"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..."
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".
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.
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!)
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.
Hah! Brilliant, Terry. I'm glad that it was this elegant/involved as I was worried I was missing something incredibly obvious!
"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..."
Pie is proven to be directly related to circumference.
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".
Well, OK. I have no idea why you would do this. 🤷🏼♀️
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.
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!)
Very cool. I would have never guessed. Can you do this with other math problems or answers?
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.
So cool. I AM a Maths person but no, that constraint was nowhere in my field of view. Very cool. 😎
My head is swimming -- I'm not a maths person -- but am intrigued, and liked the resulting poem and challenge, so thanks, Terry.
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.
*😉
"rats who constructed the labyrinth from which they then try to escape." Sounds like a metaphor for life in general : )