The phrase ‘putting two and two together’ means to figure something out from the information you have on hand. For example, as he plunged off yet another towering cliff, Wile E. Coyote put two and two together and came to the conclusion that teaming up with Elmer Fudd to catch the Roadrunner had not been a good idea.

Now my question – beyond why anyone would ever think teaming up with Elmer Fudd was a good idea – is why is it ‘two and two’? Why not put one and one together? Or three and three? Heck, why not five and five?

Maybe putting one and one together, ostensibly to make two, would have too much of a naughty connotation. Maybe three and three would be too scary because look what happens if you put three and three together three times in a row. Maybe the arithmetics of five and five would be too troublesome.

Some might say that two and two won out due to the pleasing homonymic properties it has with the word ‘together’. Well, I don’t believe that for a second. I put two and two together and realized there’s a lot more to it than that. Two is the smallest prime number. It is the first prime number. It is the only even prime number. That can only mean one thing: Two and two was chosen by the Illuminati to further their nefarious machinations.