Puzzles
A monkey hits keys at random forever. Will it ever type the complete works of Shakespeare?
Imagine a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter completely at random for an infinite amount of time. Mathematicians have proven something that sounds absurd: given infinite time, it would almost surely type out any finite text you name — including every play Shakespeare ever wrote — not just once, but infinitely many times.
Reveal the answer
Yes, with probability 1, given truly infinite time — a result formalized by Émile Borel in 1913. The catch is the timescale: the odds of even reproducing a single sentence by chance are so vanishingly small that the universe's actual lifespan wouldn't come close. It's a proof about infinity, not a plan you could ever carry out.
— Émile Borel, Mécanique Statistique et Irréversibilité — Journal de Physique, 1913