Today’s Musical Memories post will be a little different. In the previous 17 installments, I have used my personal collection of songs from my MP3 player. I also collect songs on Spotify, which does NOT run my personal collection. Therefore, I wanted to do the shuffle on my Spotify list this time. Here goes, with YouTube links on the names of the songs if possible. All will open in a new window!
spelling bee
[M.M.X.I.V. 64]
Dude, where’s my title? Well… if you must have a title, here it is:
Rhymes, Bits, Mississippian, Squares: Redundancy.
Here we go with what I mean by that strange title, one word at a time. When I was in the third grade, there were various mnemonics to remember certain multiplication facts. One mnemonic that I remember well was along the lines of “Eight and eight fell on the floor. Picked them up and I had sixty-four.” (Now, 7-times-4 was one that often tripped me up on Mad Minutes–my most common erroneous response was 27 instead of 28. But that’s another topic for another post, maybe…)
On the topic of bits, that refers to the Nintendo 64 game system. It was definitely a part of my childhood in my late elementary school and early middle school years. Although I didn’t always get into trends of those years, video games was definitely one that I did. There were quite a few that I liked quite a bit like Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And this last summer when Levi picked me up from the Amtrak station, we both marveled at the fact that the system was 17 years old, having been released in 1996.
How about Mississippian? I drew the number “64” for the Lincoln Public Schools Oral Spelling Bee in 2000 (I think it was February 26), my seventh-grade year. In some sense, with the background of the previous paragraph, I felt that would be my lucky number. I can’t remember the first word that I spelled after the practice round, but it was something easy. In the second round:
PRONOUNCER: “Mississippian.”
NOAH: “Mississippian. m-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i-a-n. Mississippian.”
JUDGE: “Not correct.”
I was really disappointed, having made it to the fourth round in 1998 (bowing out after “t-e-n-a-s-i-t-y” [tenacity]) and the third round in 1999 (knocked off by “h-e-p-h-e-r” [heifer]), and did not take the consolation prize of a coupon to Godfather’s Pizza when I alighted the stage. Returning to where Mom, Dad, and Mrs. Sanks (my fifth grade teacher) were sitting, they had a hopeful aura about them–thankfully (rhyme with Sanks not intended) one or more of them had gone to appeal the decision.
Indeed, I had not mis-spelled the word, because you are not required to capitalize an always-capitalized word. So, I was reinstated! (There were also one or two other spellers that were reinstated for judge errors that year.) Most of the other words I cannot remember, but two that I remember well are “labyrinth” and “chamberlain.” The latter I knew because of it being a garage door opener make! Eventually, the contest came down to Noah vs. Will, the defending champion. I don’t recall what word he erred on that I got correct, but after that:
PRONOUNCER: “Annihilate.”
NOAH (to self): (I know this word! It was mentioned in a letter in an old Nintendo Power magazine when a reader was concerned that the PlayStation would annihilate Nintendo’s business.)
NOAH (matter-of-factly): “Annihilate. a-n-n-i-h-i-l-a-t-e. Annihilate.”
JUDGE: “Correct.”
I can’t remember what my reaction was–recall that my memory for older events is mostly with relation to what happened or where I was, as opposed to the emotions. But, it was exciting as I won a check for $100 (ostensibly for travel expenses to Omaha), a dictionary, and the right to advance to the Midwest Spelling Bee in Omaha the next month.
So, that takes care of Mississippian. Then, for Square, I quickly developed 64 as my favorite number after the Spelling Bee. Not long after that, my e-mail address (which had been “noah11@netscape.net” had been administratively changed (I don’t know why) to “Noah121Weiss@netscape.net.” Although I didn’t think about it at the time, 121 = 11^2, and since 64 = 8^2, I decided to generalize and make perfect squares a favorite family of numbers.
And finally, that brings me to Redundancy. With a whole post about the number 64, do I really need a title when the title is already there in the countoff?
(And there’s also an Easter egg in the time of posting of this post: I timed it to publish 64 minutes after I woke up.)
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Today is the sixty-fourth day of M.M.X.I.V. That makes nine weeks and one day.
Numerical musings
All five days of this week, I put “musings” on certain integers. All five of the musings have something in common, which will quickly become apparent. For those blog readers who don’t read my Facebook account, here are the five statements I made:
1) 14 is a very HANDY number… and it can also be converted into something quite close to ME…
2) The number 64 is a square… and on the vertices, correct spelling of annihilate, COMFORTABLE, UNCONVENTIONAL SPELLING OF MY NAME, and favourite list…
3) Many people know that Interstate 94 connects the North and South Sides of Chicago, but what they don’t know is that this Interstate is also a SIDE of Chicago…
4) A certain proverb claims that 79 > 210. Yikes! And it’s even one that I tend to abide by…
5) In Lincoln, 56th Street is a significant artery, but it takes special significance NEXT MONTH…
OK, so what do all of these have in common? Notice in each of them that I have certain words capitalized. Indeed, there is a connection between the capitalized words and the numbers, and after the first one, it might become a guessing game as to what the others are.
OK, starting with number one. Although 14 has many significances, the reason that I call it a “handy” number has to do more with a certain numerical value. In Hebrew, the word for “hand” is יד, which has a numerical value of 10+4 = 14. Actually, the number 14 was what encouraged me to start this sequence of musings: I was biking toward my Hebrew class this Monday, and looking at my watch, had 14 minutes before class started, and all of a sudden, realized, “Hmm… 14 is the numerical value of יד!”
And as the conversion? The number 14, in Celsius, corresponds to about 57.2 degrees Fahrenheit. If we take the ceiling function of that converted number, the answer is 58… and נח is my name… don’t wear it out!
But, in Hebrew, oftentimes extra “vav” or “yud” are added when vowels are not used. So, an unconventional spelling of my name in Hebrew is נוח which happens to also be the word for “comfortable.” And, the numerical value: 50 + 6 + 8 = 64.
That’s quite a story too! After all, “64” was the number that I pulled at the spelling bee in seventh grade, and though I won the competition, I did not spell EVERYTHING that I was asked correctly, but once down to two, an error does not mean elimination: there is a “win by two” clause. So, at least to me, “64” has at least a square of implications. As I have mused before, you can find significance in any number and take it as your own!
Well, since it is now obvious that I am introducing numerology here, clearly EVERY one of the musings is related to a Hebrew word. The third one, about the Sides of Chicago, is 94. The Hebrew word for “side” is צד with value 90+4 = 94. Of course, the way I like to use that word is while biking, with the phrase “על צד שמאל שלך!” [On your left!]
The fourth one. What proverb might use a “greater than” sign? Well, might is often seen as a sign of greatness. And let’s write 79 = 70 + 9 and 210 = 8 + 200 + 2. These translate to the Hebrew words עט and חרב, respectively. Those words… “pen” and “sword.” I’m afraid we’ve got a loss in translation here! (Of course, there’s also another disturbing coincidence of the number 210: חבר (friend)).
And the last one, which is probably quite anti-climactic: 56 = 10 + 6 + 30 + 10, for the word יולי which is indeed a cognate of the English word “July.” You never know what words and numbers will be salient, and obviously I used 56th Street a lot in Lincoln.
Of course, I wonder if there is English numerology with values of words, other than Scrabble scoring? It might be interesting to consider.
Odd… this is also my 72nd post on this blog, and 72 is a main street in Omaha. Have I mentioned that I have always been quite obsessed with roads? That’s maybe another topic for another day!
Never A Worry 