Saturday, April 01, 2006

meatloaf said...

After successfully answering my last query which therefore allowed me a peaceful nights sleep (many thanks) as well as having the excitement of a future trip to the theatre to see \'Fame\' the musical (which I promptly booked straight away), I now once again find myself restless at the thought of my next question I pose to you: Why is Dick short for Richard, Bill short for William etc, etc... I can understand Jimmy for James etc a little better but those such as the first 2 are a puzzle... please Hugh Evans enlighten Meatloaf.

2 Comments:

Blogger hughevans said...

Meatloaf,

Do accept my apologies for a tardy response. I have had an influx of investigations over the past week and in order to provide satisfactory responses to them all, I must take my time and be thorough.

I am also pleased to hear that my advice proved useful to you. Let us hope that you will capture some further benefit from the results of my second invesitgatorial outing for you…

It is a commonly held enigma that some words will come across as more satisfying – will roll of the tongue better, or simply sound more appealing to the human ear. Have you ever wondered why this is? “Well,” I hear you cry, “no-one knows – it is an enigma…”. Not any more. Let me explain…

The world is made up of many mathematical anomalies. The Fibonacci sequence astonishingly regularly rears its aesthetically pleasing head in nature. Where nicknames are concerned, there is another complex mathematical explanation for why some names make more sense than others.

I call this the ‘Evans Scrababet Theorum’.

Let us take a look at the examples you provided me with:

Acceptable:
James = Jimmy

Unacceptable:
Richard = Dick
William = Bill

What you need to do is to de-code these names using the following method. Lay out the alphabet in sequence, and underneath lay out the same albphabet, only backwords, creating a key that will help us to unravel the first part of the code. Like this:


A B C D E F G H I J
Z Y X W V U T S R Q

K L M N O P Q R S T
P O N M L K J I H G

U V W X Y Z
F E D C B A

Decode each name, both original and nickname and lay them out as follows:

JAMES = JIMMY
QZNUH = QRNNB

DAVID = DAVE
WZERW = WZEV


RICHARD = DICK
IRXSZID WRXP

WILLIAM = BILL
DROORZN = YROO


The next step is to use the timeless legend that is the Scrabble scoring system. It looks like this:

A1 B3 C3 D2 E1 F4 G2 H4 I1 J8 K5 L1 M3
N1 O1 P3 Q10 R1 S1 T1 U1 V4 W4 X8 Y4 Z10


Use the scrabble scale to find the scrabble scores of each name or decoded name. Then add them up and categorise them into those that equal multiples of 3 or 4 or both.


JAMES 14 JIMMY 19 = 33 (multiple of 3)
QZNUH 26 QRNNB 16 = 42 (multiple of 3)

DAVID 10 DAVE 8 = 18 (multiple of 3)
WZERW 20 WZEV 19 = 39 (multiple of 3)


RICHARD 13 DICK 11 = 24 (multiple of 4 and 3)
IRXSZID 24 WRXP 16 = 40 (multiple of 4)

WILLIAM 12 BILL 6 = 18 (multiple of 3)
DROORZN 17 YROO 7 = 24 (multiple of 4 and 3)


As you can see, the names that are acceptable add up to multiples of 3 in both forms – Nickname and de-coded nickname and name or de-coded name.

Any impurities where the total adds up to a multiple of 4 or a hybrid of 3 and 4, it just won’t work.

To help to prove this theory I included my middle name, David, and its commonly used nickname, Dave.

I hope this has helped to clear up what previously was a very confusing turn of events.

I look forward to hearing from you again soon.

Hugh Evans PI

5:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your answer is even more baffling then the original problem posed but then I am not as intellectual as yourself hugh because I would therefore not b asking for your advice & singing your praises. Well done on investigating such oddities & being that we celebrate the daft tradition on this very day can you explain what a 'April Fool' is & how to spot such a person?

6:15 AM  

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