Frenzied Fiction/The Perplexity Column as Done by the Jaded Journalist
XV—The Perplexity Column as done by the Jaded Journalist
INSTANTANEOUS ANSWERS TO ALL QUESTIONS
Harvard Student asks:
Can you tell me the date at which, or on which, Oliver Cromwell’s father died?
Answer. No, I can’t.
Student of Mathematics asks:
Will you kindly settle a matter involving a wager between myself and a friend? A. bet B. that a pedestrian in walking downhill over a given space and alternately stepping with either foot, covers more ground than a man coasting over the same road on a bicycle. Which of us wins?
Answer. I don’t understand the question, and I don’t know which of you is A.
Chess-player asks:
Is the Knight’s gambit recognized now as a permissible opening in chess?
Answer. I don’t play chess.
Reuben Boob asks:
For some time past I have been calling upon a young lady friend at her house evenings and going out with her to friends’ nights. I should like to know if it would be all right to ask to take her alone with me to the theatre?
Answer. Certainly not. This column is very strict about these things. Not alone. Not for a moment. It is better taste to bring your father with you.
Auction asks:
In playing bridge please tell me whether the third or the second player ought to discard from weakness on a long suit when trumps have been twice round and the lead is with dummy.
Answer. Certainly.
Lady of Society asks:
Can you tell me whether the widow of a marquis is entitled to go in to dinner before the eldest daughter of an earl?
Answer. Ha! ha! This is a thing we know—something that we do know. You put your foot in it when you asked us that. We have lived this sort of thing too long ever to make any error. The widow of a marquis, whom you should by rights call a marchioness dowager (but we overlook it—you meant no harm) is entitled (in any hotel that we know or frequent) to go in to dinner whenever, and as often, as she likes. On a dining-car the rule is the other way.
Vassar Girl asks:
What is the date of the birth of Caracalla?
Answer. I couldn’t say.
Lexicographer asks:
Can you tell me the proper way to spell “dog”?
Answer. Certainly. “Dog” should be spelt, properly and precisely, “dog.” When it is used in the sense to mean not “a dog” or “one dog” but two or more dogs—in other words what we grammarians are accustomed to call the plural—it is proper to add to it the diphthong, s, pronounced with a hiss like z in soup.
But for all these questions of spelling your best plan is to buy a copy of Our Standard Dictionary, published in ten volumes, by this newspaper, at forty dollars.
Ignoramus asks:
Can you tell me how to spell “cat”?
Answer. Didn’t you hear what we just said about how to spell “dog”? Buy the Dictionary.
Careworn Mother asks:
I am most anxious to find out the relation of the earth’s diameter to its circumference. Can you, or any of your readers, assist me in it?
Answer. The earth’s circumference is estimated to be three decimal one four one five nine of its diameter, a fixed relation indicated by the Greek letter pi. If you like we will tell you what pi is. Shall we?
”Brink of Suicide” writes:
Can you, will you, tell me what is the Sanjak of Novi Bazar?
Answer. The Sanjak of Novi Bazar is bounded on the north by its northern frontier, cold and cheerless, and covered during the winter with deep snow. The east of the Sanjak occupies a more easterly position. Here the sun rises—at first slowly, but gathering speed as it goes. After having traversed the entire width of the whole Sanjak, the magnificent orb, slowly and regretfully, sinks into the west. On the south, where the soil is more fertile and where the land begins to be worth occupying, the Sanjak is, or will be, bounded by the British Empire.