Holiday Party!

Gabriellebirchak/ December 17, 2019/ Ancient History, Modern History, Post Classical

The hol­i­days are upon us! What bet­ter way to cel­e­brate than shar­ing a fun log­ic puz­zle about five weird sci­en­tists and their hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tion. For the sake of the puz­zle, let us just assume that these sci­en­tists are neigh­bors, and all exist in the same era. They include William Buck­land, Tycho Bra­he, Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, Stub­bins Ffirth, and Pythagoras. 

William Buck­land lived from 1784 to 1856. But in this log­ic puz­zle, he’s alive today. Imag­ine meet­ing this bril­liant guy from Oxford who penned a com­plete descrip­tion of a fos­silized dinosaur, the Mega­losaurus. How­ev­er, William Buck­land also had a predilec­tion for eat­ing every­thing that was meat. Yes, every­thing! Like roast­ed hedge­hog, sea slugs, kan­ga­roo, pot­ted ostrich, pan­thers, por­pois­es, you name it! He drank bat urine and even claimed to have eat­en the with­ered heart of King Louis the fourteenth. 

Our next neigh­bor is Tycho Bra­he, who was born in 1546. Tycho Bra­he loved to par­ty. This guy would have par­ties on his pri­vate island, com­plete with a court jester under the table and drunk­en pet elk. So, we want this guy for our sto­ry. When he was 20, around Decem­ber 10, 1566, while at an engage­ment par­ty at Pro­fes­sor Lucas Bachmeister’s house, Bra­he and his third cousin Man­derup Pars­berg got into a fight over who was the bet­ter math­e­mati­cian. Appar­ent­ly, this fight went on for a cou­ple of weeks, when the two decid­ed to have a duel in the dark on Decem­ber 29, 1566. As a result, Bra­he lost the bridge of his nose in the duel and had to wear a pros­thet­ic nose for the rest of his life. 

Our third neigh­bor is Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov. Ilya Ivanov lived from 1870 to 1932. In 1924, the Bol­she­vik gov­ern­ment gave Ivanov per­mis­sion to leave his coun­try to car­ry out sci­ence exper­i­ments in an attempt to cross­breed apes and humans. In 1926, Ivanov graft­ed a woman’s ovary into a chimp and attempt­ed to fer­til­ize her with human sperm. When the chimp could not con­ceive, he went to Africa to insem­i­nate chimps with human sperm. When those chimps could not con­ceive, he went back to Bol­she­vik to try to insem­i­nate five Sovi­et women with chimp sperm. How­ev­er, before he could begin his exper­i­ments, Stal­in had ordered the removal of sci­en­tists. Ivanov was sent to Kaza­khstan, where he died two years lat­er from a stroke.

Stub­bins Ffirth. Stub­bins lived from 1784 to 1820. This guy was obsessed with yel­low fever and believed that it was not con­ta­gious. He was so intent with prov­ing that it was not infec­tious that he sliced his arms with a knife and smeared his arms with vom­it from yel­low fever patients. He poured the vom­it in his eye, drank it, and fried it to breathe the fumes. Then he gath­ered the blood, urine, and sali­va from yel­low fever patients and cov­ered him­self in it. He did not get sick though! The rea­son why is because the patients were in the late stages of the ill­ness and past the point of contagion. 

Final­ly, there is Pythago­ras. Pythago­ras lived between 570 BCE and 495 BCE. As we all know, he was a smart guy. But, I’m going to go with a myth because it works for my puz­zle. The sto­ry goes that Pythago­ras hat­ed beans. He hat­ed beans so much that he pro­hib­it­ed his fol­low­ers from eat­ing them. If they ate beans, he would ban­ish them from his group. The sto­ry con­tin­ues that Pythago­ras was being chased by a mob intent on killing him. Pythago­ras, while run­ning away from them, encoun­tered a bean field that he could run into and hide. How­ev­er, he did not, because he hat­ed beans that much. Instead, he just stopped in his tracks. The mob found him and beat him to death. Again, this is a myth, but it works for this story. 

William Buck­land, Tycho Bra­he, Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, Stub­bins Ffirth, and Pythago­ras, who are neigh­bors to each oth­er, decid­ed to cel­e­brate Christ­mas Eve togeth­er. After one drunk­en Thanks­giv­ing eve, they decid­ed to mix up their hol­i­day and do some­thing dif­fer­ent. Instead of all meet­ing at one house, they planned to round-robin the par­ty, eat one course of din­ner at one place, and trav­el to the next per­son­’s home. Of course, Tycho Bra­he thought that the idea was bor­ing, so he sug­gest­ed some kind of enter­tain­ment as well. He asked if he could bring his court jester, but they all dis­missed that idea. So, instead, they all agreed to per­form one song with a dif­fer­ent musi­cal instru­ment at each person’s house. 

So, they all agreed that their cours­es in their Christ­mas din­ner would include soup, sal­ad, bread, meat, and dessert. For the house with dessert, they assigned that per­son to pro­vide a nice vari­ety of desserts that would include ice cream, cake, pie, pud­ding, and cookies. 

• Some­one thought it would be fun­ny to serve bean sal­ad, just to upset Pythagoras. 
• The soup was served in the home of the per­son who ate cake for dessert.
• Pythago­ras could not stand the song “Cel­e­bra­tion” by Kool and the Gang.
• The bread was not served in William Buck­land’s home.
• One of them played the triangle.

• Some­one played “The Twelve Days of Christ­mas” using the harmonica.
• Pythago­ras, in hon­or of the hypotenuse, per­formed “I Want a Hip­popota­mus for Christ­mas.” But, he sub­sti­tut­ed “Hypotenuse” for “Hip­popota­mus.” But, he didn’t play it with bag­pipes. Instead, anoth­er per­son used the bagpipes.
• “Grand­ma Got Run Over by a Rein­deer” was played using a poten­tial­ly con­ta­gious flute.

• Bull tes­ti­cles mar­i­nat­ed in bat urine were served in the home of the per­son who ate pie for dessert.
• Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov loved to antag­o­nize Pythagoras. 
• Dessert was served in Stub­bins Ffirth’s home. By the way, Stub­bins Ffirth did not play the harmonica.

• Tycho Bra­he played the cym­bals and for dessert did not eat the ice cream, the pie, the pud­ding, and the cookies.
• Pythago­ras swore that there were vanil­la beans in the ice cream, the cake, the pie, and the vanil­la cook­ies. So, for dessert, he ate what he thought had no beans in it. 
• One of them played “Jin­gle Bells.”
• Bean sal­ad was not served in the home of the per­son who ate ice cream. 
• Some­one played “Cel­e­bra­tion” by Kool and the Gang. 

Which din­ner course was served at each person’s home?

Which dessert did each per­son eat? 

Who played what song? 

Which musi­cal instru­ment did each use?

Please feel free to add your answers below! I will post the answer next week! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

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ANSWERS!

It was a fun week! Thank you to those who played along! 

Here are the answers:

William Buck­land: Served bull tes­ti­cles, ate the pie for dessert and played The 12 Days of Christ­mas on the harmonica.

Tycho Bra­he: Served soup, ate the cake for dessert, and played Jin­gle Bells on the cym­bal (I bet that sound­ed lovely!). 

Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov: Served the bean sal­ad (take that Pythago­ras!), ate the cook­ies for dessert and played Cel­e­bra­tion on the bag­pipes (a la Ross Geller style!). 

Stub­bins Ffirth: Served dessert, ate the ice cream for dessert and played Grand­ma Got Run Over by a Rein­deer on the flute.

Pythago­ras: Served bread, ate the pud­ding for dessert and played I Want a Hypotenuse for Christ­mas on the tri­an­gle (of course!).