I’m going to hold off on more newsletters for the time being. I’m not sure that I’m delivering the quality of newsletter that I want to deliver and I need some extra time to think it through.

The solution to February’s (not great) puzzle is below.

Puzzle Dept.

What is the significance of this set of numbers:

-2100, -900, -522, -19, 1025

Since this is a bit harder puzzle than I have customarily shared, here’s some clues to help:

1.) The negative numbers are not numbers we usually think of as negative.

2.) All the numbers are heroic.

If you treat the negative numbers as BCE (before Common Era) and you consider “heroic” then:

2100 BCE - Approximate date of the Epic of Gilgamesh being recorded on clay tablets

900 BCE - Earliest date guessed for the composition of the Illiad

522 BCE - Earliest date guessed for the Odyssey and Illiad being written down. (From approximately 900 BCE - 522 BCE these works were thought to have been transmitted via oral tradition.)

19 BCE - Virgil’s Aenid

1025 CE - Composition of Beowulf

(Editors/Author’s Note: This is not my best work in terms of creating a puzzle. My apologies because this really isn’t/wasn’t up to the standards I try to maintain!)

Feedback Dept.

If you’d care to share:

or anything else, please contact me, Onorio Catenacci, editor of the Impractical Engineer at my email.

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