3.Attach the barrel of the bulb to the other terminal. Note that the bulb should go sideways rather than be pointing up, or the tin might not close properly. This a good point to try the circuit. With the bulb in contact with the anode (–), the bulb should light when the wires touch. If it doesn’t, check every connection—and make sure the bulb works.
You now have a circuit that will light a bulb when two wires touch. Install it in the tin with more tape.
To use, bend one wire into an assault course of curves and use the loop to go from one end to the other without touching. Here is where you need the steady hand. The whole thing can be carried in a pocket.
There is a slight chance the wires will form a circuit through the metal of the tin, so it’s not a bad idea to line it with the tape. At the time of writing, ours has lasted more than a year without breaking or the battery wearing out—despite regular use.
Five Pen-and-Paper Games
1. HANGMAN
THIS IS THE CLASSIC word game for two or more players. Think of a word and mark out the number of letters in dashes _ _ _ _ _ _ _. The other player guesses letters one at a time. If they guess correctly, write the letter. If they get one wrong, draw a line of the hanged man and write the letter on the page. Incorrect guesses of the whole word also cost a line.
There are twelve chances to get the word right. If the hanged man is completely finished, they lose. Take turns and try some really hard words, like “paella,” or “phlegm.”
2. HOUSES
This one is silly, but enjoyably frustrating. It looks very easy. Draw six boxes anywhere on the page. Mark three of them with G, E, and W—Gas, Water, and Electricity. Number the others 1, 2, and 3. The object of this puzzle is to provide vital services to the three numbered houses. You do this by drawing a pipe line from one to the other. Lines are not allowed to cross and they may not go through a house or a service station.
In the example, you can see one of the houses has Gas and Water but no Electricity. Try moving the squares around, but remember you are not allowed to cross any lines. This puzzle looks possible, but it actually isn’t. No matter where you put the boxes you cannot connect all three services without crossing a line. It is perfect to give to someone who thinks they are really clever (like an elder brother). It will completely outfox them. Pretend you know the answer, refuse to tell them, and watch them struggle. (There is a cheating way to complete the puzzle. You take the last pipeline out to the edge of the paper, run it back on the other side and then punch a hole through to the house. This does not impress onlookers.)
3. SQUARES
This is a very simple game for two players that can be fiendishly difficult to win. Draw a grid of dots on a piece of paper, say nine by nine or ten by ten. Each player can draw a line between two dots as his or her turn. The aim is to close a box, making a square. If you can do this, you get another turn.
The game tends to follow a pattern of easy steps as most of the lines are filled, then sudden chains of boxes made, one after the other, until the grid is complete. It may be a good idea to sacrifice a small line of boxes so that a larger one is yours. Mark the boxes clearly so they can be counted—either with different colors or a symbol. The player with most boxes at the end wins.
4. BATTLESHIPS
This is a classic. Two grids are drawn, with x and y axes numbered 1–10 and A–J. Larger grids will make the game last longer. Draw ships on your grid—an aircraft carrier of five squares, a battleship of four, two destroyers of three, a submarine of two, and another cruiser of two. Any reasonable combination is possible as long as both players agree.
Once these have been drawn in private, each player then calls out shots in turn, using the grid references—A4, C8 and so on. The aim is to sink your opponent’s ships before yours are sunk.
An interesting alternative is to replace the ships with words chosen by each player—of two letters, three letters and so on. The aim is still to find and “sink” the words, but with a score of five points for every word—or ten points if the word can be guessed before the last letter is hit. The winner then is the one with the most points at the end.
5. OTHELLO
Another one that looks easy, but is in fact fiendish. Begin by drawing a grid—school exercise books always make these things easier, which may be why an awful lot of these games are played at school.
Three by three is not enough of a challenge, but will do for the explanation. Five by five is much better.
The player using O fills in two corners, while the opponent puts an X in the other two. Decide who moves first by flipping a coin.
Each player can only place a symbol on squares adjacent to the ones he already has. You can’t “move” diagonally.
Any of the opponent’s adjacent symbols are changed into yours by the move—including diagonals. In diagram number 2 it would make sense for O to put one in the middle-right square.
You’ll need an eraser! The X in the corner will be erased and turned into an O.
Of course, now X can respond. If they put their X in the middle of the top row, it will win two more X squares.
. . . and so on. In fact, O must win this one.
The game ends when one player has nothing left, or when the grid is filled. This is just a teaser. With larger grids, the game can be fascinating and complex.
The Golden Age of Piracy
THERE HAVE BEEN PIRATES for as long as ships have sailed out of sight of land and law. The period known as “the golden age” of piracy began in the seventeenth century and continued into the early eighteenth. The discovery of the New World and vast wealth there for the taking caused an explosion of privateers—some, like Francis Drake, with the complete authority and knowledge of Queen Elizabeth I.
The word “buccaneer” comes from European sailors who caught wild pigs on the islands of Haiti and Tortuga in the Caribbean and smoked the meat on racks to preserve it. The French boucaner means to dry meat in this fashion. The men referred to themselves as the “Brethren of the Coast” and it is from their number that the most famous names came, like Calico Jack Rackham and Blackbeard. Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the golden age is the fact that many pirates were given pardons, sometimes in exchange for military aid or a cut of the loot. The Welsh privateer Henry Morgan was not only pardoned, but knighted by Charles II, made acting governor of Jamaica, a vice admiral, commandant of the Port Royal Regiment, a judge of the Admiralty Court and a justice of the Peace!
Although the skull and crossbones, or “Jolly Roger,” is by far the most famous pirate flag, there were different versions and many other flags that would send fear into the hearts of merchant sailors and their captains. Here is a selection of the most famous, as well as the men who sailed under them.
A Simple Electromagnet
AN ELECTROMAGNET is just a copper coil with a current running through it. The classic use is the junkyard crane, lifting cars into the crusher. Ours lifted two iron screws.
You will need a few feet of copper wire and something iron to wrap it around—a piece of metal coat hanger or a nail. You will also need a battery and preferably one of the plastic battery holders you can see in the picture. Model shops sell them for very little. It is possible to attach batteries to a circuit using no more than duct tape and elastic bands, but it’s fiddly and the connections are unreliable.
Insulate the iron nail with tape. It still works without, but the battery terminals heat up and can burn.
Wrap the copper wire around the nail, leaving a few inches of the first end free to attach to the battery later. The more turns of wire, the stronger the magnet, so use the longest length you can find. The one in the picture has more than one layer of wire, up then down the rod. Each layer should be insulated from the next with electrician’s tape.
Make a switch if you like—it’s less fiddly than poking wires through the battery terminals, even when you have a holder. We used a couple of black screws—one attached to positive (+), one to negative (�
�). It is crucial to complete the circuit, or this won’t work.
Now use the iron tip to pick up paper clips!
Secret Inks
ANYTHING ORGANIC (carbon-based) that is clear or almost clear can be used as a heat-activated secret ink. Put simply, being organic means it contains carbon and carbon things will burn. Milk, lemon juice, egg white and, yes, urine will work as a secret ink. In the picture, we used milk.
In our first attempt we wrote a sentence down the side of a letter. Unless you were looking for it, it wasn’t easy to see. The letter on top helped to disguise it. We let this dry and then applied a flame directly to the hidden words. Try to avoid setting fire to the paper or your clothing. The letters appeared as if by magic.
You can read the words THE ARMY LANDS AT MIDNIGHT. Though it sounds very dramatic, this is a clumsy sort of message. Far better to have your spy waiting for a time, then put “mid” somewhere on the piece of paper. That would be much harder to find.
The trouble with this sort of thing is that the cover letter must look real, but not so real that your spy doesn’t look for the secret message. As with the section on codes, some things work better with a little planning. Invent a sister—and then they will know that every letter that mentions the sister by name contains secret words.
Secret inks allow you to send confidential information by mail. If it’s not expected, it’s not at all likely to be spotted.
Sampling Shakespeare
NO WRITER OF ANY AGE has come close to rivaling the creative genius of William Shakespeare. He was born in 1564, on April 23—St George’s Day, in Stratford-upon-Avon. Anyone alive should know Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Othello and Hamlet, or have seen them in a theater.
Here are a few of the better-known quotations. Shakespeare has added countless commonly used phrases and words to English—so common in fact, that we often hardly recognize them as Shakespearean. He really did write “I have not slept one wink” before anyone else, as well as “I will wear my heart upon my sleeve” and hundreds more.
1.
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
by any other word would smell as sweet.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
2.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1
3.
If music be the food of love, play on.
Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1
4.
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we’ll not fail.
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7
5.
Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
6.
Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1
7.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1
8.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3
9.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7
10.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1
11.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
12.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
13.
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2
14.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Usually rendered as ‘. . . dreams are made of’)
The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1
15.
Why, then the world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 2, Scene 2
16.
I am a man
More sinn’d against than sinning.
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2
17.
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2
18.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5
19.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4
20.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1
21.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1
22.
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5
23.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus.
Julius Caesar, Act 1 Scene 2
24.
Et tu, Brute!
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1
25.
This was the most unkindest cut of all.
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2
26.
Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
27.
A plague o’ both your houses!
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1
28.
Now is the winter of our discontent.
Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1
29.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3
30.
I thought upon one pair of English legs
Did march three Frenchmen.
Henry V, Act 3, Scene 6
Extraordinary Stories—Part Three
Touching the Void
IN MAY 1985, two young English climbers set off to conquer the unclimbed west face of Siula Grande—a 21,000-foot (6,400-m) peak in the Andes. There are no mountain rescue services in such a remote region, but Joe Simpson (25) and Simon Yates (21) were experienced, confident and very fit. Their story is an extraordinary one. Apart from being made into a book and a film, it has inspired intense debate among that small group of expert climbers with experience enough to judge what happened.
The two men tackled the face i
n one fast push, roped together and taking everything they needed with them. They carried ice axes and wore boots with spikes (crampons), using ice screws and ropes for the ascent.
They climbed solidly that first day until darkness fell and they dug a snow cave and slept. All the second day, they climbed sheet ice, reaching 20,000 feet when high winds and a blizzard hit them on an exposed vertical slope. At that point, they were climbing flutes of powder snow, the most treacherous of surfaces and incredibly dangerous. It took five to six hours to climb just 200 feet in the dark before they found a safe place for a second snow cave.
The third morning began with a clear blue sky. By 2 p.m., they reached the north ridge at last—the first men ever to climb that face of Siula Grande. Both men felt exhausted after some of the hardest climbing of their lives, but they decided to follow the ridge toward the peak.
They reached it, but with the weather uncertain, they couldn’t stay for long. Only half an hour into the descent, clouds came in and they were lost in a whiteout on the ridge, completely blind. On one side was a drop of thousands of feet and the ridge itself was made of overhanging cornices of snow that could break off under their weight. Yates saw the ridge through a break in the clouds and climbed back up to it. The cornice broke under his weight and he fell, saved by the rope attached to Simpson. He shouted up that he had found the ridge. In such conditions, progress was very slow. By the time darkness came, they were still at 20,000 feet.
The Dangerous Book for Boys Page 17