Encyclopedia on a toothpick
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The entire Encyclopædia Britannica is in the digits of pi; I'm just not telling you at what digit it starts. Haruki Murakami's puzzle is a thought...
'How do you store an encyclopedia on a toothpick?' This theoretical puzzle is used by Haruki Murakami in his wonderful novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World to illustrate a point about eternity. The theoretical answer to the puzzle is as elegant as it is simple. To store an infinite amount of data on a toothpick, assign a numerical value to each letter of the alphabet (00 for 'a', 01 for 'b' and so on) - you could even use their ASCII codes. Next string all the letters making up the encyclopedia together to form a very large number. You'll end up with something like this…
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