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These verses can be interpreted to support either the Stuarts or the Hanovers, according as they’re read. If each is addressed separately, from top to bottom, they’ll seem to support the Hanoverian regime; read together, right across the page, they declare for the Stuarts: From Reuben Percy, Relics of Literature, 1823.

In this conundrum by Mitsunobu Matsuyama, when four congruent quadrilaterals are rotated about their centers, their area seems to increase. What has become of the red square? The answer is that each side of the large square is slightly shorter after the rotation. If θ is the angle between two opposing sides in each quadrilateral, then the ratio of the areas of the two...

J. Bryan III used to challenge his friends to think of an English word that contains either of the following strings of letters: ILIL ILIW “I’ve never played the game with anyone who could solve either of these combinations.” Can you?

“Improprieties in pronunciation” among the people of New England in 1808, collected by Caleb Bingham and published in The Child’s Companion: afraid: afeard apron: apun audacious: outdacious bonfire: burnfire brittle: brickle cards: cairds caught: cotch coin: quine cucumber: cowcumber dictionary: dixonary drain: dreen earth: airth fanciful: fancical five pence: fippence gown: gound grasshopper: hoppergrass jaundice: janders musician: musicianer poplar: popple quart: quairt quotient: coshun...

How can we make sense of this passage, composed by Willard R. Espy? The Optic Reed has a Haste Harm. It Hose, one assumes, not to be Lever; it neither Heats the Ripple, nor Hides the Razed sinner for his Rude Rime; it is not Old. Then Leave to it; ere thy grave Loses, thou mayst find here the Hart to the Rest thou...

A circle is divided into six sectors, into which are written (say, counterclockwise) these numbers: 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 You can increase any two neighboring numbers by 1. By doing this repeatedly, is there a way to make all six numbers equal?

A problem by Nikolai Rozov: “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?”

This remarkable phenomenon was discovered by Cambridge mathematician James Grime. Number five six-sided dice as follows: A: 2, 2, 2, 7, 7, 7 B: 1, 1, 6, 6, 6, 6 C: 0, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 D: 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 9 E: 3, 3, 3, 3, 8, 8 Now, on average: A beats B beats C beats D beats E beats...

Excerpts from letters received by the British pensions office, quoted in George Lyttelton’s Commonplace Book, 2002: Mrs R. has no clothes, has not had any for many years. The clergy have been visiting her. In reply to your letter, I have already cohabited with your officers, so far without any result. You have changed my little boy to a little girl. Will this make...

By Wikimedia user Efbrazil. Fill in four squares to make a continuous dark path connecting the stars. No diagonal moves are allowed.

When I went out to throw the discus I went and sprained some little viscus. Since that disruption of my viscera I don’t go out and throw the discera. — Don Laycock

subagitate v. to have sex with verecund adj. bashful; modest reme v. to cry or call out cacoëpistic adj. badly pronounced [Sir Walter Raleigh] loved a wench well; and one time getting up one of the Mayds of Honour up against a tree in a Wood (’twas his first Lady) who seemed at first boarding to be something fearfull of her Honour, and modest,...

“Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.” — Elias Canetti

In his 1954 book Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, Kenneth Pike presents a toy language in which meaning is determined by the relative order of the elements. If these expressions have the indicated meanings: 1. los "It is smoke" 2. mif "It is a ball" 3. kap "They are eyes" 4. losmif "The ball is smoking"...

When the news of [Richelieu’s] passing was brought to Urban VIII, the old Pope sat for a moment in pensive silence. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘if there is a God, Cardinal Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not, he has done very well.’ — Aldous Huxley, Grey Eminence, 1941

You see, when you learn to read you will be born again into another world and it is a pity to be born again so young. I should put off reading, if I were you. As soon as you learn to read you will not see anything again quite as it is. It will all the time be altered by what you have read...

In his Table Talk, W.H. Auden says that La Rochefoucauld “simply says what one has always known.” Robert Craft added, “Yes, but without him some of us would not have known that we knew.”

“Conjugated nouns,” offered by Ohio State University linguist Arnold M. Zwicky in Verbatim in 1975: I steal the keel. I stole the coal. I have stolen the colon. They choose the hues. They chose the hose. They have chosen the hosen. They mow the banks of the row. They mowed the banks of the road. They have mown the banks of the Rhone. I...

Dedication of P.G. Wodehouse’s 1926 book The Heart of a Goof: To My Daughter Leonora Without Whose Never-Failing Sympathy and Encouragement This Book Would Have Been Finished in Half the Time

Oh Lord, Thou knowest that I have lately purchased an estate in fee simple in Essex. I beseech Thee to preserve the two counties of Middlesex and Essex from fire and earthquakes; and as I have also a mortgage at Hertfordshire, I beg of Thee also to have an eye of compassion on that county, and for the rest of the counties, Thou may...

“Ingliz menuyu” presented to writer William Dalrymple at a family restaurant in Turkey in 1986: SOAP Ayas soap Turkish tripte soap Sheeps foot Macaront Water pies EATS FROM MEAT Deuner kepab with pi Kebap with green pe Kebap in paper Meat pide Kebap with mas patato Samall bits of meat grilled Almb chops VEGETABLES Meat in earthenware stev pot Stfue goreen pepper Stuffed squash...

Wikimedia user Tarquin points out that the natural rhythm of spoken language can be used to teach polyrhythms. Above: The phrase “cold cup of tea,” spoken naturally, approximates a rhythm of 2 against 3. Below: The phrase “what atrocious weather” approximates 4 against 3.