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Leaping To Conclusions
We don’t see what we don’t consider
As was fitting on 25th December in the West, our breakfast discussion was largely focused on the various traditions that have grown up around the late-Victorian approach to celebrating this date. My brother innocently asked, “How many gifts did the lady receive in total?”
For those of you unfamiliar with English nonsense, this question refers to a song composed in 1909 by the composer Frederic Austin about a man attempting to curry favor with a woman by sending her gifts across the Twelve Days of Christmas, the twelve days derived from Christian mythology regarding the elapsed time between the birth of the Jesus god and the eventual arrival of the magi bearing gifts.
On the first day the suitor presents a partridge in a pear tree, on the second day the suitor delivers two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree, and so on until twelve days have elapsed and the pile of gifts has grown.
To solve this puzzle we need only construct a simple matrix:
Summing the column #GiftsTotal we arrive at 364 gifts.
