On Sundays, Browser readers receive a special edition with puzzles, poems, books, charts, music and more - plus selections from our decade-plus archive of the finest writing on the internet. Here's a taste of this week's edition.

Problem Of The Week

The following four statements refer exclusively to a mother and her four daughters. One of the statements is true and the remaining three are false:

1. Alice is the mother.
2. Carol and Ella are both daughters.
3. Beth is the mother.
4. One of Alice, Diane or Ella is the mother.

Who is the mother?

— from The Ultimate Mathematical Challenge by The UK Mathematics Trust

solution below, after the Book of the WEek

Book Of The Week

Slouching Towards Utopia
J. Brad DeLong | Basic Books | 2022

recommended by Paul Krugman at the New York Times
"Slouching Towards Utopia is a magisterial history of what DeLong calls the 'long 20th century' running from 1870 to 2010, an era shaped overwhelmingly by the economic consequences of technological progress. DeLong argues that there are two great puzzles about this transformation: Why all this technological progress happened, and why it hasn't made society better than it is"

Problem Solved

Problem: The following four statements refer exclusively to a mother and her four daughters. One of the statements is true and the remaining three are false:

1 Alice is the mother.
2 Carol and Ella are both daughters.
3 Beth is the mother.
4 One of Alice, Diane or Ella is the mother.

Who is the mother?

Solution: If Alice is the mother then statements 1, 2 and 4 are true. If Beth is the mother then statements 2 and 3 are both true. If Carol is the mother then all four statements are false. If Diane is the mother then statements 2 and 4 are both true. If Ella is the mother then statements 1, 2 and 3 are false and statement 4 is true, which meets the precondition, so the answer must be: Ella.

— from The Ultimate Mathematical Challenge by The UK Mathematics Trust

The Browser Sunday edition is a smorgasbord of delights. If you enjoyed this taster, subscribe for puzzles, crosswords, art, charts, articles and more each Sunday - plus five articles daily, in your inbox:

Why A4?

Ben Sparks | Spektrum | 24th August 2022

A sheet of A4 paper measures 210mm by 297mm. Why? Because math. Fold an A4 sheet in half and you have an A5 sheet with the same height-to-width ratio. For a rectangle to preserve its proportions when folded in half (or unfolded to double its size), its height-to-width ratio must be the square root of two — a number that defies exact expression, but 210mm x297mm is a fair approximation (1,345 words)

Maradona In Mexico

Brian Phillips | The Ringer | 10th August 2022

Epic appreciation of the chaotic genius of Diego Maradona, and in particular of Maradona's second goal against England in Mexico City in 1986, the "goal of the century", when he jinked the ball past the entire England team before scoring. "Everyone else out there is fighting gravity and physics and time, the way we’re all fighting them. Maradona is orchestrating them. They’re on his side" (7,500 words)

London readers are warmly invited to join the upcoming tour Toe-Rags and Tenterhooks, on 3rd September. Explore how centuries of City of London trade, culture, and traditions left their colourful mark on the English language. Places are limited - tickets are available here.

Was King Arthur A Real Person?

Joshua Hammer | Smithsonian | 23rd August 2022

The question posed in the headline remains unanswered, but the journey is nonetheless a delight. The legend's flexibility is responsible for its enduring appeal. "The interesting thing about the Arthurian legend is that it has periods of both ebb and flow... It’s able to be moulded to fit with current preoccupations, such that it can find applicability no matter what the mood of the moment" (4,954 words)

Bambi’s Mum Had To Die

Daniel Kalder | UnHerd | 31st August 2022

Eighty years on, Disney's 1942 film Bambi is held in high regard. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein found it impressive and it was Walt Disney's own favourite. Its characters "live animal lives centred around birth, death, rutting, raising children, finding food and dodging predators" and once Bambi's mother dies, she stays dead. There is no uplifting return as a benign spirit or guiding star (1,607 words)

Rare, Precious, Smells Like Whale

Tess McClure | Guardian | 26th August 2022

Dispatch from time spent among the ambergris gatherers of New Zealand. This strange waxy substance comes from the intestines of sperm whales and is "cured" by exposure to sea and sun. It is prized by perfumers for its scent but hard to identify and is often mistaken for stones or dog poo. Hunters are territorial and competing collectors have been known to issue threats (1,410 words)

The Economy And The Paradox Of Technology

Samuel Gregg | Engelsberg Ideas | 30th August 2022

Overview of the relationship between technology and economics over the last two centuries. At best, we can declare the results of this modern technological project to be mixed, especially in the financial sector. "While technology has helped diminish uncertainty and risk in some areas, it has proved incapable of eliminating human fallibility, weakness or our inability to know everything" (2,515 words)

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Can An Avant-Garde Filmmaker Save Us?

Rob Madole | Spike | 30th July 2022

Every four years, devotees travel to Lyssaraia, a tiny village in the Peloponnese, to watch ten hours of an 80-hour film titled Eniaios. This epic, composed "almost entirely of black and white flashes", was made by Gregory Markopoulos. He had "a borderline messianic conviction that his work had the power to redeem our media-polluted epoch", and this writer thinks he may have been correct (4,128 words)

Word Is Bond

Peter Mommsen | Plough | 29th August 2022

In praise of vows, from one who has had reason to know: a member of the Bruderhof. It is incorrect to say that a binding bond erodes personal liberty, he argues. The release from "the sterile freedom of endless options" provides greater latitude. "Ultimately, to take a leap of commitment, even without knowing where one will land, is the only way to get to a happiness worth everything" (3,423 words)

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London readers are warmly invited to join us for our next walking tour, on Saturday 3rd September. In 'Toe Rags and Tenterhooks', we'll explore how centuries of City of London trade, culture, and traditions left their colourful mark on the English language.

Art, Mourning, Remembrance

Hayley Campbell | Literary Hub | 24th August 2022

Conversation with Nick Reynolds, Britain's only sculptor of death masks, whose subjects have included Peter O'Toole, Malcolm McLaren, Ronnie Biggs, William Rees-Mogg — and his own father, Bruce Reynolds, who masterminded the Great Train Robbery. "When you die, you look amazing. All tension is released from your face. Ideally, I would get to them while they were still warm” (3,500 words)

How To Cook A Direwolf

Rachel P. Kreiter | Eater | 22nd August 2022

Food occupies a fraught position in fan culture. Cooking dishes mentioned in Game of Thrones is a way enjoying the show, but when the maker is a professional chef with fans of her own, it gets complicated. "If everything is fandom, then a restaurant can be, too. Elizabeth did not just attract fans; it has fans. With its networks of symbols and signature dishes, it is its own IP" (8,934 words)

On Sundays, Browser readers receive a special edition with puzzles, poems, books, charts, music and more - plus selections from our decade-plus archive of the finest writing on the internet. Here's a taste of this week's edition.

Book Of The Week

The Book Of Unconformities
Hugh Raffles | Pantheon | 2020

Recommended by Parul Sehgal at the New York Times:
"The Book of Unconformities is among the most mysterious books I’ve ever read — a dense, dark star. It’s the biography of a few notable stones, including a chunk of pockmarked meteorite, mica prepared in Nazi concentration camps, and the layer of marble under Manhattan. Raffles is serenely indifferent to the imperatives and ordinary satisfactions of conventional storytelling. I intend this as praise"

Chart Of The Week

The Human Subway Map, by Sam Loman

The Browser Sunday edition is a smorgasbord of delights. If you enjoyed this taster, subscribe for puzzles, crosswords, art, charts, articles and more each Sunday - plus five articles daily, in your inbox:

Wikipedia And The Flat Earth

Anonymous | Wikipedia | 6th August 2022

Explainer of Wikipedia's editorial philosophy. The goal of Wikipedia is "to mirror the current consensus of mainstream scholarship". Fringe theories deserve little or no space. If Wikipedia had existed in 700 BC it would have reported "as a fact without qualification" that the Earth was flat. Wikipedia is "academically conservative, as is fitting for a standard reference work" (6,500 words)

How Many Errorrs Are In This Essay?

Ed Simon | Millions | 24th August 2022

On mistakes in general, and on typographical errors in particular, with digressions into Biblical errata, Freudian slips, and sloppy drafting. "The U.S. Constitution isn’t particularly long — only a few pages — and yet it’s filled with grammatical and spelling errors, as well as confusing syntax. Capitalization is inconsistent, apostrophes are dropped, and even 'Pensylvania' is misspelled" (6,600 words)

Panic At The Library

Brian Michael Murphy | Lapham's Quarterly | 24th August 2022

The creation of public libraries in the US occurred alongside the so-called "social hygiene movement", which aimed — among other things — to encourage spiritual purity via bodily cleanliness. Books that were shared with the "great unwashed" must thus be cleansed. Sterilisation via gas chamber for books became the norm in the early 20C, as fears over disease and pests ramped up (2,337 words)

In Praise Of Bewilderment

Alan Levinovitz | Hedgehog Review | 24th August 2022

To cultivate a more flexible mindset, it is necessary to abandon certainty for bewilderment. Seeking out questions that are "above our pay grade" is difficult but rewarding. "There is, I admit, an initial shock to the system, like when you jump into a frigid lake. But the shock doesn’t last. It quickly gives way to relief, even comfort." This is a worldview that better reflects reality, it is argued (1,746 words)

Email Innovation Timeline

Elizabeth Feinler & John Vittal | Computer History Museum | February 2022

Comprehensive timeline of email's invention and development. The earliest entries, from the mid 19C, deal with the emergence of the ability to communicate codes or images via wires — a vital precursor to what would become "electronic mail". The fax machine comes along in 1924, then the first civilian computer modem in 1962. Arguably, it was all downhill from there (43,063 words)

Ode To The Library Museum

Erica X Eisen | Paris Review | 24th July 2018

On the untouchable physicality of precious texts. "There are books made entirely of jade. There are picture scrolls featuring calligraphy by the brother of the Japanese emperor. There are papyrus codices that constitute some of the few surviving texts of Manichaeism... There are Armenian hymnals, Renaissance catalogues of war machines, and monographs on native Australian fauna" (1,699 words)

Deep Time Sickness

Lachlan Summers | Noema | 14th July 2022

Earthquake victims in Mexico City experience time differently. Cracks in buildings progress slowly, hard to track unless lines are drawn on walls. Movement is at geological speed, but the earth threatens sudden upset any moment. Residents live fixated by fear of this happening. "She was not doing the approaching. It was the day the building would fall that was doing the approaching" (3,847 words)

Milman Parry

Robert Kanigel | Harvard Magazine | 20th August 2022

Parry was a student of Greek who died in 1935 at the age of 33, but he was consumed by an idea that would long outlive him: that it was an oral, not written, culture that had produced the Odyssey and the Iliad. By recording the songs of Serbia's surviving guslars — wandering singers who performed poems — Parry was able to argue for the existence of a similar Homeric process (901 words)