The Story of Joe Sine
— Answer Key
A Puzzle by David Pleacher
One day Joe Sine went to call on his new neighbors who lived
in the adjacent house.
He was a handsome tangent, a confirmed
bachelor.
Joe was met at the door by two sisters who had anything but
congruent figures.
The first, Deca Gon, had real
construction problems.
Her discontinuous
curves were intersected at various angles
by parallel lines.
The second sister, Polly Gon, was dressed in a pretty
coordinate set and it was
obvious that her natural curves ran into
imaginary numbers. Just
looking from the first
to the second, Joe found his
interest
compounding rapidly. What poor Joe
did not know was that Polly knew all the angles and
was an expert at taking squares.
Joe was invited to come in and sit down.
Deca proved to be
as square as she looked and just sat there like a
log. Polly, at a given sign,
sent Deca out to
find some roots to make tea.
While she
was gone, Polly served Joe sum pi.
Then she used the corresponding angle
and Joe was soon reduced to zero
power.
Next, she introduced an "If... Then
proposition. "That is, if Joe would marry her, then ...
Well, Joe said, "yes," but then began to consider the possibility of
spending the rest of his life adjacent to her
side.
He began to get very nervous and his head was going in
circles. He knew she was a complex
number and he was really afraid of her. So, he tried
to make her think that he was odd by asking,
"Do unit?", pretending that he did. When that
didn't work, he stood up and announced that he was going to the bus
terminal to
median, his true beloved.