Colchis in Greek Myth

Kriton Kyrimis kyrimis at cti.gr
Fri Sep 6 18:16:34 CEST 2002


> When was this published?  It sounds like it could have been based on an
> Uncle Scrooge gag in which Huey, Dewey, and Louie try to trick Scrooge into
> putting a penny on the first square and then doubling it for every other
> square

Perhaps Eta Beta can answer this.

Note that the Uncle Scrooge gag is based on the legend about the
reward that the inventor of chess is supposed to have asked from the
king/emperor/whatever for whom he invented the game: one grain of wheat
for the first square, two for the second, etc. The emperor agreed at
first, only to realize that all the wheat in the world would not be
enough to pay the inventor. The emperor did find a simple way out of
the deal, however: he had the inventor beheaded!  The Trojan war story
is probably based on that idea, and not the Barks gag.  In fact, at
one point in the story, the besieged beagles, who have run out of food,
discover a grain of rice, and put the chessboard in operation. There is
a scene where rice is shown pouring out of the Beagles' hut.

In the end of the story we get another lesson in combinatorics, where
the chessboard is broken into its constituent squares, and Scrooge makes
Donald and Gladstone reassemble it in the original order, trying all
possible combinations, as the board will not function if it is assembled
in any other way!

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
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