'—And He Built a Crooked House—' is a science fiction short story paraphrased from an English nursery rhyme with a Roud Folk Song Index number of what?
&quot;—And He Built a Crooked House—&quot; '—And He Built a Crooked House—' is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein first published in "Astounding Science Fiction" in February 1941. It was reprinted in the anthology "Fantasia Mathematica" (Clifton Fadiman, ed.) in 1958 and in the Heinlein collection "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" in 1959. The story is about a mathematically inclined architect named Quintus Teal who has what he thinks is a brilliant idea to save on real estate costs by building a house shaped like the unfolded net of a tesseract. The title is paraphrased from the nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man".
Poor Mary "Poor Mary" or "Poor Jenny" is a popular English language nursery rhyme and singing game. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 1377.