Sources page biographical material

6.BN. ROUND PEG IN SQUARE HOLE OR VICE VERSA
Wang Tao K'un. How to get on. Late 16C. Excerpted and translated in: Herbert A. Giles; Gems of Chinese Literature; 2nd ed. (in two vols., Kelly & Walsh, 1923), in one vol., Dover, 1965, p. 226. "... like square handles which you would thrust into the round sockets ..."

Sydney Smith. Sketches of Moral Philosophy. Lecture IX. 1824. "If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes, -- some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong, -- and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other." Quoted in: John Bartlett; Familiar Quotations; 9th ed., Macmillan, London, 1902, p. 461 (without specifying the Lecture or date). Irving Wallace; The Square Pegs; (Hutchinson, 1958); New English Library, 1968; p. 11, gives the above quote and says it was given in a lecture by Smith at the Royal Institution in 1824. Bartlett gives a footnote reference: The right man to fill the right place -- Layard: Speech, Jan. 15, 1855. It is not clear to me whether Layard quoted Smith or simply expressed the same idea in prosaic terms . Partially quoted, from 'we shall ...' in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations; 2nd ed. revised, 1970, p. 505, item 24. Similarly quoted in some other dictionaries of quotations.

I have located other quotations from 1837, 1867 and 1901.

William A. Bagley. Paradox Pie. Vawser & Wiles, London, nd [BMC gives 1944]. No. 17: Misfits, p. 18. "Which is the worst misfit, a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole?" Shows the round peg fits better. He notes that square holes are hard to make.

David Singmaster. On round pegs in square holes and square pegs in round holes. MM 37 (1964) 335 337. Reinvents the problem and considers it in n dimensions. The round peg fits better for n < 9. John L. Kelley pointed out that there must be a dimension between 8 and 9 where the two fit equally well. Herman P. Robinson kindly calculated this dimension for me in 1979, getting 8.13795....

David Singmaster. Letter: The problem of square pegs and round holes. ILEA Contact [London] (12 Sep 1980) 12. The two dimensional problem appears as a SMILE card which was attacked as 'daft' in an earlier letter. Here I defend the problem and indicate some extensions -- e.g. a circle fits better in a regular n gon than vice versa for all n.