July 13, 2024

Superegg!

Be honest, do you read all the card backs? Is your brain fit to burst from the sheer volume of knowledge now compacted into every cell?

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With over 5000 cards and a word count totalling more than Tolstoy’s War and Peace (no, seriously), it’s understandable if you’ve skipped a few - so we’re sharing some of our favorites directly to your eyeballs. Let’s start with Superegg, which feels slightly like one British writer showing off about their local confectionary. 

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Weird question - what would happen if you took a super ellipse, and rotate it around one of its axes?

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According to pioneer of the grook Piet Hein (and apparently confirmed mathematically), you’d be looking squarely (or elliptically) at a Superegg. Curiously, this solid of revolution is capable of standing upright on a surface, thanks to its curvature being zero on each tip.

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The self-standing novelty of the shape helped provide Piet a selling point, with supereggs made of brass and other materials being sold as so-called ‘executive toys’ throughout the 1960s. If you’ve eaten a Kinder Surprise chocolate egg, you may also have handled a superegg, with the yellow plastic capsule inside itself being Piet’s shape. Make sure not to swallow that bit, though.

‍

July 13, 2024

Superegg!

Be honest, do you read all the card backs? Is your brain fit to burst from the sheer volume of knowledge now compacted into every cell?

‍

With over 5000 cards and a word count totalling more than Tolstoy’s War and Peace (no, seriously), it’s understandable if you’ve skipped a few - so we’re sharing some of our favorites directly to your eyeballs. Let’s start with Superegg, which feels slightly like one British writer showing off about their local confectionary. 

‍

Weird question - what would happen if you took a super ellipse, and rotate it around one of its axes?

‍

According to pioneer of the grook Piet Hein (and apparently confirmed mathematically), you’d be looking squarely (or elliptically) at a Superegg. Curiously, this solid of revolution is capable of standing upright on a surface, thanks to its curvature being zero on each tip.

‍

The self-standing novelty of the shape helped provide Piet a selling point, with supereggs made of brass and other materials being sold as so-called ‘executive toys’ throughout the 1960s. If you’ve eaten a Kinder Surprise chocolate egg, you may also have handled a superegg, with the yellow plastic capsule inside itself being Piet’s shape. Make sure not to swallow that bit, though.

‍