What is the meaning of life? (be concise)

I take attendance by having students answer a prompt. It's usually set up to equally fit serious and silly answers; my strong preference is for students to attend my class (and secondarily be comfortable enough there to be silly).

What is the meaning of life? (be concise)

First of all, thank you to the student who wrote "This is an ill-poised question." for highlighting my deviation from the ends-with-a-question-mark type of prompt for attendance.

Serious students tended towards sentences:

• improvise. adapt. overcome.
• Nothing except what we make for ourselves.
• Sometimes you see a happy dog.
• Live a fulfilling life
• Trying to figure it out

Lots of illustrations on this sheet.

• [three smiley-faces]
• [drawing of leaf]
• [leaf emoji, smiley-face-with-double-wink emoji, heart emoji]

... I'm now realizing that last one could be read "live, laugh, love" if you squint through the right emoji-interpreting lens. Is there a word for wordplay when it involves verbalizing emoji? There must be. If you know it, please leave a comment.

Several students tended towards local optima:

• algorithms
• attendance
• Lemmas
• algorithms
• runtime

And several more students avoided answering entirely:

• great question
• life
• Absolutely nothing
• ^life'
• who knows
• ?

This wouldn't be a non-empty collection of college students without the mandatory answers of "42" and, apparently, "bird". (Maybe it's just this particular cohort, but I am suspicious some birds have infiltrated my classroom.)

A collection of miscellaneous other answers:

• laundry
• the reference
• Radical Freedom!
• to uncover
• to cause chaos and have fun
• connection
• ramen
• music and love
• continuing next life

Today's "literally correct, figuratively messing with the questioner" Award goes to the student who said that life is "a breakfast cereal."

This post is dedicated to every student out there who would have left this question blank or marked "I don't know" to receive 25% of the credit.

This post's theme word is sententious (adj), "full of pithy expressions; full of pompous moralizing." The sententious prompt received high- and low-brow responses.

If you had to organize a parade, the theme would be:

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

If you had to organize a parade, the theme would be:

• trans pride
• colors
• running
• birds
• women in STEM!
• [name of another student in the class]
• birds
• gumby
• SPOOKY
• Poros
• elephants
• Gudetama
• all of the above

Some people chose things which already have parades:

• Thanksgiving 
• pride
• parade-themed
• sports
• parades
• mummers

And a lot of students were thinking about food:

• buttered toast
• coffee
• tacos
• szezhuan [sic] sauce
• instant noodles
• gummy animals
• cookies
• seafood
• cuisine
• sushi
• elephants
• sandwiches
• food

I'd like to see an "existentialism"-themed parade, but... maybe it would take place at night? I don't know enough about existentialism to interpret it through the weird cultural lens of "theme of a parade", but this sounds like the setup to a joke over at Existential Comics.

This post dedicated to the future students who make a useless-blog-themed parade.


This post's theme word is mise en abyme (n), "self-reflection in a literary work, work of art, etc." e.g. a play within a play, a dream within a dream... The hyperlinks on the mise-en-abyme post were infuriatingly both nested and circular.

What word makes you turn your head because you think it's your name?

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

What word makes you turn your head because you think it's your name?

Publishing the answers that students wrote would go against my general policy of "don't publicly identify people by name without their explicit consent." So instead of writing their actual responses, let me give you a gloss:

• [student's name, but an alternate spelling]
• [description of sneezing in another country with different typical accents]
• [commonly-uttered phrase in a computer lab]
• [student's name, verbatim]
• [word that rhymes with student's name]
• [non-grammatical sentence/series of words that, if spoken quickly enough or muffled, might rhyme with student's name]
• [list of nine one-syllable names rhyming with student's name] "and eight thousand others"
• "[student's name] but it's a different [student's name] than me"

I am glad, as always, to have an unusual-but-mostly-pronounceable name. I continue to resolve to name my child "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--", unless that name becomes too popular among database-saboteur parents.

Today's "I don't think you got it" Award  goes to the student whose attention is grabbed by "Anyone yelling anything and staring at me". You got it, buddy, good job.

This post is dedicated to the diligent and compulsively thorough student readers of the future, who are reading every post here for a reason inscrutable to me. I know you exist. Hello!


This post's theme word is asterismos, "the use of a seemingly unnecessary word or phrase to introduce what you're about to say." Hi-ya! Good morning class, I'm Lila! (<-- be="" delivered="" must="" p="" pronounced="" rhyme="" singsong="" to="">

What is your favorite pattern?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is your favorite pattern?

Visual patterns:

• checkered
• paisley
• checkered
• geometric
• stripes
• plaid

Math patterns:

• a hexagonal lattice
• fractals but only when graphed on the TI-84
• Fibonacci #s
• fibonaci [sic] sequence 
• Mandelbrot set
• compound interest
• Minkowsky
• Pascal's Triangle
• the one that looks like this [scribbled-out drawing] NVM I messed it up but it's like a fractal with a lot of circles
• set of interesting numbers

Social patterns seemed to be mostly self-referential descriptors:

• women self-selecting out of CS (not)
• sleep, eat, soccer (repeat)
• sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat (repeat)

The uncategorizable "randomness" gets a mention, since: is that a pattern? Ditto to "object-oriented" and the student who wrote simply "hate patterns", as if adding a subject to the verb would take too much effort. You hate so much that it suppresses your verbal skills. Apparently.

A tip of my hat to the person clever enough to say "baldness".

I looked up the symbols to transcribe this as faithfully to the handwritten original as possible: "D^♭Δ7E⁷AΔ7FΔ7".

The Award for Narrative Convenience and Irksomeness goes to the person whose favorite pattern is "deus ex machina".

The Recurringly Attempting to Get Into the Professor's Good Graces Plaque goes to the student whose favorite pattern is "one of good attendance".

This post is dedicated to the student who diligently checked this blog --- although often through a VPN, so that I wouldn't know who was reading --- and then came to my office throughout the semester to ask me why I wasn't updating it.


This post's theme word is antimetabole, "a literary and rhetorical device in which a phrase or sentence is repeated, but in reverse order." The linguistic patterns woven into the antimetabole dazzled and amazed.

What is your quest?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. This one has occurred previously.

What is your quest?

References first, of course:

• To seek the holy grail.
• blue?
• blue! no, wait...
• To catch them all

Then things that might be references, but the Stodgy Professor Didn't Get It:

• To catch the golden shoop
• neze!
• :)

Locally-relevant quests:

• to participate in a really good high five
• to pass this class with flying colors

This attendance sheet moved a bit slowly throughout the room, so some people responded with hyper-local, context-sensitive quests:

• To make sure everyone gets this [attendance sheet] before class ends
• TO SIGN IN
• to remember to fill out the attendance sheet

Achievable, a bit self-centered, but what would YOU say if you were put on the spot for a quest?

• get the platinum trophy
• straight As
• have a good shoulder
• Have a good time
• 8 hrs of sleep a night
• To either see the world burn or live on an island with access to League of Legends servers and golden retrievers.
• graduate
• Schedule sandwiches to eat by myself

Noble quests that I hope succeed:

• To eliminate suffering and stigma caused by mental illness.

Not really achievable, because of the limitations of reality:

• frisbee around the world
• to make travelling from US to London as fast as 10 min
• To do literally everything
• to reach my asymptote
• to pet every dog

Quests which can only be awarded retrospectively (after death, or possibly after the end of time itself):

• to eat as much ice cream as possible
• Live a fulfilling life
• Make the best cup of coffee ever

Today's Recursive Award of Recursively Awarding Recursive Awards of ... goes to the quest "to find out my next quest". (Look! You achieved it! Now you achieved it again!)

The Noble Quest that I absolutely endorse and support goes to "To eliminate suffering and stigma caused by mental illness."

This post's theme word is reeve (n), "a local official." Upon her deathbed, Cynthia was delighted to hear the reeve pronounce, "You have officially eaten as much ice cream as possible!" whereupon she died of satisfaction, though the coroner later disputed the fact by stating "Sugar overdose."

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

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

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

Again we had traditionalists: 0, 10, 50, 100, 101, 1000, 1001, 1024.

Also the unusual ones: 2, 4, 13, 21, 68, 751, 827, 922, 690,000.

Also those who wanted only to give bounds: "at least 10", "<1>=1", "probably like 15".

Also, or some reason, people who count to non-integer numbers out loud? 3.5 or 3.1415926535897932386424.

And of course "a millillion (by millillions)", all of which: [sic].

My favorite was the editorialized "100, the largest known number". The award for "wrote the longest reply and went over into a paragraph in the margin, but still somehow didn't answer the prompt" goes to "I was trying to break an iron ore in minecraft with my hands. It took like 300 hits. I didn't count, but I should have."


This post's theme word is adynaton, "hyperbole in which exaggeration is taken to a ridiculous and literally impossible extreme." I never needed a word for extra-hyperbolic hyperbole until I heard someone claim they had counted to O(∞) aloud; what adynaton!

What song was most recently stuck in your head?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What song was most recently stuck in your head?

Students are in a different cultural bubble than I am, so please forgive any typos I've introduced in accidentally transcribing their handwriting, and also... I can't even tell if some of these are actual songs, or just a series of words strung together.

• Taylor Swift's new song
• Promiscuous - Nelly furtado
• Heart of Glass
• Rabbit Heart
• DARE
• Cherub Rock
• That one remix of the horrible meme song that doesn't have a name?
• chocolate chip cookie
• cold cold man
• wake me up when sept ends
• coconut song on YouTube
• Diamonds
• Anime un Po'
• I am Moana
• Pakkanen
• Liang Zhu
• My Way by Frank Sinatra
• Wagon Wheel
• the Schumann piece I'm learning
• In a sentimanta [sic] mood
• Something Just like this
• Brite Lites
• Super Rich Kids - Frank Ocean
• Rich Love
• Apartment
• Dvorak New World Symphony
• Despacito

The winner was "Dragon Tales", with two (!) votes, which I won't look up but will instead guess is a theme song to an animated TV show.

This post's theme word is epimone, "the rhetorical device of frequent repetiton of a phrase or question; dwelling on a point." LMFAO's iconic song "Shots" seems to have been mostly written by epimone, or a regular expression like:  "(shots)*".

What is the punchline of your favorite joke?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is the punchline of your favorite joke?

(I asked this previously in 2016 but that attendance sheet was so hilarious that it went missing, and I never saw the survey results. So neither did you.)

Some punchlines were to popular jokes:

• orange you glad I didn't say banana
• to get to the other side
• A-salted
• they always take things literally
• a one-eyed grape
• that's what they said
• ba dum ching
• awkward silence

I hear you, awkward silence, I hear you. (Someone also wrote "crickets", which could be a description of the noise emphasizing lack of laughter, or an actual punchline consisting of the word "crickets".)

Some punchlines made it seem possible to fill in the missing joke setup:

• hose A, hose B
• "moo"
• mooooooo
• "Broccoli, 49 cents!"
• A plant!
• Royal Executive Bond
• Juan on Juan
• Red Wedding [<-- dark="" humor="" li="">
• jk, rowling
• cheep!

Some punchlines were inscrutable:

• It's a brick!
• [student's own name]
• "Not Today"
• "Well, in the state of Wyoming, it's illegal to wave your firearm in public."
• Tony
• blue, blue, blue, blue.
• suh, dude

Protest vote appeared as "my jokes are spontaneous, not scripted". Depleted imagination wrote, "can't remember, sry". One student actually wrote both the setup and the punchline, in violation of the question.


This post's theme word is persiflage (n. formal!), "light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter." Knock-knock jokes? I shun such persiflage and rely solely upon puns for my humor.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

I take attendance by asking the students a question.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

As before, many students picked onomatopoeias:

• swish
• poof
• shmrshmrshmrshmr
• boom skrrt
• clap
• bloooop
• whoosh!
• cloooop

Others chose to describe it in other ways:

• little air molecules getting pushed off to adventure
• magnificent
• jazz hands
• sound of hand and face clapping
• like Pacman
• nothing
• the sound of silence
• a very faint buzzing

Still others used their response to issue a protest against the question:

• What is the sound of a tree falling in the woods when no one is there to hear it?
• the answer to zen riddles must be spontaneous, and I've already heard this one
• inconceivable!
• clap, otherwise it wouldn't be clapping.

This week's Melancholy Monument has a plaque at the base engraved in honor of the various students who wrote, "the sadness of a missed high five", "the sound of sadness", and simply, "sad".

This post's theme word is krummholz, "stunted trees near the timber line on a mountain." The clumsy hermit's logging expedition near the krummholz avoided people but resulted in a lifelong lack of a left hand.

Give me a joke, please

I take attendance by having the students answer a question fill in MadLibs.

A _______ walks into a bar. The bartender says, "______________."

This was intentionally open-ended because I want the students to be a little bit creative, and I'm not sure I've optimally tapped their creative reservoirs of energy-to-come-up-with-something-to-write-on-the-attendance-sheet. (Part of the trick seems to be starting the attendance sheet with someone who writes something witty, so that other students have an example when it gets to them.)

The traditional response, of course, is: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?"

The literalists were there again, for example: A man walks into a bar. The bartender says, "oh wowhaha lol slapstick humor." Also "gymnast / hmmm... I should have put that higher..." and "man / Are you okay? That looked like it hurt."

There were some cute ones:

• An electron walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why so negative?"
• An e-flat walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve minors."
  (Alternate: A person under 21 walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Leave.")
• A past, present, and future walk into a bar. The bartender says, "This is a tense situation."
• A bartender walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I quit my job."
• A bug walks into a bar. The bartender says, "#@$%(%@203åDEL▟"
• An underscore walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Longer underscore."
• A backpacker walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Take a hike!"

The recurring Non-SequitAward goes to: A woman walks into a bar. The bartender says quack, because the bartender is a duck.

I truly didn't anticipate that punchline.


This post's theme word is blet (v. tr.), "to overripen to the point of rotting." I'm retiring that joke; I've bletted it thoroughly.