Alphametics (a.k.a. Cryptarithms)

This addition sum

  SEND
  MORE
MONEY

was first published by Henry Dudeney in 1924. The conventions for verbal arithmetic, as it is known, are that

• each letter stands for a different digit and 
• none of the numbers involved start with a zero. 

It is a bonus if

• there is a unique solution, and
• the words make up a meaningful phrase,

Here are two more

  WRONG

  WRONG

  R I GHT

and  MAKE + THIS = ADDUP.

A nice variation on the idea has been used by Susan Denham*, author of some of the more elegant Enigma puzzles in the New Scientist, a British science weekly. Here are two of her examples:

1. EIGHT is a cube, PRIME is a prime, and NINE  is divisible by 9.
2. NINETY is divisible by 9, TEN is one more than a perfect square, which is also divisible by 9, and there are SIX perfect squares between TEN and NINETY. 

Readers are invited to send in their solutions for a prize, so the second one ended with the question "What number should be SENT?"

*This name is a pseudonym, which is an approximate homophone for Sue Denham.

Bullshitter

This crossword clue is a nice double definition (with a four-letter solution beginning with J).

On re-reading this post, I noticed that the clue in question had gone missing. I can't remember what it was, and so I have made up another one, whose surface meaning is perhaps more topical:

                One despised Yank. (4, starting with J)

Pythagoras Theorem

Here is a lovely proof-without-words of this ancient theorem, as true today as ever it was. The right-angled triangle is yellow, the square on the hypotenuse is blue, and the squares on the other two sides are red.

             

This is just one of 99 proofs  of Pythagoras Theorem collected by Alexander Bogomolny for his wonderfully inventive and informative cut-the-knot column that appeared from 1996 until 2012 on the Mathematical Association of America website. 

Nominative Determinism

I believe the weekly magazine, New Scientist, may have coined the phrase "nominative determinism" in its light-hearted column at the back. I came across a lovely example of it last week, when my son Cameron and I went on a conducted tour of the the Jaguar production lines at Castle Bromwich in Birmingham.

Our amiable and very knowledgeable guide had worked in the car industry for most of his working life. He told us that his first job had been hanging doors on cars on an Austin production line, and at the end of the tour,  when I looked at his name label, it read: Austin Dawes. He assured us that it was not a joke.

Royal Philandering

To stave off mental decay, I try to complete the cryptic crossword on the back page of The Week magazine, composed each week by Tim Moorey. He has reached Crossword Number 858, which means he has set more than 25,000 clever, cunning, crafty, captivating cryptic clues over 17 years or so. Here is a nice one from his latest engrossing grid:

The Duke and the Queen carry on. (9)