What is your quest?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. This one pairs nicely with the previous question "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

What is your quest?

Not the college-polished liberal arts answers I expected:

• i'm still waiting for the call to action tbh
• still figuring that out
• I don't know

Short-term thinkers and those with pretty feasible goals:

• sleep
• eat 2015's chocolate award winners
• not puke after watching a romcom
• to finish the current problem set
• to make it through the day
• over to the left a bit
• sort things
• to finally get to October break

Long-term and big picture thinkers:

• to find a nice farm to settle down in
• to find the meaning of my one and only life
• to sell vacuum cleaners in n cities, driving as few miles as possible
• find my quest
• to make myself and others happy
• to be the best there ever was
• seek ultimate fun in life
• join moon
• to get vim commands to work in google docs

I'm not sure that "join moon" should be interpreted literally. Maybe it's a cult thing?

There were some context-free superlatives:

• be the best
• to be the very best
• to be the best there ever was

This last one, it turns out, was a frequent verbatim response, sometimes extending for several more lines. I had to do an internet search to find my missing cultural context, because I am an old person and not hip or cool.

The obvious answers (I can hear it, with accent and cadence, in my head):

• to find the Holy Grail
• I don't know thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-----
  [ed. note: the line trailed off and upwards into the margin]

The "playing for brownie points" award goes to my favorite: "to reach node v of graph G".

This post's theme word is manumit, "to free from slavery." A valuable life's work is to maximally manumit.

What is the largest number you have counted to out loud?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. (This question was student-generated, too!)

What is the largest number you have counted to out loud?

Usual answers: 100, 101, 125, 200, 400, 999. "I don't remember."

Unusual answers: 7, 20, 42, 54, 117, 267, 723. Why stop at (1) such a small number, and (2) a non-round number?

Impressive answers: ∞, 5000, "1000 (My parents wanted to keep me distracted and I was 8.)" (note: it worked, and this student is now a math major!).

Answers I, personally, found confusing: i, -1, √115, 0, "2 grillion", 17 1/2. I'm not sure what increments you are counting in to get to -1, or i, or square roots, or fractions. Actual theoretical issues of countability (in the technical sense) come into play here.


This post's theme word is plangent, "loud and resounding," or "sad or mournful." The plangent dirge counted onwards, never ceasing, its rolling tones reverberating down the valley, but I had come to suspect that the Plinker Monks would never reach "square root of 115 bottles of beer on the wall"... (-excerpt from My Life Amongst Mathematical Entities from Thought Experiments)

Your hidden talent?

I take attendance by having the students ask a question.

Of course, the class is full of very talented people. In addition to a slew of musical instrument and dancing skills, my class harbors many unusually-talented students. Parse that as you will.

What is one of your hidden talents?

• vaguely ambidextrous
• hiding my talents
• eating copious amounts of food
• tying shoelaces
• can make a bubbly noise in awkward silences
• sleeping
• Bejeweled
• I have 3 arms.
• hiding

Today's prevention of semantic/logical loops goes to: "It wouldn't be hidden if I told you."

This post's theme word is sub rosa, "secretly, privately, or confidentially." The students submitted their homework sub rosa; I have no idea why.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

This one might have been very cultural-reference-specific, but... I honestly want to know.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

• African or European?

Okay, I deserved that. Other answers included:

• 2
• 3.00*10^8 m/s
• 3
• 50 minutes (one algorithms class)
• c=2.78*10^8 m/s
• 10mph
• 574mph
• -9.8m/s
• 5
• 12 knots
• 20mph west
• depends on mass of coconut
• 25mph, depending on African or European

I'm worried by the units (or lack thereof) on some of those answers.

And on a less quantitative level:

• What's an unladen swallow?
• as fast as it can dream
• The swallow is the center of the universe. All moves relative to it.
• very fast
• Will this be on the exam?
• faster than me
• impossible to measure

This post's theme word placentious (adj), "pleasing or inclined to please." The students are placentious indeed.

Quoth the raven

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

Quoth the raven, "_______________."

• Join Bird Club!
• 'sup
• Hi, how are you?
• suh dude
• I can fly.
• Can I fly?
• Fantastic!
• hey wassup hello
• nooooooooooooooooo

Many followed the reference but with variations:

• n3v3rmor3 xD
• never ever never no matter what forever (more)
• not the "n-word"!
• NEVER EVER MORE, EXCEPT SOMETIMES MAYBE
• "Quoth the raven, "Quoth the raven, " ... " " "
• What, the poem by Edgar Allen Poe? The super dark one? :(

I appreciated the close-quotes which matched on the recursive answer. The most popular answer was, of course, the simple "nevermore".

Many people picked onomatopoeia:

• caw
• woot
• hey
• cacaw
• yo
• yo yo
• chirp
• KAA KAA
• Squahk

Today's winner was:

"A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had a chance that I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for awhile. [piano]* And February made me shiver, with every paper I'd deliver. Bad news on the doorstep I couldn't take one more..."

* pronounced "bracket piano bracket" 

-- I promise I'm listening to the lecture.

This post's theme word is frowsty, "musty; having a stale smell." The frowsty classic poem was rejuvenated by students' colorful edits.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

• for an insurance scam
• Caged animals have no freedom in 'murica.
• Her mission is classified.
• Why not?
• Because it's entitled to do so.
• To sing Adele's "Hello (from the other side)"
• the other chicken
• to find his home

It's clear that students have food-as-motivation on their minds. It was a popular theme:

• probably food
• b/c there was food?
• to get Chinese food

If not food, then they have deeper existential questions:

• intention
• What is a bird?
• to find purpose in its life
• to run away from its problems
• The road is a metaphor. The chicken is not.
• Why not?
• Why didn't the chicken cross the road?
• Death is an illusion.

And also darker and more pessimistic interpretations:

• To die by its own choice.
• It was an exorcism.
• "NOTHING IS WRITTEN!!" (<-- future="" lawyer="" li="" possible="">
• or else I would've killed it.
• It has accepted its mortality.

And today's honorary brownnoser award goes to, "because it wanted to go to algorithms class."


This post's theme word is malinger, "to feign illness in order to avoid work." That malingering chicken, always visiting the across-the-road doctor and never clocking in to the same-side-of-the-road henhouse!

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

• Standing right behind you.
• not here
• I just saw her the other day
• PASTA BAR
• California
• up and to the left
• I'll never know
• Mars
• Australia / down under
• MATRIX :(
• Where in time is Carmen Sandiego?
• with Waldo
• San Diego
• Antarctica
• really far away

Australia and California had more than one vote each.

Swarthmore-specific references:

• McCabe
• According to cygnet, Willets.
• Econ 01 (she got lotteried out of Algorithms)

"I don't know" and "idk" and "??" were popular answers; maybe the cultural reference is not universal. Similarly, "Who's Carmen Sandiego?" Alsa, hilariously, "Literally (not figuratively) no idea."

My CS-professor heart was won by the student who answered, "in the heap."


This post's theme word is gleichschaltung (n), "the forced standardization of political, economic, and cultural institutions, as in an authoritarian state." The non-ubiquity of Carmen Sandiego, despite her extensive travels, indicates an absence of gleichschaltung in the student body.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

• very quiet
• waft of air
• om
• a friendly wave
• Basically that of 2 but quieter.
• whoosh?
• flap
• whoo
• blob

This post's theme word is crural, "relating to the leg." The crural version of this puzzle is much easier; one foot stamping is coherent on its own.

Nitpicking metaphors with modern engineering

"Jesus had said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven, but rocketry had thirty years of practice working with astonishingly small tolerances and rose to meet the challenge." - Scott Alexander's Unsong, chapter 39

The swoop from cultural highbrow to literal engineering terminology tickles my sense of humor. Is there a name for this genre? "Nerdbait"?

This post's theme word is ultracrepidarian (n/adj), "(one) giving opinions beyond one's area of expertise." Which is truly the ultracrepidarian, the literary scholar with opinions about engineering  details or the engineer who obliterates a metaphor with a cleverly-designed tool?

James Joyce

"In attempting to be completely faithful to real life, in all its true confusion and complexity, Joyce ended up writing a book that is fascinatingly, instructively unreadable." - Professor Eric Bulson, for The School of Life on Joyce's Finnegans Wake

This is serious. I have tried several times and I just keep putting Joyce's books back into the queue. Listening to this framing of Joyce's work makes me think I should bump up its priority and try to read it again.

This post's theme word is frustraneous (adj), "useless, unprofitable." The exercise of reading was frustrating but not frustraneous.