On Friday 13 May 2005 12:17, Thomas Colthurst wrote:

Dan Asmiov asks:

...

So what do you call an "initial" that doesn't stand for anything?

A terminal initial?

That can't be right in this case. According to the category theorists, any object that is both initial and terminal is a zero, but this one was an 8. -- g

Wasn't it in fact `Harry Shippe Truman' ? R. On Fri, 13 May 2005, Thomas Colthurst wrote:

Dan Asmiov asks:

...

So what do you call an "initial" that doesn't stand for anything?

A terminal initial?

Harry Truman had such a middle initial and apparently various government offices endlessly argued about whether his name should be rendered as "Harry S. Truman" or "Harry S Truman".

Brad DeLong hypothesized that the 8 in Jennifer 8 (8. ?) Lee's name was short for "867-5309" as in the Tommy Tutone song, "Jenny (867-5309)". [http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001653.html]

Obligatory math content: 8675309 is prime.

-Thomas C

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Martin may not have known the exact history. When he says `C & G later discovered ...', it was in fact JHC & Mike Guy. I was in India at the time, and constructed a SOMAP independently, tho it may not have been quite complete. We, the Guy family, were introduced to the Soma cube by T H O'Beirne, who visited us in London in the late fifties, before Mike went to Cambridge and met Conway. We had found almost all of the 240 solutions, by a random brute force search, including the `oddball' one, which was found by my wife Louise. At that stage Mike went to Cambridge, met Conway, and they systematized and completed the enumeration, as described in Winning Ways. One of many `in' jokes of Winning Ways is found by looking up Peter Guy in the Index. (This should be p.843, not 841, in the recent edition.) You won't find anything there, but he is responsible for the `official colors' of the 7 pieces. At the time a keen aircraft model maker, he got the job of painting the pieces of the puzzle that I made. It was serendipitous that he colored the two enantiomorphic pieces Red and bLue, which are `official names' of the two players, Right and Left, in many parts of the book. R. On Fri, 13 May 2005, ed pegg wrote:

Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games The Entire Collection of his Mathematical Games Columns

is now out! I got my copy in the mail today. The CD has all 15 books, and is fully searchable. I just tried a search on "Richard Guy" -- and now I'm copying a paragraph.

Martin Gardner wrote: Conway and Guy later discovered that if you begin with any of 239 solutions (one solution is an anomaly), all of the others can be obtained in 238 steps by altering the position of no more than three pieces at each step. Conway has drawn a large graph (which he calls the Somap) showing how the 239 solutions are linked to one another and giving each solution a concise notation, called its "somatype." The map does not give any one solution, but once you have built the cube in any of the 239 ways, the map enables you to transform it to all the others by moving two or three pieces at a time. The map is too complex to reproduce here, but you will find it on pages 802 - 803 of Winning Ways, Vol. 2, by Elwyn R. Berlekamp, John H. Conway and Richard Guy (Academic, 1982).

That's pretty handy! Many thanks to all involved for putting the collection together the first time around, those who assisted in getting the books out, with correction and commentary, and those who helped to get the CD finalized.

You can get the CD at http://www.maa.org/ . Well, actually, right now, you can't -- the bookstore website seems to have gone down. It's always something. When it's up again, you'll be able to order you own copy.

Ed Pegg Jr

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This is from the autobiography of US Grant, written while he was dying of cancer to generate some $$$ * * * * * * On the evening of the first day out from Goliad we heard the most unearthly howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my ear it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our party, horses and all, at a single meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed from was not thickly settled, but wolves had been driven out long before I left. Benjamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where yet the wolf roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the animal and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an unlimited number of them. He kept on toward the noise, unmoved. I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion. I have no doubt that if Benjamin had proposed returning to Goliad, I would not only have "seconded the motion" but have suggested that it was very hard-hearted in us to leave Augur sick there in the first place; but Benjamin did not propose turning back. When he did speak it was to ask: "Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that pack?" Knowing where he was from, and suspecting that he thought I would overestimate the answer, I determined to show my acquaintance with the animal but putting the estimate below what possibly could be correct, and answered: "Oh, about twenty," very indifferently. He smiled and rode on. In a minute or two we close upon them, and before they saw us. There were just /two/ of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing for the past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noise of a few disappointed politicians who had deserted their associates. There are always more of them before they are counted. Thane Plambeck http://www.plambeck.org/ehome.htm Marc LeBrun wrote:

I haven't followed this thread closely, but I think you are referring to President Grant (he's the dude on the US $50 http://www.moneyfactory.com/newmoney/files/Glossy-face-web.pdf).

Here's a few facts I gathered from the web (among many more--it's worth a surf if you're inclined to this sort of trivia).

Ulysses S. Grant was originally named Hiram Ulysses Grant. His family called him by his middle name Ulysses, or Lyss for short. By the time he was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1839, he had been signing his name as "Ulysses H. Grant." Congressman Thomas Hamer, who had been acquainted with the Grant family, mistakenly listed Grant as "Ulysses S. Grant," probably assuming that his middle name was his mother's maiden name, Simpson. Grant didn't bother to correct the error. In time, he accepted U. S. Grant as his true name, insisting that his middle initial stands for "nothing." Grant was generally an average student, but he excelled in mathematics. Upon graduation, Grant had no intention of keeping the military as his career and planned instead on being a professor of mathematics.

Figures. I suppose we should be thankful he didn't choose to call himself something like "What Is the Name of This President?"

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