"You've hit the nail on the head, my boy," the devil replied. "The thing that makes numbers so devilish is precisely that they are simple. And you don't need a calculator to prove it. You need one thing and one thing only: one. With one -- I am speaking of the numeral, of course -- you can do almost anything." —The Number Devil, Hans Magnus Enzenberger What is the number devil explaining in such a clever way? calculators boys numbers nails