Here’s a little something for the nerds (of both the mathematical and literary variety)…

In 1948, wordplay master and recreational mathematician Leigh Mercer published this equation in Notes and Queries…

Read in the right way, it follows almost all the rules of a limerick — an AABBA rhyme scheme with the third and fourth lines shorter than the others. I say almost all the rules, because the foremost limerick scholar maintained that the true limerick is always obscene, which this one is not. Sorry.

So, can you read it?

If not, here’s the written translation…

A dozen, a gross, and a score

Plus three times the square root of four

Divided by seven

Plus five times eleven

Is nine squared and not a bit more.

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