Mystery: what is this?

[Elvis]

I HAVE TO KNOW.

[tazmic]

Heh

Google: Best guess for this image: mystery tool

[backtoiam]

That is an odd duck. For some reason, and i'm not sure why, I wonder if it might be a leather working tool.

[psynapz]

Guessing, but maybe a landscaping tool for making circular garden beds? Like a drafting compass, but for cutting sod?

[Iamwhomiam]

Well, it's definitely not a pair of sunglasses.

[Elvis]

Someone had an explanation that seems quite plausible—that it's part of a larger kit, e.g. for assembling something.

That fits with there being no manufacturer marks. (It's clearly 'manufactured' and there must be others.)

[Elvis]

There is such a dearth of clues about this object—perhaps it is not of this Earth.

[MacCruiskeen]

This strange instrument I think I still have somewhere, for I could never bring myself to sell it, even in my worst need, for I could never understand what possible purpose it could serve, nor even contrive the faintest hypothesis on the subject. And from time to time I took it from my pocket and gazed upon it, with an astonished and affectionate gaze, if I had not been incapable of affection. But for a certain time I think it inspired me with a kind of veneration, for there was no doubt in my mind that it was not an object of virtu, but that it had a most specific function always to be hidden from me. I could therefore puzzle over it endlessly without the least risk. For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.

[Elvis]

[Iamwhomiam]

Familiar words mac, good of you to recall them.

Each end is too long to be folded into the handle, so it might be used as shown, perhaps to cut a circular pattern in plexiglas-like plastics. It may be meant to be used with both ends fully extended, to clear old mortar from between bricks for repointing, but I've never seen anything quite like it.

So it must be a Planned Parenthood late-term abortion and organ harvesting tool.

[Nordic]

I think it would serve as a fine back-scratcher.

[MacCruiskeen]

Elvis, the object in your photo is what we used to call "a thingwy" (pr. "thungwae").

If that's not precise enough for you, here's a website that may help:

http://whatisthisthingcalled.com/

Various perplexing thingwies are depicted and discussed there, for example this one:


A thingwy

...and this one:


A thingwy

[MacCruiskeen]

Clearly that wooden thingwy is a primitive device for measuring the size of a coin.

[MacCruiskeen]

Familiar words mac, good of you to recall them.

Glad to hear you know and like the book too, IAWIA. Molloy contains some of the funniest passages I know of by any writer (e.g. the descriptions of Molloy's love life, or the famous predicament with the sixteen stones), and even when Beckett is not funny he is always uncannily precise. In fact the humour's a frequent side effect of the desperately conscientious precision.

Anyway... may as well conclude the passage I quoted above (not sure why I truncated it):

... It is then the true division begins, of twenty-two by seven for example, and the pages fill with the true ciphers at last. But I would rather not affirm anything on this subject.