A puzzle from Recreational Mathematics Magazine, October 1962:
If the product of 673,106 and 4,783,205,468 is 3,219,60_,299,743,608, can you supply the missing digit without actually multiplying the numbers?
The answer, given three months later, was “The missing digit is 4.” It certainly is, but I don’t see how one can arrive at this fact without actually doing the calculation. I had thought the solution might involve digit sums, but I don’t see that it does. Any ideas?
The main site’s tagline is “an idler’s miscellany of compendious amusements.” I like this, but I’ve always worried that compendious doesn’t mean quite what I want it to mean. Here’s the OED definition:
1. Containing the substance within small compass, concise, succinct, summary; comprehensive though brief; esp. of literary works; also of their authors. (‘It is a Compendious Prayer, and contains much in little.’) (‘A compendious analysis of the chapters which form this..compilation.’)
2. a. Of a way, method, or process: That saves time or space, expeditious, not circuitous, direct; summary. Obs. (‘The most compendious passage to the shades below.’)
b. Economical.
c. Profitable.
What do you think? I may experiment with other phrases just to see how they read, either similarly polysyllabic ones or something simple like “Your refuge from productivity.” Once I’ve settled on something I’m going to commission a proper logo for the site — that Helvetica nameplate is just too generic.
I’m gathering material to publish a Futility Closet book, first as an ebook and then, if interest seems high enough, in print. This raises some practical questions, the first of which concerns images. Many of the items on the website rely on artwork, illustrations, or diagrams, and I’m not sure these can be included reliably in an ebook. Can anyone advise me in this? I suppose one option is to withhold these items until the print version, but that seems unfortunate.
I’m running analytics on the main Futility Closet site, but not on this blog, so I don’t know how many people are reading it. If you check it regularly, could you post a quick comment here or write to me at gregblog@gmail.com? I want to use the blog to solicit readers’ input about future directions for the site, but first I need to know how many people are reading it. Thanks.
The Wikipedia article on Mark Kac contains this anecdote:
Kac got a typed manuscript back from his secretary and it contained the following sentence: ‘This result can be verified by connecting 300 volts across a negro gentleman.’ He looked at his handwritten draft to see what could possibly have produced this, and it said ‘This result can be verified by connecting 300 volts across a rigger,’ which was a Breadboard.
No source is given, and I can’t find an atom of corroboration anywhere, including Kac’s 1985 autobiography, Enigmas of Chance. Does anyone know whether this is true?
In preparing a book, the first question is whether to organize the material into categories (oddities, puzzles, math, etc.) or to present it as a miscellany, as on the site itself. I can do either, but I’m inclined toward the latter. Collecting, say, all the obscure words into a dedicated chapter would make a given item easier to find, but it would reduce whatever charm arises from the juxtaposition of odd elements. What do you think?
Here’s a stray item from my notes. In the Göttingen Pocket Almanac, G.C. Lichtenberg notes that people born on Leap Day lament being able to celebrate a birthday only once every four years. But he points out that at the moment of anyone’s birth, the sun stands at a certain point on its ecliptic, and that properly speaking he is 1 year old on the day when the sun returns to that point, regardless of what the calendar calls it.
In this sense, not only does a Leap Day baby have a birthday every year, but the rest of us may be celebrating on the wrong dates. “If you had been born on any other day — for instance, May 1 — you would nevertheless, under certain conditions, celebrate your birthday on different days, at times on April 30, at times on May 2. … This is based on the circumstance that the year does not consist of exactly 365 days but of about 365 days and six hours, while we can’t possibly bother with such fractions of days in our ordinary affairs.”
I’ve been wanting to fashion this into a post, but first I need to know if he’s right. Today is April 16. When Earth returns to this position in subsequent orbits, will the calendar always read April 16?
On mobile devices, Futility Closet is currently served by the WPtouch plugin. This works well enough, and I’m perfectly game to leave things as they are, but I wonder if the site might not be more usable if I invested in a proper mobile theme (or perhaps an app?). What do you think? WPtouch serves content well enough, but you can’t browse the archives very easily, and you can’t surf randomly. I think it must be difficult to use. Is it?
Oh, also, I suppose I’ll need a designer for the book, as well as a cover designer, though I have a lot of spadework to do first. Here again I’d prefer to work with someone who knows the site, so the design can reflect the tone of the content. Please contact me if you’re interested.
I’m looking for a WordPress theme designer to help tweak the current design of the site. All the elements are in place, but they don’t work together as harmoniously as I’d like, and they don’t really reflect the spirit of the content. To my eye it looks as if the site was assembled rather than properly designed.
The theme doesn’t need a complete overhaul, but I think it would benefit from a designer’s eye. Most immediately I want to improve the appearance of the search and email subscribe boxes, the “click for solution” puzzle boxes, the metadata bars that follow each post, and some of the typography. And (possibly this is a separate undertaking) I’d really like the nameplate at the top to be more distinctive — the paper airplane is great, but using all-caps Helvetica for the title strikes me as generic and unprepossessing. A newcomer can’t really tell what she’s getting.
If you can help with any of this, I’d be grateful to hear from you. Ideally I’m hoping there might be an interested designer who actually reads the site — I’ve been finding it hard to describe the tone to outside designers. Thanks.
