Feature Articles Top 5 Sp00kiest Triposes, in Ascending Order

Raymond justifies the name of this issue with his supernatural analysis of all things sp00k

5: Land Economy

We’re not entirely sure that this Tripos actually exists. But if it did, it would be some combination of education in aristocratic land management and animal husbandry. Of course, this would be the perfect cocktail for preparing the UK’s next generation of landed gentry for a life at the top of the caste, moulding them into Gothic, Shelleyan figures destined to spend the hours gazing out upon their moors from the confines of a deteriorating and dilapidated castle.

4: Linguistics

What, exactly, do linguists do? There are only two of them in my year here at Trinity, and both of them have masterful ways of evading the question. During their many hours of toil, what do they study? Where do all of them go during the daylight hours? Who are they, really, under the surface? Logic suggests that they are tortured souls of the damned; some sp00ky denizens of Trinity’s private purgatory, organ scholars who met their demise by falling into the pipes and never being rescued. Whatever they do, wherever they are… they will always be watching.

3: Natural Sciences

Forgoing trifles of the mortal realm, NatScis concern themselves only with the abstract studies of particles, boxes on strings, disease and plants. But spookiest of all is the way they seem to be able to slip, unnoticed, into almost any social gathering. Straddling the line dividing seclusion on one side (see Mathmos, CompScis in the Appendix) and social integration on the other (Engineers, Econs), NatScis are well-placed shapeshifting spies able to replicate normal human behaviour and activity without having any understanding of either. We may wear sporting clothes and speak of nights at the bar… But have you ever seen a single one of us pick up a hockey stick or down a shot at Vinyl? The more you think about it, the less sure you will be.

2: English Literature

Our own Lord Byron laid the groundwork for these unique scholars of the humanities. Immersing themselves in the works of Byron, Shakespeare and the many white men who compose the established canon, Englings spend years studying tales of tragedy, murder, betrayal, haunting and horror.

For every physicist who’s read QED, there are a dozen Englings who have memorised the violent and brutal deaths of innumerable protagonists at the close of a fiveact Shakespearean tragedy. Maybe they just get off on death like the rest of us. Or, perchance, beneath the surface lies something even more macabre. Perhaps they are preparing for something… Sp00kier.

1: Mathematics

They never talk. They never eat. They never sleep. Perhaps, unbeknownst to us, they slip into a titanium coffin for an hour each night, the internal surfaces inscribed with increasingly complex depictions of multidimensional manifolds. Do they dream of Gauss? Sex? Do they dream at all? It may just be the case that we never know. (Bonus tip: don’t leave your room after midnight on the 31st, as this is the one day a year when all mathmos, in a display of meticulous coordination, roam the grounds unhindered, reaping the souls of any applied scientists they find).