In the old days it was quite a hike
Going west by horse, boat, foot, or bike
But the mighty steam train
Helped to lessen the pain
Once they drove in that bright golden spike
Event: First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah
Year: 1869
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
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People didn’t seem to be very interested in the smaller numbers this week. I guess “Go big or go home” is the motto of the KYPC enthusiast. It should be noted that the characters representing numbers larger than one hundred million are rarely used–that is, rarely used in their capacity to represent numbers. “Trillion” and “ten quadrillion” have other meanings for which they more commonly appear. So don’t feel bad if those ones misled you.
We salute A Fan for using Google to look up how many seconds are in a week, just as we used it to figure out how many years ten quadrillion seconds is. Unsurprisingly, his “surprise pick” turned out to be incorrect, as, for some strange reason, the Japanese have no specific character to represent the number 604,800 (or 60,4800). However, he did manage to pick the answer that was closest; F is ten thousand, or, in terms of seconds, the play/musical. There is, in fact, a character used to represent “zero,” but it’s not E. It looks like this:
零
But, once again, he cleverly managed to pick the one that was closest to it. E is a hundred, the microwave lunch. Also, we regret to inform A Fan that we will continue writing puzzles about tables as long as we like, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
We’ll give Theoman the benefit of the doubt and assume that he stuck to the large numbers because he already knows the smaller ones. And even with huge sums he’s not that bad. By process of elimination he was able to pick out D as a trillion, making it the cave painting, not the dinosaurs, which was A Fan’s theory. This character also means “omen.” The basis on which he established his elimination, however, was wrong. Like Dragon, he leapt on the idea that the most complicated character would be the largest number, and they were both quite wrong. A is the smallest of the “large” numbers: 100 million, the abbreviated college career. And the one he recognized is one that he probably saw while it was playing its other, much more popular role. B means “capital” and is the “kyo” of both Tokyo and Kyoto. On the weekends, it means 10 quadrillion, or, in seconds, 316,887,646 years.
Shirley made good guesses but failed to hit the mark. While it might feel like it takes a pot of water a trillion seconds to boil if you stare at it, it’s probably not quite that long. The character for a thousand, the number of seconds it takes to boil water if you don’t watch the pot, is C. I agree that B is the best looking of the characters here, but, sadly, it didn’t translate into a correct answer.
And now, from our Be Careful What You Wish For Department, we give A Fan exactly what he asked for: a quiz about French. The following are all words in use in Japanese today that were originally borrowed from French. This will also be the first KYPC challenge to not feature a single kanji character. But don’t complain to me; it wasn’t my idea. Instead, you should devote your energies to identifying the words that represent the following concepts: bell pepper, clown, contest, studio, survey, and pants. Bonne chance!
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Day 229:
“Two outs, runners on first and third. Parr coming to the plate.”
“Rivers has thrown thirty pitches already this inning. Does he have one more out in him?”
“No one warming up in the bullpen. That’s showing confidence in your closer.”
“Here’s the pitch—”
DOINK
“Easy out.”
“Hang on . . . this could be trouble.”
“The wind’s carrying it out! Castillo’s not going to be able to catch up!”
“Oh you have got to be kidding me.”
“Johnson, playing a deep right field, charges—”
“C’mon, c’mon.”
“Runners off at the crack of the bat. Rogers has already crossed home plate, and the speedy Ricardo rounding third—”
“C’mon!”
“Johnson dives . . . AND MAKES A SPECTACULAR CATCH!”
“Yes!”
“Unbelievable. No way Johnson gets to that ball in real life.”
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In the aftermath, most people saw
It was time for a new basic law
Two big changes in store
Were the clause to end war
And the emperor’s final hurrah
Event: Postwar constitution of Japan goes into effect
Year: 1947
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Japan
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You may know your picture characters, but how well do you really know yourself? Let’s see.
Theoman knows himself perhaps even better than he realizes. He first noted that he is whimsical, and this trait above all else seems to have defined his responses. The Japanese word for whimsicality is represented by characters meaning “movement” and “spirit,” calling to mind the image of a mind constantly in motion, flitting from one place to the next. In this case, Theoman’s whimsical mind reversed his two answers. He found C whimsical and A worrisome, but it turned out that they were the other way round.
A Fan ignored the instruction to relate his guesses to his own personality, which some might consider E, impertinent. But he did his best to make up for it by telling a story about a table, which could in its own peculiar way tell us about the author himself. Does he see himself as being like the table, the symbol of flatness, ever even-keeled, a personality trait that is not particularly well represented among this list? Or does the saga of the table’s inevitable fall suggest a short-tempered individual ever teetering on the edge, as one finds at D? (Note: the word used here for “short-tempered” actually uses a character that means “short.”) This second possibility seems more likely, as his usually reliable shotgun method failed to earn him a single correct answer this week.
Shirley, then, is the only contestant this week to get one right. However, she may or may not be pleased to learn that her intuition was sharpest with regard to C, the worrywart. Apparently knowledge of Scandinavian Angst is not to be scorned. Her “whimsical thing” at the end of B and F is, sadly, simply a suffix used to turn nouns into adjectives. Then again, by itself this character means “target,” and it is made up of components meaning “white” and “ladle,” so maybe the fact that none of these things seem to have anything to do with each other could be regarded as pretty whimsical (or speak to the whimsicality of whoever made the character up in the first place). In fact, B and F are the sociable fellow and the optimist, respectively, making them probably the most well-balanced members of the group. But where would we be without all the brazen, short-tempered, whimsical worrywarts to make things more interesting?
All this business about emotions and personality is pretty murky. It’s time to get back to cold hard facts, and as facts go, none are colder or harder than numbers. You may recall that, way back (roughly one year ago), we had a quiz on numbers. It was our first KYPC challenge. That quiz, though, only went as high as the number ten. Surely you’re not satisfied with only knowing how to count that high! It’s about time I expanded your horizons. Those who are disturbed by large quantities of zeroes can stick to the small stuff, your hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands . . . that’s right, ten thousands! While we in the west group our large numbers by the thousands (thousand, million, billion, etc.), traditional East Asian counting systems use ten thousand (ten thousand, hundred million, trillion, etc.) Think of it as writing a comma every 4 zeroes instead of every 3. But anyway, I’m expecting that these large, intimidating sums will be left to anyone who, say, happened to minor in math at a reputable educational institution at some point.
And for those of you who, like me, have trouble conceiving of what such giant numbers could possibly mean, try this helpful guide:
A hundred seconds is about how long it might take you to microwave your frozen lunch
A thousand seconds is about how long it might take you to bring a large pot of water to boil
Ten thousand seconds is about how long it might take you to watch a two-act play or a musical
One hundred million seconds is about how long it might take you to finish college if you came in with sophomore standing
A trillion seconds is about as old as the oldest known cave paintings
Ten quadrillion seconds ago is before the age of the dinosaurs
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