—And He Built a Crooked House—

"There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile. ''He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house."

- There Was A Crooked Man

—And He Built a Crooked House— is a short story by Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1941.

Quintus Teal is an architect always looking for the next big thing in design. While having a friendly conversation with his friend, Homer Bailey, Teal dreams about building a house that utilizes a fourth dimension. When he admits that this is currently impossible, he still thinks that the preliminary steps toward it could be a great new design type and he persuades Bailey to let him build a new house for him as an unfolded tesseract. When it is completed, he proudly takes Bailey and his wife to view the innovative new home. However, a small earthquake during the night has made the impossible a reality, and unfortunately, Teal and the Baileys become trapped in the middle of his architectural masterpiece.


 * Alien Geometries
 * Author Avatar - Heinlein makes a brief allusion to himself as the "Hermit of Hollywood" who lives across the street from Teal.
 * Bizarrchitecture - Literally taken to the next dimension.
 * Fainting - Mrs. Bailey repeatedly does the Emotional Faint variety throughout the story.
 * Going in Circles - Teal winds up chasing himself around the entire tesseract several times before retrieving his own dropped hat and realizing what's happened.
 * Henpecked Husband - Bailey shows signs of this as his wife can be quite shrewish. However, given the events of the story, her dislike of Teal may be well placed.
 * Hyperspace Is a Scary Place
 * I Need a Freaking Drink - When Teal hands Bailey a shot of liquor to help revive his wife, he downs it himself.
 * Literary Allusion Title - To the nursery rhyme There Was A Crooked Man.
 * Only in America - The introduction to the story is the perfect explanation of this trope (see trope page for the quote).