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I have a copy of the issue, so when I went to see one of his Christmas Tree Lectures a few years ago I took it with me to get signed after the talk. Instead of

I have a copy of the issue, so when I went to see one of his Christmas Tree Lectures a few years ago I took it with me to get signed after the talk. Instead of just signing it, he opened to his article and corrected a typo in the Potrzebie article--I think it amounted to two numbers being transposed somewhere around the millionths place (My copy is packed away from a recent move so it's not too convenient to verify). What was funny was he had a poem he used to remember the order of the numbers after the decimal. He couldn't quite remember it, so he ssh'd into his home machine (or University, dunno), fired up Emacs, and opened a file containing the poem. Then he corrected the typo. And that's how Donald Knuth "signed" my copy.

svat 8y ago
+1 I was behind you in this line and can confirm this story :-) He was surprised someone brought this and IIRC asked you how you got hold of this MAD magazine issue. I remember him not wanting to sign without fixing the typo, and also ssh-ing to find the correct numbers after he wasn't sure he remembered them.
- redshirtrob 8y ago
  Wow, that's wild. It makes me happy someone else remembers it. I kinda figured it was just me as I think I attended the lecture alone that year--pretty sure it was 2015. FTR, the answer to how I got it: I made an off-hand comment to my wife about the magazine and she tracked it down for the next gift-giving occasion.