38 Comments
Mar 15Liked by Terry Freedman

Hah! Brilliant, Terry. I'm glad that it was this elegant/involved as I was worried I was missing something incredibly obvious!

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Thanks, Nathan! Chortle.

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Mar 15·edited Mar 15Liked by Terry Freedman

"My favorite teacher, when I was leaving primary school for high school, stopped me one day and gave me a piece of advice: 'Don't complicate your life.' I'm not sure if he was alarmed by my appearance or my 'rock attitude,' but either way, I was in the process of becoming a 'writer-worm' (hopefully to evolve into a 'writer-butterfly'). Thank you for reminding me of my love for labyrinths, intricate maps, and ciphered keys. By the way, the initial simplicity of Borges' worlds..."

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Very funny! My pleasure, Rafa. Agree re Borges.

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Mar 15Liked by Terry Freedman

Pie is proven to be directly related to circumference.

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😂

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Mar 15Liked by Terry Freedman

Irrational numbers, when I first heard the term in a math class lightyears ago, made no sense to my rational mind. If a number were irrational, then why use it? Good one though, Terry. I will rename your exercise "a reverse linguistic acrostic".

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😂 I always had a similar problem with imaginary numbers. I mean, either a number exists or it doesn't, and if the latter why bother?

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Mar 14Liked by Terry Freedman

Well, OK. I have no idea why you would do this. 🤷🏼‍♀️

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😂 simply to see what you can produce. It's useful if you have a bit of Writer's block 😄

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Mar 15Liked by Terry Freedman

!!! I think I'd rather just stick pins in my eyes.

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Nonsense! Come up to London the day before my course (which is on 8th June), stay over in a nice hotel, and do my course. You will go away armed with a load of block-busting techniques and sore ribs from laughing so much

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Mar 21Liked by Terry Freedman

I’m sure you’re right!

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Ha, the Arthur C. Clarke response! Whenever someone wrote to him with a crackpot suggestion he would reply: "There may be something in what you say." 🤣

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Mar 14Liked by Terry Freedman

Ah, Terry, Terry, Terry. If I signed up for Oulipo 101, and this were the first assignment, I would be the first one to drop out ( and then go spend the newly-free time doing Waffle puzzles.) To me this is brain boggling.

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Mar 14·edited Mar 14Author

It won't be the first exercise, Sharron 😆

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Mar 15Liked by Terry Freedman

Good to know. But please don't use "Sharron" and "exercise" in the same sentence. BTW I will have your wonderful "Essex Station" photo out on Saturday. Where the hell is Essex station?

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😂. Great! Nowhere near Essex. It's in London, near an area called Islington

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That’s incredibly Sherlockian, well done! And highly irrational (as in my preferred use of the word being untamed and wild, not that of the math pedants I referred in my post!)

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Thanks, Bryn. Definitely irrational then, in a rational sort of way 😆

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Very cool. I would have never guessed. Can you do this with other math problems or answers?

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I should like to think so. There must be a way of using algebra for instance.

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Use of letters to words like surrealist did the irrational of putting letters in a hat and randomly picking them out to make a poem. No numbers involved but allows the irrational to coexist with a rational outcome. I have to think of pi placement of numbers to the nth degree as a formula for calculating the irrationality of the world progress in space/time and realize there is no rational answer to how the earth turns in the galaxy nor what our future will be. Nostradamus tried. What will be will be.

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Interesting. The Oulipians distanced themselves from the Surrealists because of the latter's reliance on chance

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So cool. I AM a Maths person but no, that constraint was nowhere in my field of view. Very cool. 😎

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😁

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My head is swimming -- I'm not a maths person -- but am intrigued, and liked the resulting poem and challenge, so thanks, Terry.

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Thanks, Mary. Well, if it's any consolation, I'm not a maths person either, but am trying to get a bit better!

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That's a very pertinent use of the word 'irrational', Terry. 🤯

Bravo, though - that's really, really clever! You got me - as usual. 🙄

Beth - I loved your explanation too - which is a word puzzle in its own right - so a BRAVO* to you, too.

*😉

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Chortle! Thanks, Rebecca. And yes, definitely agree with you about Beth T 😀

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Ah, you agree that the 'BRAVO' I awarded to Beth deserved to be in capitals, then!

😊🤭😊

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Of course! I gave her a shout-out in my post, didn't I?

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Yes, you did!

My 'Bravo' to you was in lower case.... 🤫

*giggles*

😉

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Oh! Chortle!

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🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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"rats who constructed the labyrinth from which they then try to escape." Sounds like a metaphor for life in general : )

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Doesn't it though...

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LOL. I hadn't thought of that but you're right!

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