Futility Closet
Futility Closet is a blog, podcast, and database started in 2005 by editorial manager and publishing journalist Greg Ross. As of February 2021 the database totaled over 11,000 items. They range over the fields of history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and recreational mathematics. The associated Futility Closet Podcast was a weekly podcast hosted by Greg and his wife Sharon Ross. It presented curious and little-known events and people from history, and posed logical puzzles. History In January 2005, Greg Ross started the Futility Closet website, an online wunderkammer of trivia, quotations, mathematical curiosities, chess problems, and other diversions. The site has spawned two printed collections, and continues to be updated daily. Gary Antonick of the New York Times''' Numberplay blog described the first book as "the literary equivalent of Trader Joe's Tempting Trail Mix". Futility Closet has sometimes been a conduit or used to popularize results by John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy, Lee Sallows, Solomon W. Golomb, and many other well-known mathematicians when they dabbled in recreational mathematics.Golomb Rulers Futility Closet: Science & Math, November 12, 2014 Puzzles from Futility Closet have frequently been featured in the New York Times puzzle section and the New York Times blog. Futility