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A Limerick Paradox from Scientific American, around 1972 An amusing variant of the old liar paradox appeared a few years ago in the British monthly ”Games and Puzzles”. It is presented here as the last of four ”limericks”. - There was a young girl in Japan Whose limericks never would scan. When someone asked why, She said with a sigh, ”It’s because I always attempt to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.” - Another young poet in China Had a feeling for rhythm much fina. His limericks tend To come to an end Suddenly. - There was a young lady of Crewe Whose limericks stopped at line two. - There was a young man of Verdun. - The paradox of the fourth limerick arises when the limerick is completed in one’s mind: ”Whose limericks stopped at line one.” To complete it is to contradict what the limerick is asserting. The four limericks presented prompted J.A. Lindon, the Brittish comic versifier, to improvise the following new ones. - A most inept poet of Wendham Wrote limericks (none would defend‘em). ”I get going”, he said, ”Have ideas in my head, Then find I just simply can’t.” - That thing were not worse was a mercy! You read botton line first Since he wrote all reversed - He did every job arsy-versy. A very odd poet was Percy! - Found it rather a job to impart‘em. When asked at the time, ”Why is this? Don’t they rhyme?” Said the poet of Cahartham, ”Can’t start ‘em.” - So quick a verse writer was Tuplett, That his limerick turned out a couplet. - A three-lines-a-center was Purcett, So when he penned a limerick (curse it!) The blessed thing came out a tercet! - Absentminded, the late poet Moore, Jaywalking, at work on line four, Was killed by a truck. . So Clive scribbled only line five. - In the next issue you could read: When I ended the column with limericks of decreasing length, I referred to the one-line limerick as the ”last of four”. Many readers told me I should have called it the last-but-one of five. The fifth, of cource, has no lines, which is why other readers failed to notice it. Tom Wright of Ganges, Brittish Columbia, wrote: ”I was interested in the limerick paradox, particulary in the decreasing two-line and one-line limericks. I wondered if you had, in fact, added the no-line limerick (about the man from Nepal), and I looked minutely to see if it wasn’t there. On examination, my fist impulse was to assume that it was indeed not there, since no space was provided, but further cogitation suggested that a no-line poem, requiring no space, might indeed bee there, Unable to resolve this paradox by any logical proof, I am abjectly reduced to asking you whether or not a no-line limerick was printed in the space not provided, or not.” |
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