Amuse-bouche:

The day is (h)ours.

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Today’s Wonderful Word: “assiduous.”

Definition: showing hard work, care, and attention to detail, constant in application or effort, working diligently at a task.

Example: An assiduous reader and cook can learn countless lessons by reading through the family cookbook.

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“You know when ______ said ______? I should have responded ______ ___ ______ __ ________ _ _________. If only I’d thought of it sooner!”

When you think of the perfect reply too late, you’re experiencing a phenomenon known as l’esprit de l’escalier.

What would writers have to write about if they said all the funny things in the moment? It’s important to delay the creation of a response. More people should think before speaking as is.

However, I have to admit, it’s a sort of post-FOMO that l’esprit de l’escalier brings on. It’s frustrating. The funniest joke, one that would have busted guts, more often than not comes to me too little too late. Maybe it’s for the better. Don’t want to be responsible for any gut busting.

Apparently Denis Diderot was at a dinner party in a mansion and thought of a killer comeback. The only issue was that he was already at the bottom of the staircase on his way out.

“I no doubt prevented abdominal cramping from the fit of laughter I would surely have evoked had my joke come to mind on the spot,” he thought to himself. (Translation my own.) But he couldn’t shake the grief of a brilliant retort born and buried outside of its time.

As he closed the door behind him, wallowing in sorrow, Diderot coined the term l’esprit d’escalier. I choose to believe that he got to laugh at his own joke, which was probably funnier than anything anyone else said throughout the duration of the party.

Thank you, Diderot, for enduring your suffering and for coming up with the term for us.

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Answer to Saturday’s riddle:

13112221

Explanation: This is a set of integers known as the “look-and-say sequence.” To get the next number in the sequence, you read off the digits of the previous item.

For instance, “1” is “one one” so the next item is “11.” From that comes “two ones,” so you write down “21” and so on. So, to get the next term in the sequence above, it would be “one three, one one, two twos, two ones.”