Credit card terminals in Japan are pretty similar to those in Canada — you can use tap (タッチ) or insert your card and enter your PIN to authorize the transaction. But there’s one twist that confused me at first. If you need to enter your PIN on a touchscreen, the numbers on the number pad are displayed in a random order!

I have no idea if this is unique to Japan or if it’s just new to me, but it does seem like a helpful security feature to ensure that your PIN can’t be guessed later based on the fingerprint smudges on the screen.

Calligraphy is one of several hobbies I’ve started dabbling with. I’m practicing by writing information sheets for random Unicode characters, which gives me an excuse to share some typographic trivia!

Today’s entry is U+237C RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW, also known as angzarr. This is an unusual “ghost character” that nobody knows the meaning of. Jonathan Chan has an ongoing series of blog posts tracing the history of the character to the Monotype foundry between 1954 and 1963, but is no closer to discovering the original purpose.

When I stopped by the Nintendo store in Kyōto, I knew I needed to get an product with the company’s oldest mascot on it. No, I don’t mean Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, or even Mr. Game and Watch. I’m talking about… Napoleon Bonaparte?

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If you weren’t aware, the Nintendo corporation is much older than video games. It was originally founded in 1889 (Meiji 22) to produce hanafuda cards (花札) — which it still makes today!

A hanafuda deck consists of twelve suits of four cards each, all with abstract designs (originally to evade Edo-era anti-gambling laws). The cards are much thicker than western playing cards (トランプ) but are about a third of the size.

As shown above, Nintendo’s hanafuda come in a box with Napoleon’s portrait on it. That has been the case since at least 1901 (Meiji 34), although the company once had many other brands of cards featuring other historical figures like Saigō Takamori (西鄕 隆盛) and fanciful designs like tengu (天狗).

It’s not clear why Napoleon was chosen, why he got top billing, or why he remains the face of hanafuda today. One theory suggests it was copied or acquired from an American brand, which in turn may have been named after an English card game, but this is purely conjecture.

Footnotes

Before we left for Japan, I tried my hand at making my own stamp to use on the cover page of my eki stamp book. I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt!

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The stamp is made out of a 1/8” thick rubber gasket material. I used an X-Acto knife to carve it into a stylized rose design, glued it onto a wooden coaster, and sanded it down a bit to allow ink to stick to it.

While in Japan, I dabbled in the perfect hobby for obsessive-compulsive travellers like myself: stamp collecting!

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All over the country, train stations have distinctive rubber stamps (駅スタンプ) for travellers to mark their stampbooks with to commemorate their journey. These really took off in the 1970s1 when Japanese National Railways installed stamps at 1400 stations as part of its DISCOVER JAPAN campaign.

Prior to then, stamps were already offered at a handful of individual stations; enthusiasts had been collecting commemorative postmarks since the late Meiji era (1900s-1910s). An even earlier tradition had temples and shrines award stamps called goshuin (御朱印) as a proof of pilgrimage for their devotees.

With that said, here are the stamps I collected on our recent trip!

JR West stamps

I collected four classic stamps from JR West’s stations in Kanazawa and Kyōto.

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JR East stamps

I absolutely love JR East’s refreshed 2020 stamp designs for its Tōkyō stations. Each incorporates one character of the station’s name with some distinctive feature of the surrounding neighbourhood. I collected six stamps from the Yamanote line (山手線) and one from the Chūō line (中央本線).

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Tourist stamps (記念スタンプ)

Train stations aren’t the only places you can get stamps. Tourist information centres at major destinations often have their own stamps for visitors, and even some stores participate in limited-time stamp rallies.

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Goshuin

Stamp collecting in Japan is at least informed by, if not directly descended from, the practice of receiving goshuin (御朱印) on a pilgrimage to a temple or shrine. Conversely, goshuin were influenced by the success of stamp collecting: many sects offer them to collectors and other travellers for a small donation, regardless of faith.

I had one goshuin entered into my stampbook at Honnōji (本能寺) in Kyōto.

Footnotes

Leah and I are back from a three-week trip to Japan! It was my first trip to the country, and only my second time away from North America. Over the next few months, you can expect plenty of posts with photos, observations, and souvenirs from the trip.

For now, here’s an overview of our itinerary and some initial thoughts of how it went.

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Tōkyō (東京)

We started the trip with four full days in Tōkyō. I was worried I’d be totally overwhelmed, but I was pleasantly surprised by how manageable it was. Part of that was location: our hotel in the centrally-located but less hectic neighbourhood around Ōtemachi (大手町) and Kanda (神田) provided a home base for us to retreat to.

But even the busiest areas of Shibuya (渋谷), Ginza (銀座), and Ikebukuro (池袋) were not as bad as I expected. It turns out that thousands of pedestrians and tens of vehicles is not much more of a sensory overload than an urban experience with hundreds of each.

We mostly stuck to the central core of Tōkyō within the Yamanote Line (JY 山手線) and took advantage of our central location on several metro lines:

• Marunouchi (Ⓜ 丸ノ内線)
• Ginza (Ⓖ 銀座線)
• Hanzōmon (Ⓩ 半蔵門線)
• Chiyoda (Ⓒ 千代田線)
• Tōzai (Ⓣ 東西線)

I’m very glad I studied the geography and metro lines of Tōkyō before I left!

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Kanazawa (金沢)

After we had our fill of Tōkyō, we took the Hokuriku Shinkansen (北陸新幹線) to Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture (石川県) on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The city is home to roughly half a million people and many traditional arts and crafts dating from the Edo era.

In our three days in Kanazawa, we stayed in the historic Higashiyama (東山) teahouse district and took a bunch of craft workshops I’ll cover in future posts.

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Kyōto (京都)

The final leg of our trip was five days in Kyōto. The cultural capital is home to lots of historic landmarks and is ground zero for Japan’s challenges for overtourism. Our itinerary was focused more on Kyōto’s traditional crafts than the major tourist destinations, and it became even more so as we adjusted our plans to account for travel fatigue.

With hindsight, it would have been better to plan a slightly shorter trip and stay somewhere on the Karasuma subway line (烏丸線) rather than the tourist-heavy Gion district (祇園), but we still had a very nice time.

The highlight of Kyōto for me was definitely the railway museum — more on that in a future post.

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Food

It is cliché to talk about all the amazing food one eats on a trip, but this has historically been challenging for me since I have a bit of a fragile stomach.1 Fortunately, Japan is full of food that is tasty and easy on the stomach, so our trip was both gastronomically and gastrointestinally satisfying!

Our favourite go-to meals were cold soba (そば) for Leah and unajū (鰻重) for me, although we also had excellent yakitori (焼き鳥), okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), oyakodon (親子丼), shrimp omurice (オムライス), and grilled salmon teishoku (鮭定食).2 I definitely missed my daily serving of peanut butter, but Japan’s famously incredible convenience stores (コンビニ) made up for it by providing snacks and reasonable emergency meals.

Language

It’s been a hot minute since I studied Japanese in university, but I was very thankful for my basic vocabulary and ability to read hiragana, katakana, and a handful of kanji. I’m sure it’s possible to visit Japan without knowing any of the language — million of tourists do it every month — but language was so core to our experience that I have a hard time imagining it.

Multilingual signage can be found everywhere at major attractions, in many restaurants, and on public transportation.3 But it’s a lot more efficient to be able to read and listen for directions in multiple languages, especially in smaller places where the English versions might be slightly dubious.4

I was surprised at how much value I got just from having a working knowledge of katakana. Japanese has a lot of English loanwords, to the point that you can navigate many stores just by sounding things out. At a drugstore, you might see my lips move as I read スキンクリーム as su-ki-n-ku-ri-i-mu — oh, this is skin cream!

People were universally very complimentary of our Japanese skills — not because we were any good, necessarily, but because we were showing consideration by putting in the effort. And they were more than willing to meet us halfway by simplifying their own speech, dropping in English words they knew, and being patient with us. There were a few very special interactions and experiences we were able to have in Japanese, and I’m very grateful to everyone we met for accommodating us.

Back home

We had a wonderful trip, but it’s great to be back home in our own bed with our cat and our routine. I’m sure we’ll be back one day, although it might take a few years to work up the energy for another trip of that length. Until then, I hope you’ll excuse me using this website to look back on my experiences for the next little while!

Footnotes

The Pythagorean theorem states that, for a right triangles with side lengths $a, b$ and hypotenuse $c$:

$$a^2 + b^2 = c^2.$$

There are many proofs, but my favourite for its geometric simplicity is the following proof by rearrangement.

The popular image of a tall, narrow iceberg is wrong:

While it’s true that only ~ 10% floats above the surface of the water, the “classic” orientation is unstable and would actually not be found in nature. An elongated iceberg would not float on its head, but instead on its side.

Megan Thompson-Munson

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Generally, icebergs will float so their long axis is parallel to the ocean surface. See for yourself with this iceberg flotation simulator!

The British Foreign Secretary recently announced an agreement that will restore sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelagoto Mauritius. I don’t have enough context to understand what this means to the Chagossians in exile, but I can say this has huge implications for geography trivia — the sun will finally set on the British Empire for the first time in over four centuries!

This news may also have a big impact on the internet. Up until now, the Chagos Islands were part of an entity called the British Indian Ocean Territory, which was assigned the country code IO and the top-level domain .io. Domains ending in .io have become popular in the tech world: high-profile examples include CodePen, Swagger and Jenkins, the official Rust package repository, the Azure Container Registry, and lots of GitHub Pages sites.

When the British Indian Ocean Territory ceases to exist, IANA policy says that all .io domains should also be eventually extinguished, as happened with .yu and .cs. However, the .su top-level domain still exists for the Soviet Union, so it would not be unprecedented for IANA to make an exception and keep .io around.

Today is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. With the day off comes an opportunity (and responsibility) to learn about residential schools, through which the federal government and Canadian churches separated children from their families and subjected them to abuse and neglect in loco parentis.

[R]econciliation, in the context of Indian residential schools, is similar to dealing with a situation of family violence.

Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Although the first residential schools were first established pre-Confederation, their story is shockingly and depressingly recent: residential school populations were at their highest from the 1920s to the 1960s, and some continued to operate well into my own childhood.

In 2007, New Zealand paint company Resene decided to name this specific shade of teal “zomp”.

The Kama Sutra (कामसूत्र) is an ancient Hindu text about sensory pleasure. Although it’s best known in English for its most risqué chapters, it also contains a list of sixty-four arts whose knowledge makes a person popular and attractive.

1. Singing.
2. Playing on musical instruments.
3. Dancing.
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28. A game, which consisted in repeating verses, and as one person finished, another person had to commence at once, repeating another verse, beginning with the same letter with which the last speaker’s verse ended, whoever failed to repeat was considered to have lost

Kama Sutra, Chapter 3

In modern times, the twenty-eighth art is primarily practiced by bored children on road trips and is known by many names like word chain or shiritori. I had no idea it was over 1700 years old!

The word “distribute” is etymologically the opposite of “tribute”.

early 15c., distributen, “to deal out or apportion, bestow in parts or in due proportion,” from Latin distributus, past participle of distribuere “to divide, deal out in portions,” from dis- “individually” and tribuere “to pay, assign, grant,” also “allot among the tribes or to a tribe,” from tribus (see tribe)

In geography, a tributary is a stream or river that feeds into a larger body of water; for example, the Thompson River (Snek’w7étkwe) is a tributary of the Fraser (Sto:lo). When a river bifurcates into multiple downstream branches, such as the North and South Arms of the Fraser, those branches are called distributaries.

In case you ever have need for a large-ish prime number, here are a few that are easy to remember:

• 314159 ($\lfloor \pi \cdot 10^5 \rfloor$)
• 8675309 (Jenny’s number)
• 1000000007 (a billion and seven)
• 2147483647 ($2^{31}-1$, i.e. INT_MAX)
• 11111111111111111111111 (twenty-three ones)
• 1000000000000066600000000000001 (Belphegor’s prime)

Diggy, my best furry friend of twelve years, passed away this week. He was full of sass, love, energy, mischief, curiosity, and affection, and will be deeply missed.

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Diggy was found as a kitten on the streets of Kamloops in 2012, and Leah and I took him in on November 1. As soon as he was out of the carrier, Diggy was wandering around our apartment like he owned the place. Diggy slept on the bed between the two of us the very first night we had him.

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Diggy was a cat full of mischief. Under his watch, no bag would be left unoccupied, no nook would stay unexplored, and no paper would remain unchewed. Diggy zoomed around as a kitten, usually ending with a parkour climb up our bathroom door jamb and once leaving me to shower in the dark after he caught the light switch on the way down. Diggy slowed down later in life but was no less of a brat, climbing on counters, getting water all over his face, and yowling at night to report he had found his favourite toy.

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Cats have their people, and I was Diggy’s person. The two of us were inseparable: first thing in the morning and last thing at night Diggy would hop into the bed to snuggle. If I sat down on the couch to read or play video games, he would force himself onto my chest and nuzzle my face. And any time I called his name, he would trot over with a purr that could be heard across the room.

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In 2018 we adopted our second cat, and Diggy became a big brother. Although Diggy and Pazzo were never super close, they were true partners in crime. The two frequently played together: grooming, wrestling, racing down the hall, or batting at one another from different heights of furniture. For a while we kept the office door closed to protect its contents from the cats, but despite our best efforts Diggy would break in and Pazzo would follow to make mischief.

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Diggy was constantly making us laugh and smile. He was a true master of the “blep” technique as shown in the photos below. And his dedication to “flumping” came with it a complete disregard for gravity; he has been known to do an unintentional barrel roll right off a piece of furniture.

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All in all, Diggy was an adorable cat, full of sass, love, energy, mischief, curiosity, and affection. He brought Leah and I together as a family and brightened up our lives and our home. Diggy was the first cat I ever had, and I was incredibly lucky to have had such a special relationship with him.

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You know what a fire hydrant looks like. You pass by them every day, and they’re all painted to be a highly visible red. Or is it yellow? Wait, maybe they have other colours on them too?

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If the subject of fire hydrant colours has ever crossed your mind, you might have assumed (as I did) that they’d be covered somewhere in the Fire Code. In fact, the code is completely silent on hydrant colours, and it’s up to individual municipalities and their fire departments to decide how hydrants should be painted. This leaves a lot of room for variation!

Even setting aside exceptional cases — like downtown Quesnel’s artistic hydrants, or that time an Abbotsford neighbourhood got gold-plated hydrants — there’s a wide variety in the colour schemes used across municipalities in BC.

The non-standard standard

A document called NFPA 291, published by the US-based National Fire Protection Association, is the closest thing there is to a standard fire hydrant colour scheme. It recommends that:

[P]ublic hydrant barrels are to be colored their characteristic chrome yellow. … The tops and nozzle caps are also painted under a capacity-indicating color scheme to provide simplicity and consistency. This scheme consists of Light Blue [for hydrants that can pump 1500 gallons per minute], Green [1000-1499 gpm], Orange [500-999 gpm], and Red [less than 500 gpm].

ANSI, describing NFPA 291

Although many NFPA standards are incorporated into the Canadian Fire Code, the NFPA 291 colour scheme is purely voluntary.

Many municipalities incorporate the recommended flow rate colours into their hydrant designs, but only a few — notably Kelowna, Chilliwack, and Merritt — implement the full standard including the chrome yellow body.

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Vancouver

In the city of Vancouver, most fire hydrants are painted entirely red. Each hydrant has a label indicating the flow rate (as per the NFPA 291 colour code) and an alphanumeric identifier that can be looked up on the on the city website to find the make, model, and installation date.

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Downtown, you’ll also see fire hydrants of a different colour. These large blue hydrants are part of the Dedicated Fire Protection System, an auxiliary network that can supply enough water pressure to reach the tops of high-rise buildings. The network was built to withstand magnitude 8 earthquakes after the successful use of a similar system in San Francisco.

Fire hydrants on Vancouver’s Dedicated Fire Protection System are blue with white trim.

Burnaby

The city of Burnaby might have a claim to the province’s most distinctive fire hydrants. Their red, white, and green colour scheme isn’t found anywhere else in BC.

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The Burnaby tricolour apparently only applies to public hydrants. The shopping centres at Market Crossing, for example, installed boring red fire hydrants on their parking lots.

Kamloops

My hometown of Kamloops paints its hydrants yellow with a white bonnet.

The largest port of a Kamloops hydrant exhibits another colour code that can be found across the province. The main cap can either be yellow or black depending on whether it is threaded or uses a Storz connection.

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Hope

Downtown Hope’s red hydrants have little antennae attached to make them more visible, especially in cases of heavy snow.

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Across BC

As much as I’d like to travel around the province taking pictures of fire hydrants, this post needs to be published at some point. I therefore took to Google Street View to survey fire hydrants in each of the 75 most populous BC municipalities.

Municipality	Body	Cap	Bonnet
Abbotsford1	⚪ White	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Armstrong	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Burnaby	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🟢 Green
Campbell River	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Castlegar	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Central Sannich	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Chilliwack	🟡 Yellow	NFPA2	NFPA
Coldstream	🟡 Yellow	⚫ Black	🟡 Yellow
Colwood	⚪ White	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Comox	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Coquitlam	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Courtenay	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Cranbrook	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Creston	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Dawson Creek	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Delta	⚪ White	⚪ White	NFPA
Esquimalt	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue
Fernie	🔴 Red	Silver	Silver
Fort St John	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Hope	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Kamloops3	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	⚪ White
Kelowna	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Kent	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Kimberley	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Kitimat	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Ladysmith	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Lake Country	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Langford	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Langley	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Maple Ridge	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Merritt	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Mission	🟡 Yellow	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Nanaimo	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Nelson	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
New Westminister	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
North Cowichan	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
North Sannich	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
North Vancouver	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Oak Bay	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Osoyoos	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Parksville	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Peachland	🔴 Red	NFPA	NFPA
Penticton	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Pitt Meadows	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Port Alberni	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Port Coquitlam	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Port Moody	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Powell River	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Prince George	🟡 Yellow	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Prince Rupert	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Qualicum Beach	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Quesnel	Decorated	Decorated	Decorated
Revelstoke	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green	🟢 Green
Richmond	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Saanich	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Salmon Arm	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green
Sechelt	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🟢 Green
Sidney	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Smithers	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Sooke	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Squamish	🔴 Red	⚫ Black	🔵 Blue
Summerland	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Surrey4	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Terrace	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Trail	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Vancouver	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Vernon	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	⚪ White
Victoria	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
View Royal	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🔴 Red
West Kelowna	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
West Vancouver	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Whistler	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
White Rock	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Williams Lake	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green	🟢 Green

The above table is not foolproof. It is hard to tell, for example, whether Williams Lake has adopted a uniform yellow-and-green colour scheme for aesthetic reasons or it just happens to have a lot of 1000 gpm hydrants painted according to NFPA 291.

I also saw one instance of a hydrant in Comox that appears either yellow or red in Street View depending on the angle; one image was taken in 2012 and the other in 2022, and the hydrant had apparently been repainted in the interim.

Conclusion

Fire hydrant colours are left to each municipality, and frequently lack public documentation. I’ve done a quick survey of what’s out there, but I’ve surely missed many exceptions, oddities, and quirks in each municipality. Pay attention to the hydrants in your neighbourhood and you’ll surely notice something interesting!

Footnotes

Most ice cream trucks in Canada and the United States use music boxes made by a single mom-and-pop company in Minneapolis. If there’s a particular ice cream truck song that annoys you all summer, you have the Nichols Electronics Company to blame.

(You could always ask the your local driver if they’re able to switch it up — if they have one of the Omni models, they could change it to one of thirty-one other songs.)

Historically, ice cream truck music boxes were a sonic callback to late 19th-century ice cream parlors and soda fountains, which had coin-operated music boxes before phonographs were invented and jukeboxes could become a thing.

Highway exits in Canada are generally numbered based on the distance (in km) from the beginning of the highway. But what about before Canada went metric? Did all the exits have to be renumbered?

As it turns out, my assumption that distance-based exit numbering is not as widespread or as recent as I thought.

• Ontario and Québec have exit numbering systems that predate metrication, but only barely, so the switch wasn’t too hard.
• Newfoundland and Nova Scotia have sequential exit numbers, not distance-based ones.
• Alberta didn’t post exit numbers at all until 2004!

My daily routine nowadays includes two word puzzles: the Puzzmo/AVCX crossword and the The New York Times’ new game Connections. That’s inspired me to see if I could create a hybrid of the two.

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Here’s what I came up with. The following is a normal American-style crossword puzzle — no cryptic clues this time — with 24 seven-letter answers. Once you’re done solving the crossword, write down the seven-letter entries and see if you can group them into six categories of four words each, like a jumbo-sized version of Connections. Good luck!

Answers (and a bit of trivia) can be found below the puzzle behind spoiler tags.

ACROSS

DOWN

Answers

Connections answer

The Connections categories of the seven-level words are as follows, in increasing order of difficulty:

Countries
Armenia, Denmark, Ecuador, Vietnam.

Chemical elements
arsenic, calcium, krypton, mercury.

Technically fruit
apricot, avocado, coconut, pumpkin.

Anagrams
camelid, claimed, decimal, medical.

Plausible cryptic crossword anagram indicators
diced up, ordered, sketchy, various.

Objects counted with -枚 in Japanese
acrylic, judo mat, seaweed, SIM card

It was quite the challenge to come up with four-word categories given the constraints of the crossword, and it was impossible to include any cross-category red herrings. But I’m quite satisfied that I was able to fit all 24 seven-letter entries into the Connections sub-puzzle; I originally thought I’d only be able to get four categories of four with the other eight being “miscellaneous”.

The last two categories are certainly harder to get than you’d normally see in the NYT puzzle, but I think they mostly hold up.

Crossword Trivia

To me, compiling a crossword is a great excuse to break out trivia I had filed away and to learn new things about the random topics that happen to fit in the grid. Here are some mildly interesting facts about this puzzle’s clues!

Trivia based on the crossword answers

1 across: Arsenic might be an essential trace nutrient

Arsenic is famously toxic, and was historically favoured as an assassination tool since it was hard to detect and mimicked the symptoms of cholera. But studies in rats, goats, and birds have demonstrated arsenic deficiency is possible when fed unnaturally low levels of the element. (Arsenic naturally occurs in groundwater at levels of a few parts per billion.)

17 across: Microsoft slang references an email system from the late 80s

Microsoft employees use “OOF” as shorthand for “out of office”, even though it doesn’t make sense as an acronym. Reportedly, it comes from the name of the auto-reply feature in a Xenix email system Microsoft hasn’t used since 1993.

25 across: Yuri Oganesson

Yuri Oganessian is a physicist whose discoveries were essential to the discovery of elements 106 to 118, and who led the international team in Dubna, Russia who first synthesized many of them.

The race for the periodic table is a fascinating story in its own right; the team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory claimed to have first produced elements 116 and 118 in 1999, but the discovery was later exposed to have been based on data fabricated by Victor Ninov. Both elements were later synthesized for real in a collaboration between the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US and Oganessian’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia.

Oganesson is the heaviest element synthesized to this date; only a handful of atoms have ever been produced. It sits at the bottom of the noble gases column on the periodic table, but it is theorized that it would actually be a reactive solid if it existed long enough for those to be meaningful descriptions.

39 across: Oxygen is sour stuff

The word “oxygen” is named by Antoine Lavoisier after the Greek word ὀξύς describing sharp or harsh tastes, since he believed (incorrectly) that it was a component of all acids. In German, the element is called Sauerstoff.

49 across: Ada Lovelace was Lord Byron’s daughter

Ada Lovelace is famous in computer science as the author of the first published computer algorithm (for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine) and the first person to recognize that the machine could have applications beyond calculation:

Again, it might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.

Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace

Less well known is Ada’s relationship to Lord Byron, the eccentric poet and famous philanderer. Lady Byron believed her husband to be insane and left Lord Byron shortly after giving birth to Ada (the marriage lasted one year). She strongly encouraged Ada’s scientific and mathematical studies in the hopes that she wouldn’t take after her father.

52 across: Osu!!

Osu (押忍) is an informal acknowledgement mainly used by people involved in martial arts. It’s also associated with cheer squads, and is referenced in the Japanese title of the Nintendo DS rhythm game series known in the west as Elite Beat Agents. It’s believed to be an extreme contraction of oyahō gozaimasu (おはようございます), or “good morning”, with the kanji 押 (“push”) and 忍 (“endure”) having been assigned after-the-fact.

54 across: Falling coconuts don’t kill that many people

There is an urban legend that hundreds of people are killed by falling coconuts each year. That statistic is completely unsubstantiated, but there is a seed of truth to it: a 1984 paper by Dr Peter Barss reported nine cases of serious head injuries caused by falling coconuts in Papua New Guinea.

68 across: Europe’s spaceport is in South America

Here’s a great trivia question: with what country does France have the longest border with? Is it Spain? Germany? No — it’s Brazil. That’s because of French Guiana, an overseas department of France between Brazil and Suriname on the north coast of South America. It’s part of the EU and Eurozone but not the Schengen Area.

French Guiana’s location right next to the equator made it the perfect site for the Guiana Space Center, built in 1968 after Algeria won its independence from France. The spaceport is operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French and EU space agencies. The space sector is a significant fraction of the Guianese economy.

69 across: The giant stones of Yap

Yap is an island in Micronesia famous for its inhabitants’ use of large stone disks as a medium of exchange for ceremonial gifts. Rai, as the stones are known to the northern Yapese, have their owners recorded in oral histories as they are impractical to physically transfer.

They are valuable in part because there’s no limestone on Yap; the stones were quarried on Palau and transported 400km by boat. Supply of rai greatly increased after European contact, as did the disks’ individual sizes, but production stopped with the arrival of the Japanese in 1914 and many were lost to typhoon and World War II.

1 down: Avocados probably did not coevolve with giant ground sloths

A paper from the 1980s suggested that avocados might have co-evolved with giant ground sloths, who were large enough to eat and scatter the large seeds. But more recent research has that’s probably not true: avocados were smaller before human cultivation, and giant ground sloths didn’t live anywhere near there anyways.

5 down: Ice is technically a mineral

A mineral is a substance that is

• naturally occuring
• inorganic
• homogenous
• solid
• has a definite chemical composition, and
• has a crystalline structure.

Glacier ice checks all those boxes.

In response, Hank Green hyperbolically exclaimed on TikTok: “Ice is a rock, water is lava, and you are a lava monster. I guess??“

24 down: Tatami mats are interesting mathematically

Ten years ago I wrote a post summarizing some of the math behind traditional tatami patterns, so go check that out.

47 down: The United States has a lot of biomes

Back in high school, I participated in the Great Canadian Geography Challenge, and this crossword clue is my favourite question from provincials that I still remember two decades later.

You can find a lot of different biomes in the United States: tundra and taiga in Alaska; tropical rainforests in Hawaii; and coniferous forests, broadleaf forests, desert, prairies, flooded grasslands, mangroves, subtropical grasslands, and shrublands in the contiguous states.

48 down: The Three Sisters

Corn, beans, and squash (including pumpkins) are the three sisters of North America. This nutritionally-complete combination of crops is key to the cuisine of indigenous peoples across the continent. They featured prominently in the myths and diet of the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, for example.

59 down: Legendre’s constant

In 1808 Adrien-Marie Legendre conjectured that the prime-counting function π(x) asymptotically behaves like

$$\pi(x) \approx \frac{x}{\ln(x) - B}$$

for some constant $B \approx 1.08366$. Decades later, it was proved that the conjecture was right but the constant was wrong — in fact, B is equal to exactly one.

Hilariously, the only known contemporaneous image of Legendre is a random watercolour caricature by Julien-Léopold Boilly.

61 down: The seconds pendulum was almost the definition of a meter

The meter was originally defined as one ten-millionth of distance from the North Pole to the Equator through Paris. The main competing proposal was to use the length of a pendulum with a period of two seconds.

By sheer coincidence, the two numbers are almost exactly the same — the seconds pendulum has a length of about 0.993 meters (plus or minus less than a centimeter, depending on where you are on the Earth).

“Hydrogen” in German is Wasserstoff, which sounds hilarious except it’s just a literal translation of the Greek hydro-gen!

Most chemical elements are more or less the same in German and English. The fun exceptions are:

• Wasserstoff (Hydrogen); “water stuff” is a literal translation from Greek.
• Kohlenstoff (Carbon); “coal stuff” is a literal translation from Latin.
• Stickstoff (Nitrogen); “suffocation stuff”, apparently because it’s the non-oxygen part of air, is a German original.
• Sauerstoff (Oxygen); “sour stuff” is a literal translation from Greek.

German also has Natrium (Sodium), Kalium (Potassium), Wofram (Tungsten), Quecksilber (Mercury), and Blei (Lead).

Cricket has a bit of a reputation for being hard to understand, but it’s actually a simpler game than the most popular North American sports.

Here’s everything you need to know to enjoy a cricket match in 600 words or less.

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Cricket is played on an oval field with a rectangular pitch in the middle. Two players on the batting team stand on either side of the pitch; the eleven players on the fielding team take up positions around the field.

Runs

The cricket ball is bowled overarm by a player on the fielding team and can bounce once. The batter hits the ball and switches ends with the other batter, scoring one run each time this happens.

If the batter hits the ball all the way to the boundary of the field, they score four runs automatically.

If they hit the ball really hard over the boundary, they score six runs.

Wickets

The goal of the fielding team is to get the batters out (“take their wickets”) before they score lots of runs.

The batter is out caught if they hit the ball and a fielder catches it before it hits the ground.

The batter is out bowled if they miss and the ball hits the wicket behind them.

The batter is out leg before wicket if they use their body to block the ball from hitting the wicket.

The batter is run out if they run and the fielding side breaks the wicket before they’re safe.

The batter is out stumped if they come too far out, miss the ball, and get run out by the wicketkeeper.

Overs

Every six balls, the fielders switch ends and a different player from the fielding team comes on to bowl. Six balls is also called an over.1

Each team gets to bat for 20 overs2 or until they have lost ten wickets. Whichever team has the most runs after both sides bat wins.

Extras

There are a bunch of rules that govern how the ball should be bowled. A violation results in a do-over, except the batting team is awarded an extra run and gets to keep any runs they scored off the illegal delivery.

A wide is signalled if the umpire judges that the ball was bowled too wide or too high for it to be reasonably hit.

A no ball is signalled if the delivery is illegal for another reason, usually because the bowler stepped too far over the white line.

A batter cannot be dismissed for being caught, bowled, stumped, or LBW off a no-ball. Depending on the competition, the batter may be awarded the same immunities for the next ball as well — this is called a “free hit”.

Positions

A typical team roster has some specialist batters who usually don’t bowl, some specialist bowlers who aren’t expected to get lots of runs, and some all-rounders who are good at both batting and bowling.

There are two main bowling styles: fast bowlers rely on the speed of their deliveries while spin bowlers deliver slow but tricky balls.

Each team has a wicketkeeper who stops the balls that get past the batter. You can recognize the wicketkeeper as the only fielder who wears gloves.

Fielders can be deployed anywhere, subject to a few restrictions.3 . Commentators describe fielding positions using funny names like slip, gully, mid-off, square leg, and third man.

Scoreboard

A typical TV broadcast overlay displays the following information:

• The batting team’s current run total and wickets lost.4
• The number of overs completed or the number of balls remaining.
• The current batters’ names, runs scored, and balls faced, with some indication of which batter is facing the next ball.
• The current bowler.

The overlay often shows other relevant information, which may include the current run rate (average runs per over), the target score needed for the team batting second to win, and/or an indication of any special fielding restrictions.

Conclusion

That’s all you need to follow and enjoy a cricket match! All that’s left to learn is some jargon, the names of the players, and the details of whatever tournament or competition you want to follow. You’ll pick up all of those as you go.

Some tournaments worth following are:

• The Men’s Twenty20 World Cup (this June).
• The Women’s Twenty20 World Cup (this October).
• England’s The Hundred (August).
• Australia’s Big Bash League (December–January).
• India’s IPL (April–May) and WPL (March).

National sides often play series against each other as well.

If you want to watch cricket, most series are carried in Canada by subscription streaming service Willow TV. You can also follow live text summaries and scorecards on sites like ESPN Cricinfo.

Footnotes