“The person with a Go stone in his mouth feels neither hunger nor thirst.”

Questions:

1. DOES such a proverb exist?

2. If yes, then what does “having something in one’s mouth” mean?
And is it comparable to the German idiom “to carry something {in one’s mouth | on one’s tongue}” = to talk much and enthusiastically about something?

3. Would you please provide the original Japanese?

TIA,
Tom

p.s.: This was allegedly quoted by Lothar Collatz at EGC 1988

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I cannot help much. I will point out that pebbles and stones with odd properties appear in the folk tales and myths of many cultures. They can be magical objects or metaphors, distracting mortals from their earthly suffering. Guessing this might have originally meant someone playing go at a high intellectual level is totally into it and will forget or neglect the needs of the flesh.

Just My opinion and I don’t have a background in oriental aphorisms but This statement doesn’t have a Japanese flavor to it.

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

Hi Tom,

I'm guessing google didn't help.

Where did you run across this alleged text ?

Closest I can recall is by dezomb:




See the KGS soundtrack for more famous quotes!

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be immersed

Guys,

not about Go at all, but post-war survivors have mentioned to me the odd time or thousand that having a stone in the mouth helped them satiate hunger and thirst. The feeling, obviously, not the nourishment.

Take care.

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一碁一会

TBH, I didn't even google it b/c this here is already a translation to English, from German … see below.


In the German DGoB forum, where Ingo Althöfer (German maths professor) asked about it, and he seems to have found the following somewhere (I don't know where):



Transl.:


Ingo is writing a booklet about Lothar Collatz (German mathematician, 1910–1990, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_Collatz) who also was active in the German Go community.

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Just did a quick Google search about "go" and "hunger", and the following paragraph about a Chinese legend called 述異記 came up:



Reference: https://www.weblio.jp/content/%E7%A2%81?edc=MNGTR

Summary of the paragraph:
A woodcutter goes to the mountains and finds children playing go. They give him a seed, which he put in his mouth and made him not feel any hunger. After some time, the children ask him: Don't you need to leave? The woodcutter realized he did, so he went to pick up his axe and the handle had rotten. When he went back to the village, nobody that he knew was there anymore.

This is the only thing I found...

Thanks, that’s quite nice

I knew the “rotted axe” story, but not with the “seed” part … so there may really be a connection.

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

A similar discussion was also held on a facebook go/weiqi/baduk site:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/2204656513?view=permalink&id=10157575631036514&anchor_reactions=true

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

Yeah, that was me also

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?