Talk:Book:Men at Arms/Annotations

Detritus as advanced mathematician

The elegant theory has been advanced that Detritus' mega-equation etched in ice on the wall of the Pork Futures Warehouse is in fact a very well-concealed shout-out to Douglas Adams' h2g2. When he gets locked in the Pork Futures Warehouse, Detritus creates a huge, elaborate "theory of everything" equation all over the walls, in an attempt to pass the time until he is rescued. He gets everything down to one last "=" before being rescued. It is suspected that the answer on the other side of that equals will be 42. The Discworld Universe has the Question, and the h2g2 universe has the Answer. Unfortunately, because this universe has seen the answer, we'll never find out the details of Detritus' question, as the Question and the Answer may not co-exist in the same universe: the pre-existing Universe will wink out of existence and something even weirder will take its place. Not saying this is true and as it isn't my idea I can't take the credit and bung it on the Annotations page. But this sort of skewed thinking is worth a mention! AgProv (talk) 23:09, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Nobby "cheating" at cards

Odd logical bomb on page 241 of the Corgi paperback edition.

Fred Colon is as good as saying Nobby Nobbs cheats at cards. "Yeah, but there were five kings in your hand yesterday, Nobby".

This only makes sense if you begin from the assumption that the Discworld deck of cards has only four suits in it - Nobby is therefore getting extra Kings from somewhere that were not in the deck to begin with. But Caroc Cards exist. And these have eight suits. Nobby's five kings therefore become not only permissible - but in the context of the Discworld pack not nearly enough to win a hand. He could still be trumped by six, seven or a full house of eight kings. Or indeed by at least five aces. He'd need nine kings to be definitively cheating. Perplexing. AgProv (talk) 21:55, 13 April 2017 (UTC)