On March 14, or 3/14, fans of both dessert and decimals come together to celebrate Pi Day. This year, though, it’s not enough to call it at 3/14, because it’s 3/14/15, and at 9:26 and 53 seconds, the first ten digits of pi will all be aligned. Speaking of aligning the digits, there’s also a form of writing called pilish, where the sequential words in a passage each have an amount of letters that corresponds with the numbers in pi. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pi Day”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
The date, March 14th, is always a special one for math geeks.
It’s 314.
Oh, pi.
Exactly. It’s pi day.
And in a year that ends in 1-5, like 2015, it’s even more exciting for math geeks because it’s 31415, which is some more.
3.1415926.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, right. And think about at 926 and 53 seconds, then it’s 3141592653, which is thrilling, right?
For that fraction of a second.
Yes, and for that fraction of a second and for those math geeks.
But there’s fun for word enthusiasts, too, because there’s a whole branch of linguistic play known as Pylish.
Pylish?
Yes, people write pi-ems instead of poems, and they do it in a way where the words represent pi by the number of letters that they have.
Oh, boy. You’re going to have to illustrate for me.
Okay. All right. Well, like there’s, for example, one sentence, how I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.
So each word has the same number of letters as the appropriate digit for pi.
Yes, exactly. And there are people who have carried this to extremes, Grant.
There’s a 10,000 word novel called Not Awake. Not a wake. Three words.
That’s, you know, N-O-T-A-W-A-K-E.
Another person wrote, and you can find this online, a version of Poe’s Raven that’s actually very good.
And it starts out Poe, comma, E. And then the title is Near a Raven.
Those letters correspond to the numbers of pi, and it goes on and on and on for stanzas, and it’s really great.
Let’s hear a couple lines.
Okay.
Po E, near a raven.
Midnight so dreary, tired and weary, silently pondering volumes, extolling all by now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap, the weirdest tap, an ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s ante-door.
This, I whispered quietly, I ignore.
Ooh, so that’s really good.
It’s really good.
So it’s not Poe’s Raven.
No, no, this is written by a guy named Mike Keith.
Shout out to Mike.
Well done, Mike.
Yeah, corresponding to the numbers in pi.
This is wonderful.
I had no idea about Pylish, this language about words with the same number of characters as each appropriate digit of pi.
It’s crazy, right?
It’s kind of insane, actually, yes.
A little bit.
But somebody’s got to do it.
But you know you’re forgetting the whole important thing about Pi Day.
Pie.
You get pie.
I’ll take some Blackberry, please.
That’s right.
You do, right?
Pie Day.
Cut that little radius in there, right?
Give me a piece of pie.
We know the world is full of people that have hobbies that have to do with language that we’ve never heard of.
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