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In 2005, Jeremy Winterson bought a bootleg copy of Revenge of the Sith in Shanghai and noticed something wrong with the English subtitles. The movie’s dialogue had been translated mechanically into Chinese and then translated back again into English, leaving it almost incomprehensible. (A similar disaster had befallen a Portuguese-French phrasebook in 1883.) Fans replaced the movie’s original audio dialogue with voice actors reading...

A Polish problem longlisted for the 19th International Mathematical Olympiad in Yugoslavia, July 1977: A room contains nine men. Among every three of them there are two who are mutually acquainted. Prove that four of them are mutually acquainted.

We have a strong intuition that it’s wrong to punish someone for a crime he hasn’t committed, but is this always the case? Algy, an Alaskan motorist, and Ben, a traffic policeman, both know reliably that Algy intends to speed on a remote, unpatrolled, but radar-surveyed highway at 10:31 tomorrow morning. They also know that, if this happens, police won’t be able to reach...

No, no; for my virginity, When I lose that, says Rose, I’ll die: Behind the elms last night, cried Dick, Rose, were you not extremely sick? — Matthew Prior Time magazine called this perhaps the only naughty verse that can’t be bowdlerized. (While we’re at it: In 1680 John Wilmot published a poem about premature ejaculation.)

This 1904 comic by Gustave Verbeek (click to enlarge) is a sort of visual palindrome — the first six panels are presented conventionally, and then they’re displayed again in reverse order and upside down to compose the story’s second half. Even the written messages change their meaning: why big buns am mad u! becomes in pew we sung big hym, and so on. Only...

Two leaps the water from its race Made to the brook below, The first leap it was curving glass, The second bounding snow. — William Allingham

Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain...

A problem by British puzzlist Hubert Phillips: In writing home about an examination, five schoolgirls each made one true statement and one untrue one. The relevant passages: Betty: Kitty was second in the examination. I was only third. Ethel: You’ll be glad to hear that I was top. Joan was second. Joan: I was third, and poor old Ethel was bottom. Kitty: I came...

It’s illegal to mispronounce Joliet. G.K. Chesterton left an unfinished poem titled Plakkopytrixphylisperadaulantiobatrix. Alms has no singular. The Spanish village Trasmoz has been cursed and excommunicated by the Catholic Church. “The wink was not our best invention.” — Ralph Hodgson An Irish riddle: Yonder he is through the stream, a man without a coat, a man without a belt, a man of hard slender...

vatic adj. relating to a prophet futurition n. future existence natalitial adj. of or relating to a person’s birth aporetic adj. inclined to raise objections In 2000, three sisters from Inverness bought a £1 million insurance policy to cover the cost of bringing up the infant Jesus Christ if one of them had a virgin birth. Simon Burgess, managing director of britishinsurance.com, told the...

Thou shalt have one God only; who Would be at the expense of two? No graven images may be Worshipped, except the currency; Swear not at all; for, for thy curse Thine enemy is none the worse: At church on Sunday to attend Will serve to keep the world thy friend: Honour thy parents; that is, all From whom advancement may befall; Thou shalt...

A puzzle from the November-December 1994 issue of Quantum: “If the brainteaser you solved before you solved this one was harder than the brainteaser you solved after you solved the brainteaser that you solved before you solved this one, was the brainteaser you solved before you solved this one harder than this one?”

In his 1985 commonplace book Michelangelo’s Snowman, George Herrick gives a notable mnemonic for the bones of the wrist: Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle (scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate) Two more, from the r/Anatomy subreddit:

I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state? — Lord Byron, letter to Thomas Moore, July 5, 1821

In 1782, during a tour of Hampton Court, Hannah More encountered landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown, who compared his art to literary composition: ‘Now there‘ said he, pointing his finger, ‘I make a comma, and there’ pointing to another spot, ‘where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a...

According to Frank M. Chapman’s Color Key to North American Birds (1912), the hooded warbler sings You must come to the woods, or you won’t see me.

Between 1741 and 1760, when a baby was left at London’s Foundling Hospital, the staff encouraged the mother to provide some token that could be used as an identifying record — a note, a letter, or some other small object. Usually a piece of fabric was provided by the mother or cut from the child’s clothing, and these were attached to registration forms and...

A maze by Eric Fisk. Following the arrows, find a path that leads away from the star and back to it.

Ohm’s law states that V = IR, where V is the voltage measured across a conductor, I is the current through the conductor, and R is the conductor’s resistance. In the image mnemonic at left (easily remembered by the word “viral”), covering any of the unknowns gives the formula in terms of the remaining parameters: V = IR, I = V/R, R = V/I....

In Venice, on a small peninsula formed by the meeting of two canals, stands the church of Santa Maria della Salute, bearing a statue of the Virgin Mary. Further out stand statues of Atlas and Fortune. And on the very tip of the point there used to stand a solitary cast-iron lamppost, on whose base was inscribed the legend FONDERIA DI FERRO IN VENEZIA...

“A man who has not read Homer is like a man who has not seen the ocean. There is a great object of which he has no idea.” — Walter Bagehot

Proverbs from around the world: “Opportunities come but do not linger.” — Nepalese “If you buy what you don’t need, you steal from yourself.” — Swedish “Happy nations have no history.” — Belgian “An old error has more friends than a new truth.” — Danish “Nothing is difficult if you’re used to it.” — Indonesian “The one being carried does not realize how far...

The Chief Defect of Henry King Was chewing little bits of String. At last he swallowed some which tied Itself in ugly Knots inside. Physicians of the Utmost Fame Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their Fees, “There is no Cure for this Disease. “Henry will very soon be dead.” His Parents stood about his Bed Lamenting...