Sideswipe: March 11: How to measure the wind

Unlikely to be true

In 1998, the BBC reported that four card players at a Bridge Club in Bucklesham, Suffolk, had each been dealt one suit from a shuffled deck. Hilda Golding found herself holding 13 clubs, Hazel Ruffles held 13 diamonds and Alison Chivers held 13 hearts (and won, as this was trumps). The dummy hand, face down on the table, held 13 spades. Though there were 55 people in the village hall at the time, some of whom claimed to have witnessed the event, it's vastly more likely that this was some misunderstanding or a false report. In 1939 Horace Norton of University College London calculated the odds of such a deal arising naturally to be 1 in 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,599,999.

Not too positive mind ...

Pukete School in Hamilton is urging its students to be positive. Interesting choice of words.

Malapropisms

1. I once knew a lovely person who had a job interview in a prison. Halfway through her comprehensive PowerPoint presentation on "penile reform" she realised a basic proofreading of the slides would have saved a lot of chortling from the panel.
2. I have a friend who described an underweight horse as "emancipated".
3. I don't remember much about primary school, but I do remember the teacher telling the whole class that, in writing about the Xmas story, I'd said that the three wise men had brought gifts of gold, "frankenstein" and myrrh.
4. My friend wants to find a boyfriend who is "articulated". Don't we all, Helen, don't we all.
5. It's fairly common, I think, but I lost all respect for the writer in our student paper who wrote that someone was a "pre-Madonna".
6. Listening to a colleague giving a very high-level presentation, and talking about a "sequin of events".
7. My mother-in law takes anti-flammables for her Arthur-itis. She serves peripherals with cream for dessert at Christmas. I love her to bits.
(As shared on Mumsnet.com)

For the love of Wordle

"In an attention economy of constant maximisation and scaling-up, Wordle is an impressively restrained exercise in beauty for its own sake," writes Caleb Madison. "No ads, no marketing campaign, no "aesthetic", no ability to binge, no feed with its endless scroll. Just one small, clear, discrete, new challenge each day. Its origin as a game made for one person, out of love, is what makes Wordle special. An antidote to overstimulation, it feels personal, even intimate - there was no ulterior motive in its creation. I play Wordle first thing in the morning or just before bed, as do most people I know - like a collective daily prayer ritual. Or maybe I'm just addicted." (Caleb Madison is the crossword-puzzles editor at The Atlantic and the author of The Good Word newsletter.)