Shows / Futility Closet
Episodes
- Futility Closet
O Loving Hate!
In 1988, Harvard mathematician Steven Strogatz hit on a new way to teach differential equations. Juliet loves Romeo, but Romeo is fickle: The more she warms to…
- Futility Closet
Checkmate
A puzzle by A. Savin, from the July-August 1996 issue of Quantum: A mother, her brother, her daughter, and her son take part in a family chess tournament. Two…
- Futility Closet
End to End
Read word by word, this sentence is a palindrome: Girl, bathing on Bikini, eyeing boy, finds boy eyeing bikini on bathing girl. From a New Statesman…
- Futility Closet
All Right Then
Vicious Circles and Infinity, Patrick Hughes and George Brecht’s 1978 anthology of paradoxes, begins with this sentence: “The anthology has no…
- Futility Closet
“Gloss”
I know a little man both ept and ert. An intro-? extro? No, he’s just a vert. Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane, His image trudes upon the…
- Futility Closet
Having Words
It’s said that Samuel Johnson resorted to unconventional methods to win a debate with a Billingsgate fishwife: He called her a noun, a pronoun, an…
- Futility Closet
Dry
It has been claimed that only three people read the three volumes of Russell and Whitehead’s monumental Principia Mathematica in its entirety, namely…
- Futility Closet
Bhartrhari’s Paradox
There are some things that are unnameable. But it seems impossible to verify this by giving positive instances, because this would require us to name that…
- Futility Closet
Taking Pause
‘Theft’ is a concept that logically and genetically depends on the antecedent concept of ‘rightfully owned property’ — and refers…
- Futility Closet
Around the World
A brainteaser from the British intelligence agency GCHQ: Explain the following: falkun, home de guerra, kick, lavoro, moed, mosca, raccordement, schafer…
- Futility Closet
“Scripture Cake”
Contributed by Mrs. M.L. Dow to a cookbook compiled by the Ladies of Trinity Church, Claremont, N.H., 1899: 4 1/2 cups 1st Kings 4:22 1 1/2 cups Judges 5:25 2…
- Futility Closet
CyberChance
A puzzle by National Security Agency applied research mathematician Nicholas R., from the agency’s October 2016 Puzzle Periodical: Eddie, Layne, Kurt…
- Futility Closet
Point of Order
“Mr. Chairman, before we put the motion ‘That the motion be now put,’ should we not first put the motion ‘That the motion “That…
- Futility Closet
Polchinski’s Paradox
In 1990, physicist Joseph Polchinski described a puzzling situation: Suppose a billiard ball were sent through a traversable wormhole into the past, where it…
- Futility Closet
Tile Swap
You’re tiling a floor with 4×1 and 2×2 tiles when you accidentally break one. A tile of the other shape is available. Show that it’s not…
- Futility Closet
Level Best
“To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.” — Max Beerbohm “[These…
- Futility Closet
Black and White
Alexey Khanyan devised this “no-brainer” in 2008. Black is in check. His only legal response is to interpose one of his knights, which then checks…
- Futility Closet
Postal Inspector
In 1897, to help inaugurate New York City’s new pneumatic mail system, officials sent a live black cat in a canister from the Produce Exchange Post…
- Futility Closet
Nothing Doing
Recess, County Galway, Ireland: Aspelt, Luxembourg: Bechyne, Czech Republic: (“In this house, no important person was born, lived, and most importantly…
- Futility Closet
Friendly Numbers
The divisors of 30 are 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 15, and 30. Add those up and divide the sum by 30 itself and you get 12/5. The divisors of 140 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10…
- Futility Closet
Flights of Fancy
In 2002, visitor Nicholas Whitehead erected a road sign to an international airport outside Llandegley, Wales. There is no such airport.
- Futility Closet
Reflection
In September 1835, Stendhal wrote on the shore of Lake Albano the initials of the women he had loved: Virginie Kubly, Angela Pietragrua, Adèle Rebuffel, Mina…
- Futility Closet
Portrait
A problem from Joseph Madachy’s Mathematics on Vacation (1966): If these statements are all true, what can we deduce about Major Perkins? Only…
- Futility Closet
Level-Headed
A puzzle by Russian mathematician Boris Kordemsky: A house has 6 stories, each the same height. How many times as long is the ascent to the sixth floor as the…
- Futility Closet
Unquote
“A man doesn’t learn to understand anything unless he loves it.” — Goethe “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for…
- Futility Closet
Changed Men
Iranian hermit Amou Haji ate carrion, drank from puddles, lived in a hole, smoked dung, and died at 94, a few months after bathing for the first time in 60…
- Futility Closet
The Same Boat
The Wikipedia article on the Ship of Theseus has changed entirely since its inception.
- Futility Closet
Math Notes
19 can be expressed as the sum of four perfect cubes: 19 = 333 + (-29)3 + (-25)3 + 163 So can 6941: 6941 = (-3476)3 + 30903 + 23173 + 3843 Can every integer be…
- Futility Closet
Plot Lines
Reading Maps plots the geographical course of hundreds of books and films, so you can see where and how events unfold on the earth’s surface. (Above is…
- Futility Closet
Casting Call
I turn off the light when I leave the room and I turn it on again when I come back in a moment later. Is the shadow of the statue on the table the same one…
- Futility Closet
Poser
Unusually, this puzzle may be easier for older readers. The answer is R, the reverse gear on a manual gearshift.
- Futility Closet
In Other News
This monster was found in the kingdom of Santa Fe, Peru, in the province of Chili and in the Lake of Fagua, located in the lands of Prosper Voston. It emerged…
- Futility Closet
The Europa Redux Manuscript
In 2020 Brooklyn’s Honey & Wax Bookseller came into possession of a strange manuscript consisting of 7,000 illustrations, each 3 centimeters square…
- Futility Closet
Lacunae
Demetri Martin’s 2012 book This Is a Book contains a page marked “This page unintentionally left blank.” The first page of this edition of…
- Futility Closet
The Magic Hat Puzzler
An old puzzle from the Car Talk radio show on NPR: You and I each draw a number from a magic hat. We don’t know each other’s numbers, but the hat…
- Futility Closet
Extra Large
When this photo appeared in the Loveland [Colo.] Reporter in 1895, farmer Joseph B. Swan was besieged with requests for pieces and seeds of his giant potato…
- Futility Closet
Verse
This poem was composed by English mathematician George Biddell Airy, the seventh Astronomer Royal. It’s written from the point of view of the irregular…
- Futility Closet
In Short
A letter from the king’s minister of finance to Zenon of Kaunos, a public official in Ptolemaic Egypt, 256 B.C.: Apollonius to Zenon, greeting. You did…
- Futility Closet
The Hurt Locker
The iron maiden, the medieval torture device consisting of a hinged cabinet with a spike-lined interior, seems to have been a myth. There’s no mention of…
- Futility Closet
Tableau
Dinosaur fossils are often found in this dramatic posture, with the head thrown back, the tail extended, and the mouth wide open. The reason isn’t clear…
- Futility Closet
Weather and Art
In 1970, Penn State meteorologist Hans Neuberger examined 12,000 European paintings to reconstruct historical climate data between 1400 and 1967. He found a…
- Futility Closet
Tête-à-Tête
It is related that Anne of Austria one day told Bautree — a councillor of State, poet, and member of the French Academy, but famous for his facetiousness…
- Futility Closet
Complaint
“Have you noticed … there is never any third act in a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there. They are the work…
- Futility Closet
Counterpoint
In 1078, Saint Anselm of Canterbury presented a proof that God exists. We define God as a being than which no greater can be conceived. If God existed only in…
- Futility Closet
Perspective
Artist Jeff Lieberman designs “Impossible Corners,” a wall art illusion that exploits the same principle as this mistrustful dragon.
- Futility Closet
Hobo Ethics
A code of principles proposed at the 1889 National Hobo Convention: Decide your own life; don’t let another person run or rule you. When in town, always…
- Futility Closet
The Fene Cellist
In 2023, the Spanish artist SFHIR created this nine-story mural in Fene, Galicia, for the first Perla Mural Fest. At night the instrument comes to life as the…
- Futility Closet
Unquote
“To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to men, not to other dogs.” — Karl…
- Futility Closet
Math Notes
A visual proof that the sum of all positive odd numbers up to 2n – 1 is a perfect square.