In a recent posting, I explained how a vast space of cryptographic keys can be represented by a small piece of data. That’s due to the sheer power of exponential growth. To see a vast space of keys arising from sheer ingenuity, it’s worth a visit to the musée Cluny in Paris, which houses a number of medieval examples.

Continue reading "Fearsome Teeth"…

The tale is told that centuries ago, Grand Vizier Sissa Ben Dahir invented a new pleasure for his king, Shirham of India, the game of chess. Delighted, the king asked this vizier to name his reward. Sissa Ben Dahir was not just inventive, but mischievous. He archly requested a trifle, a mere portion of wheat: One grain on the first square of a chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, doubling through all sixty-four squares.

Grand Vizier Sissa Ben Dahir’s wheat order in fulfillment

Continue reading "Secret Codes and Very, Very Large Numbers"…

I’ll be talking about Tetraktys at Google’s SF Office at noon, and at Books Inc. in San Francisco on Friday, 5 March. If you’re in the area (for the RSA Conference, for instance), please join me for a reading and reception at 6 p.m. !

The Kindle edition of Tetraktys is out!

(Many thanks to Emerald Bay Books and to Lee Nagan, my publisher’s excellent, punctilious printer / typesetter.)

People have undergone many forms of visual torture over the years to read on the go.  iPhone eReaders are one of the latest, but by historical standards, not as brutal on the eyes as you might think.

Here’s a 1620 edition of the works of Silius Italicus, a Roman poet. (A piquant aside: It may have belonged to a the Bishop of Metz, a bastard son of kind Henry IV, as I mention here.)  This is dense reading. An entire epic poem in less volume than a deck of cards. I’m content just to admire the binding.

Silius Italicus, On the Second Punic War, 1620 Dutch edition

A nice review of Tetraktys by Gregory Conti (faculty at West Point) just came out in ACM netWorker magazine:

Few people besides Juels could have written such a book, especially with such authenticity. Playing to his strengths as scientist, cryptography expert, and classically trained thinker, he delivers a tale that is compelling, intellectually stimulating, and destined to resonate with the technical community.

I’m this week’s featured fiction writer at The Nervous Breakdown. There’s an excerpt from Tetraktys and a self-interview in which I talk about such things as the seductions of cryptography…

The handwriting looked, in fact, like a kindred version of Ambrose’s own. He felt a thrill of camaraderie, like that of a traveler who, after long wandering in a foreign land, overhears at a bazaar stall, for the first time in months, a countryman speaking his native English.

Tetraktys, p. 198

During my commute to work by train, I keep my head well buried in a book or technical article. While I imagine I have a forbidding look of concentration, and reticence is the rule on Boston trains, someone did once buttonhole me. I was penning notes in an article, when a woman leaned over and asked, “Is that a fountain pen?”

Continue reading "The Freemasonry of Fountain Pens"…

Among the collection of small collections that I’ve accumulated willy-nilly over the years is a group of ancient Roman brooches.

Continue reading "The Bronze Serpent (a Brainteaser)"…

A so-called “bilingual” Attic vase speaks two visual languages. One side is painted in the older “black-figure” style, the other side with the newer—and for us, more familiar—”red-figure” style.

Tetraktys mentions such a vase in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It depicts the Homeric heroes Achilles and Ajax taking a break from slaughtering Trojans to play a board game.

Bilingual vase--black-figure side (Lysippides)

Bilingual vase--red-figure side (Andokides)

Continue reading "The Vase That Speaks"…

"Pythagoras," the Musical Instrument

Between the tracks was a row of metal tubes, like a suspended battery of organ pipes, with hammers in between. The whole apparatus swayed, the hammers knocking gently against the tubes, producing an eerily tempered music…

Tetraktys,  p. 186

Continue reading "The Pythagorean Musical Underground"…

Distinguishing authentic artifacts from forged or misattributed ones is an essential challenge for archaeologists and art historians. Scientific tests, though, often prove incomplete or inconclusive (or simply misleading). In such cases, the best line of defense against forged artifacts is an expert with a finely honed intuitive sense for authenticity—sometimes called a fakebuster. (In Tetraktys, Dr. Jerusalem is a consummate fakebuster.)

Can you use your fakebusting skills to figure out which image is real and which is fake?

Attic vase depicting Athena and Herakles, circa 520 B.C., Andokides painter

Click here for the answer!

When I hear the word “brainstorm,” my free-association is “tempest in a teapot.” To me, “brainstorming” is corporatespeak for a widely familiar, disheartening situation. A group of people gathers in a conference room to conjure uncharacteristic mental powers by magic. In a reckless sacrifice, they burn the meeting agenda. They wipe down the whiteboard. They align themselves around a table and await the visitation of divine creative force. Words flow, winds stir…

Creative Problem Solving, Cousin to Brainstorming

Continue reading "Quenching Fires with a Brainstorm"…

In my first “Praise of Folly” post, I talked about some of the antiquarian books in my collection. There’s another I’d like to mention…

Continue reading "In Praise of Folly (cont’d)"…

Distinguishing authentic artifacts from forged or misattributed ones is an essential challenge for archaeologists and art historians. Scientific tests, though, often prove incomplete or inconclusive (or simply misleading). In such cases, the best line of defense against forged artifacts is an expert with a finely honed intuitive sense for authenticity—sometimes called a fakebuster. (In Tetraktys, Dr. Jerusalem is a consummate fakebuster.)

In homage to an important theme in Tetraktys, here is the first of what I plan to make a regular series of fakebusting puzzles.

Can you use your fakebusting skills to figure out which image is real and which is fake?

Greek diadem, circa 300 B.C.

Click here for the answer!