Thirteenahedron
I'm really enjoying the book The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield.
The setting is atmospheric, the writing beautiful, the family of characters twisted and depraved and Faulkneresque. It's everything a gothic epic should be.
Furthermore, last night I'd just finished a really inspiring conversation with some friends about the importance of inspiration and progress in writing, as opposed to getting too hung up in editing and fact-checking and details.
And then shortly thereafter, upon arriving home and picking up The Thirteenth Tale again for some pre-bedtime reading, I tripped over this inexplicable passage:
Nevermind the situation that they're counting faces of a topiary. I promise you, in the context of the scene it's much less silly than it sounds.
But I was still dealing with how the difference between a dodecahedron and all its round soccer-ball-like charm and the succinct pointiness of the pyramid-shaped tetrahedron would require counting, rather than a quick glance, to resolve. . . . (Maybe he simply had the wrong name rather than the right shape? But then why would he count? So he knew a dodecahedron only had four sides but couldn't tell that the topiary must have been hiding a whole bunch of sides somewhere if he could only see two or three from his viewpoint?)
. . . until I got to the part about him stopping counting at six, at which point no explanation worked at all.
And, in the way I seem prone to do, I've been obsessing about it for 12 hours now.
No, don't worry, this is truly a trivial scene in the book. I've spoiled nothing for you, and neither does the answer to this mystery bear any significance on a single piece of the story after that. I think it was merely a trope used by the author and/or her narrator to demonstrate that the woman was equally as mathematically gifted as the doctor. It's just be being sort of neurotic.
But still, what possible explanation appropriately rationalized both how the difference between the two Platonic solids wouldn't have been immediately obvious just by looking?
And where the real answer apparently had fewer sides than the initial answer, but with at least six? (Disqualifying the lowly four-sided tetrahedron....)
Icosahedron? — Easy to visually confuse with a dodecahedron, but has more sides (20) rather than fewer, so wouldn't logically make sense in the dialogue, and wouldn't have been obvious after counting only six sides.
Cube? — First, who doesn't know what a cube is? And it seems that the doctor stopped at six even though there were more sides to count.
Octahedron? — Fits with the side-number criteria. However, I question how much an octahedron looks like a dodecahedron, but it's the best I can come up with. And I guess I could buy that an other would get the names tetrahedron and octahedron mixed up.
Would the author think I'm utterly crazy if I wrote her to ask? Or just that I'm a jerk for pointing out a trivial mistake she made?
Still, it's bugging me.
The setting is atmospheric, the writing beautiful, the family of characters twisted and depraved and Faulkneresque. It's everything a gothic epic should be.
Furthermore, last night I'd just finished a really inspiring conversation with some friends about the importance of inspiration and progress in writing, as opposed to getting too hung up in editing and fact-checking and details.
And then shortly thereafter, upon arriving home and picking up The Thirteenth Tale again for some pre-bedtime reading, I tripped over this inexplicable passage:
"It's not a dodecahedron," she told him slyly. "It's a tetrahedron."
The doctor rose from the bench, stepped toward the topiary shape. One, two, three, four . . . His lips moved as he counted.
...
But he reached six and stopped. He knew she was right.
Nevermind the situation that they're counting faces of a topiary. I promise you, in the context of the scene it's much less silly than it sounds.
But I was still dealing with how the difference between a dodecahedron and all its round soccer-ball-like charm and the succinct pointiness of the pyramid-shaped tetrahedron would require counting, rather than a quick glance, to resolve. . . . (Maybe he simply had the wrong name rather than the right shape? But then why would he count? So he knew a dodecahedron only had four sides but couldn't tell that the topiary must have been hiding a whole bunch of sides somewhere if he could only see two or three from his viewpoint?)
. . . until I got to the part about him stopping counting at six, at which point no explanation worked at all.
And, in the way I seem prone to do, I've been obsessing about it for 12 hours now.
No, don't worry, this is truly a trivial scene in the book. I've spoiled nothing for you, and neither does the answer to this mystery bear any significance on a single piece of the story after that. I think it was merely a trope used by the author and/or her narrator to demonstrate that the woman was equally as mathematically gifted as the doctor. It's just be being sort of neurotic.
But still, what possible explanation appropriately rationalized both how the difference between the two Platonic solids wouldn't have been immediately obvious just by looking?
And where the real answer apparently had fewer sides than the initial answer, but with at least six? (Disqualifying the lowly four-sided tetrahedron....)
Icosahedron? — Easy to visually confuse with a dodecahedron, but has more sides (20) rather than fewer, so wouldn't logically make sense in the dialogue, and wouldn't have been obvious after counting only six sides.
Cube? — First, who doesn't know what a cube is? And it seems that the doctor stopped at six even though there were more sides to count.
Octahedron? — Fits with the side-number criteria. However, I question how much an octahedron looks like a dodecahedron, but it's the best I can come up with. And I guess I could buy that an other would get the names tetrahedron and octahedron mixed up.
Would the author think I'm utterly crazy if I wrote her to ask? Or just that I'm a jerk for pointing out a trivial mistake she made?
Still, it's bugging me.