Bad News - Futility Closet
In 2015 Nature published an alarming article suggesting that dragons are real and had only gone...
Vernacular - Futility Closet
In 1991, artist Michael Dennis installed his sculpture Reclining Figure in Vancouver’s Guelph Park. In 2012,...
Unquote - Futility Closet
“If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay — in solid cash — the...
Why Not? - Futility Closet
From a letter from English scholar Walter Raleigh to Mrs. F. Gotch, July 2, 1898: Doe...
Topsy Turvy - Futility Closet
Two sets of reversible faces by Rex Whistler, from 1930 — above, Mayor & Judge; below,...
Sir Hilary's Prayer - Futility Closet
English poet Winthrop Mackworth Praed was renowned for his charades — this one, published in the...
Hard of Hearing - Futility Closet
In 1979 Auberon Waugh was working as a columnist at Private Eye when his editor offered...
The Right Track - Futility Closet
Suppose you’re hiking in the woods and become lost. What’s the best path to follow to...
The Territory - Futility Closet
Much blood has … been spilled on the carpet in attempts to distinguish between science fiction...
Black and White - Futility Closet
“This seems to be my most ingenious two-mover,” wrote Vladimir Nabokov in 1970. He had composed...
High and Dry - Futility Closet
Since much of the Netherlands is below sea level, Dutch farmers needed a way to leap...
Board Walk - Futility Closet
Al writes the numbers 1, 2, …, 2n on a blackboard, where n is an odd...
Misc - Futility Closet
To burn up is to burn down. Litotes is an anagram of T.S. Eliot. 1012658227848 ×...
A Fistful of Scrawlers - Futility Closet
From an 1897 Strand article: The “typewriter glove” was “a contrivance of wash-leather, upon which were...
Continuity - Futility Closet
In 1590 Emperor Rudolf II commissioned Flemish painter Joris Hoefnagel to illuminate the Mira calligraphiae monumenta,...
Sousselier's Problem - Futility Closet
It appears that there was a club and the president decided that it would be nice...
Illumination - Futility Closet
British artist Martin Creed introduced a controversial installation in 1995: an empty room in which the...
Peak to Peak - Futility Closet
Pick any point in the interior of an equilateral triangle and draw a perpendicular to each...
Self-Described - Futility Closet
Long-short-short, long-short-short Dactyls in dimeter, Verse form with choriambs (Masculine rhyme): One sentence (two stanzas) Hexasyllabically...
Doppelgänger - Futility Closet
I don’t normally follow sports, but this seems worth remarking: Tonight Danny Jansen is set to...
In a Word - Futility Closet
pluvial adj. relating to rainfall A little tap at the window, as though some missile had...
Floating Faster - Futility Closet
A problem by Soviet physicist Viktor Lange: It’s not uncommon to see two ships traveling down...
Off Schedule - Futility Closet
Mark Twain approaches the international date line, 1895: Sept. 8. To-morrow we shall be close to...
Evidence - Futility Closet
It must, I think, be allowed, that if a very limited intelligence, whom we shall suppose...
Ironically Apt - Futility Closet
In 2013, Japanese refrigeration company Fukushima Industries introduced a new mascot, a happy winged egg: “I...
Catastrophe - Futility Closet
In Seven Types of Ambiguity (1949), William Empson describes a particularly inscrutable English newspaper headline: ITALIAN...
Unquote - Futility Closet
Someone said to Socrates that a certain man had grown no better by his travels. ‘I...
Nontransitive Tennis - Futility Closet
A problem from the 17th Irish Mathematical Olympiad, in 2004: In a tennis tournament, each player...
Tense Trouble - Futility Closet
Sydney is 14 hours ahead of New York, so when it’s noon in Sydney it’s 10...
Discernment - Futility Closet
The most successful critics are always scribbling things in their programs, largely because it gives them...
To the Point - Futility Closet
In What a Word!, his 1936 examination of English usage, A.P. Herbert takes up a letter...
Pithy - Futility Closet
Mark Antony’s funeral oration rendered in Scrabble tiles, by Pete Stickland: COUNTRYMEN, I AM TO BURY,...
Roll Call - Futility Closet
Unusual personal names collected in Oklahoma by onomastician Thomas Pyles in the 1940s: A. Noble Ladd...
Shorthand - Futility Closet
The so-called four-field approach in anthropology divides the discipline into four subfields: archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology,...
Sharp Practice - Futility Closet
Talking of shaving the other night at Dr. Taylor’s, Dr. Johnson said, ‘Sir, of a thousand...
Stature - Futility Closet
Venice’s Museo Correr exhibits a pair of wooden implements whose use isn’t immediately clear — they’re...
Cube Route - Futility Closet
A centered hexagonal number is a number that can be represented by a hexagonal lattice with...
Reflections - Futility Closet
Epigrams of poet Ralph Hodgson: Oaths in anguish rank with prayers. The wink was not our...
Liberty - Futility Closet
Reader Derek Christie sent in this surprising curiosity after Wednesday’s post about Borromean rings: Both the...
Step by Step - Futility Closet
“Rules for the direction of the mind,” from an unfinished treatise by René Descartes: The aim...
Temper - Futility Closet
It is time to bury the nonsense of the ‘incomplete animal.’ As Julian Huxley, the eminent...
Misc - Futility Closet
Vatican City has 2.27 popes per square kilometer. Skylab was fined for littering. Five-syllable rhyming words...
All Together Now - Futility Closet
German scientist Gaspar Schott’s 1657 Magia universalis naturæ et artis includes a description of “the music...
In a Word - Futility Closet
rarissima n. extremely rare books, manuscripts, or prints In The Book Hunter (1863), John Hill Burton...
The Champ - Futility Closet
Proposed cabinet of Dizzy Gillespie, who ran for president in 1964: Secretary of State: Duke Ellington...
Dis-Connected - Futility Closet
These circles display an odd property — the three are linked, but no two are linked....
Keeping Up - Futility Closet
Scotland’s Paisley Abbey updated its gargoyles in 1991.
Hunting - Futility Closet
In 1975 British biologist Peter Scott proposed dubbing the Loch Ness Monster Nessiteras rhombopteryx after a...
Footwork - Futility Closet
Dion is a person, a whole man. Theon is that part of Dion that does not...