One from the archives this week. I spotted this some while back. This is the woodland burial park where my father (at the time) and subsequently also my mother are buried. My father would have been turning in his grave — which is only about 50m from this notice.
This week on Thinking Thursday I asked you to come up with the answer to Lewis Carroll’s famous riddle:
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Yes, it is a bit of a trick question because Carroll never intended there to be an answer; it was all part of Alice asking a serious question about the, to a child, mindless pursuits of adults.
However eventually Carroll did provide an answer:
Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!
The spelling of “nevar” is Carroll’s original, being “raven” backwards, but was lost in the printed version due to an over-zealous proofreader.
Of course this hasn’t stopped many other people providing clever answers, including “because Poe wrote on both” and “because they both come with inky quills”. You can find a longer explanation at, inter alia, wiseGEEK.
But I think the answer I like best is “because neither one is made of cheese“. Nor is either a helium balloon.
This week on Thinking Thursday were going to look at one of the most famous riddles of all time, and see if you can come up with an answer.
The riddle I pose is one originally penned by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland:
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
As always there is no prize except the fun of the chase but if you wish to put your answer in the comments I’d love to read it.
Answer on Sunday evening, as usual.
Oh and no cheating on this one by looking it up on the intertubes. ☺
In 1939 Punch published cartoons of a fanciful railway. But little did they realise that it would become a reality in the 1950s and that it would carry some 2 million passengers.
The reality was the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway — a narrow gauge railway created in Battersea Gardens by Rowland Emett for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Way away in Chattooga County, Georgia, USA the 82 year old woman who was born Carolyn Marjorie Ann Clay, has filed to change her name. Currently known as Serpentfoot Serpentfoot (according to her driving licence) this wouldn’t be the first time she’s changed her name — or done other weird and outrageous things including stripping nude at a Rome City Commission meeting in protest against them praying at the beginning of meetings.
Unsurprisingly her name change has already been rejected by a judge in Floyd County — despite her claim that it would be shortened to Nofoot Allfoot Serpentfoot. So she has moved to Chattooga County, revised her new name and submitted a new application to the courts there.
And what is that new name? …
Nofoot Allfoot-69-mouth-tail-solids-liquids-gases-animals-vegetable-mineral-all-predators-and-prey-that-consume-and-move-with-feet-fins-wings-wheels-canes-roots-limbs-vines-landslides-dust-wind-water-fire-ice-gravity-vacuums-black-holes-going-over-under-around-and-through-Our-Greater-Self-our-habitat-the-cosmos-of-which-we-are-but-part-and-where-all-life-feeds-upon-other-life-from-the-smallest-atoms-or-bacteria-to-the-great-black-holes-and-dog-eat-dog-and-“Last-Suppers”-where-we-are-what-we-eat-or-consume-and-each-lives-on-in-the-other…∞ Serpentfoot
Read more of this bizarreness in Chattanooga Times Free Press
This month I thought we would return to the humorous for our Ten Things …
Ten Exciting New Paint Shades
This week’s Thinking Thursday post asked you to make sense of
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 race
12112
Well it’s all down to how you read it. How about:
Eleven was a racehorse,
Twelve was one too.
Eleven won one race,
Twelve won one too.
Hat-tip Marcus du Sautoy who provided this in his book Finding Moonshine.