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Naughtynumbernine

The Pool Cat

High mouse

Elroy the Mouse

This song is from Multiplication Rock and teaches about multiplying by nine. It features a big orange cat who is playing pool with a white mouse as the ball.

Plot[]

It teaches about the multiplication of 9 during a cat-and-mouse version of billiards featuring a large anthropomorphic feline pool hustler (possibly inspired by Minnesota Fats). Despite the blatant tobacco-smoking reference in which "Number Nine" puffs a cigar, the song never received any censorship or known complaints. It will most likely never air on TV again, since the depiction of smoking in children's television was banned since the late 1990s. It has not aired since the early 2000s.

Lyrics[]

Number nine will put you on the spot.
Number nine will tie you up, oh, in a knot.
When you're tryin',
Multiplyin' by nine,
You might give it everything you've got
And still be stopped.
If you don't know some secret way you can check on,
You'll break your neck on
Naughty number nine.

Now the first thing to keep in mind,
When you're multiplyin' by nine
Is that it's one less than ten.
You see, nine is the same as ten minus one.
So you could multiply your number by ten,
And then subtract the number from the result,
And you'd get the same product
As if you'd multiplied by nine.
And you knew it.

I mean, eight times nine is 80 minus eight,
And seven times nine is 70 minus seven,
And six times nine is 60 minus six.
You could use those tricks.
'Cause you must have some secret way you can beat it,
Or else you'll meet it
With naughty number nine.

Of course, it doesn't hurt
To know the table of nines by memory.
It goes like this:

One times nine is nine,
And two times nine is 18.
(Mean ol' number nine)
Three times nine is 27,
And four times nine is 36.
Five times nine is 45,
And six times nine is 54,
And seven times nine is 63.
Eight times nine is 72,
And nine times nine is 81,
And ten times nine is 90.

Now, the digit sum is always equal to nine.
I mean, if you add two and seven, the digits,
You'd get nine, the digit sum.
That's true of any product of nine.
If they don't add up, you've made a mistake.

'Cause you must have some secret way you can check it,
Or else you'll wreck it
With naughty, nasty, mean old number nine.

(Elroy laughs)

Trivia[]

  • In this song, the numbers 99 and 108 are not used nor mentioned but the numbers 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, and 90 are.
  • The digit sum of a product of 9 being equal to 9, as explained in the song, is unique solely when using the decimal (or base-10) system. In any given base-n number system, the value n - 1 always has this attribute.
    • In base-12 for example, multiplying any number by E (the duodecimal value for 11) will yield the same property of having its digits add up to 11: E × 6 = 56; 5 + 6 = 11. E × 9 = 83; 8 + 3 = 11. E × E = X1; X = 10; 10 + 1 = 11, et cetera.
  • In the Schoolhouse Rock PC games, the mouse is named Elroy.
  • This is one of the first songs that Tom Yohe and Bill Peckmann collaborated on.
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