Monday, October 3, 2016

Coming to your centses

Using actual pennies from his pocket, a friend of mine challenged me to do this trick a couple of nights ago. He had learned it from a book about the capacity to learn, aptly enough. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that it stumped me. The next night he showed it to another friend of mine, who was also stumped. By this time I was able to figure it out in my head. As Holmes said to Watson, every problem is absurdly simple once it has been explained to you. (Provided the explanation sinks in, of course.)

2 comments:

susan said...

That's a very good trick as was seeing the solution to the nine spots puzzle. I'll try to remember both.

Speaking of Holmes and Watson, did you ever hear this one:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson decide to go on a camping trip. After dinner and a bottle of wine, they lay down for the night, and go to sleep.

Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend.

"Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

Watson replied, "I see millions of stars."

"What does that tell you?"

Watson pondered for a minute.

"Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets."
"Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo."
"Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three."
"Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant."
"Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow."
"What does it tell you, Holmes?"

Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke: "Watson, you idiot. Someone has stolen our tent!"

Ben said...

That's a good Holmes joke. To be fair to him Watson's observational skills do seem sharper. Just maybe misses an important detail here or there.