Sunday, Fun Day

Reading: DRACULA, for the first time. Astounding Frontiers #2. I’m torn: I want to read John C Wright’s NOWHITHER straight through, and it’s serialized. So I’m skipping it until more of it comes out, though it hurts.

Writing projects underway:
“The Kings of the Corona”: 17000 word story: finished, accepted for the upcoming anthology TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, edited by Anthony Marchetta. Publication date not yet scheduled. Anthony showed us a draft of the cover art, by Dawn Witzke, and it looks great. Probably not long now. #Fantasy #Arthurian #YoungAdult
“The Stowaways” (working title) projected as 8000 word story, or maybe 6000 if I can whittle it down: work in progress. I have about 3000 words so far. #ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera




My weekends these days are mostly taken up with work connected with closing Mom’s estate, but I want weekends to be fun days. Here are a joke and a number curiosity.

A Joke

Remembered this old chestnut this afternoon. Modified it slightly:

A young man in the heart of the South wanted to instill his love of his region’s history in his young son, and walked through the park with him one day to the statue of Stonewall Jackson, flourishing his saber, mounted on his horse, frozen in a tableau of dramatic action.

“That, son, is Stonewall Jackson,” he said.

“Wow!” said the little boy.

The statue at once became the boy’s favorite spot in the park. His father noted with pride as the years passed that his son would still return there every Sunday to admire the memorial.

At last the boy graduated high school, and was about to set off for college far away. He and his father went for one last walk through the park to visit their favorite statue one more time, and they stood in silence paying their respects to it.

When they turned to go home again, the young man said, “Dad, I’ve always wondered something.”

“What is it, son?”

“Do you happen to know—who is that man with the funny beard sitting on Stonewall Jackson?”



Recreational Math

Here’s an arithmetical curiosity I noticed that has a pretty good “gee whiz” factor.

It begins with a pleasant little “find the number” puzzle: There is only one number (not counting 1, which is rather a ‘degenerate’ solution) that has this property: it is the product of the first and last digits of its square. Find the number.

To clarify the idea, if you’re not used to how I put these things (so few people are!), if you were to try the number 17 you would square it, 17 x 17 = 289, and then multiply the first and last digits, 2 times 9 = 18. We were hoping to get our 17 back: nope, close but no cigar. In case you want to try finding it, see Answer 1 is below, not to be confused with Answer 2 below.

For a second puzzle, kick the idea up a notch by taking two digits at a time: Find a number that is the product of the 2-digit number at the left and right ends of its own square.

Again, to clarify: if you were testing 2,656, you would square it: 2,656 x 2,656 = 7,054,336. Then you would take the two-digit numbers from the left and right of the square and multiply, hoping to get your 2,656 back: 70 x 36 = 2,520. Nope.

I would think you’d want to use mechanical help to work on this one. A spreadsheet is quite adequate, and it’s a nice little exercise in writing formulas.

The interesting thing is that the one number that answers this puzzle has a curious relationship with the number that worked in the first puzzle.

Okay, you've looked at the answers? Now here's what puzzles me, and I don't have an answer: Why in the world would the numbers that answer the one-digit and two-digit problems have this pattern, where the two-digit answer just repeats the digits of the one-digit answer twice? Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, or maybe there’s a mathematical reason I don’t see.

And no, repeating digits three times doesn’t work for the 3-digit version of the same puzzle.




ANSWER 1: The number is 28. 28 x 28 = 784 and 7 x 4 = 28.





ANSWER 2: The number is 2,288. 2,288 x 2,288 = 5,234,944, and 52 x 44 = 2,288.