Friday 16 November, 2007

Wordplay

What happens when you
  • have a boring paper coming up
  • want to sleep (but can't)
  • like simple math
  • love playing around with words and
  • are an amateur poet?
You challenge yourself to find a
  • mathematical relationship between numbers which have homonyms,
  • create an overarching theme including all three
  • in a poem!

(I wanted to demonstrate to myself that when you force yourself to look for ways when you think none can possibly exist, you can almost always find them!)

I found it to be quite a daunting task, but eventually came up with this:-

"When I was just one,
I almost never won :-(

We became two,
and only sometimes managed to :-|

We became four,
and came new strengths to the fore :-)

And finally, while eight?
Our problems, we just ATE :-D

How could this be true?
Alone I fail, and succeed in a crew?

I thought all I could,
and then I understood.

Every time we were double,
half was our trouble!

Into reality turned all our dreams,
it's just the wonder of teams! :-) "

I'm pretty proud of this one, as I am of the earlier one, which came into existence when I had set myself up a similar challenge about including paradox and wit in a four line poem :-)