There are many fairies in our folklore; tooth fairies, good luck fairies, fairy godmothers. They are regarded as being the epitome of kindness - but how many of us have encountered the Cable Entanglement Fairy?

Born of the confusion of 20th century technofear, she skips merrily from house to house making sure that electrical cables become twisted into impossible knots.

She is easy to tempt: Set up your television, DVD player, video player, hi-fi and games console in one room, carefully laying out the power, scart, audio and joypad leads into a neat arrangement. No matter how hard one tries to keep this system, she will sneak in and braid the cables together into elaborate and awkward patterns. This will include impossible pieces of art such as threading cables attached at both ends through the audio leads of a pair of headphones, like some kind of evil magic-rings trick.

When she is at her most mischievious, the Gordian knots she creates requires you to unplug every appliance in the room, just so you can disentangle a computer mouse lead which has been tugging annoyingly.

It is believed that the Cable Entanglement Fairy is also responsible for hiding remote controls or making their batteries fall out.

The Cable Loosening Fairy

In accordance with the law of opposites, there is also some fairy¹ which goes around making sure things which you want entangled are either untied as soon as possible or impossible to tie in the first place - specifically shoelaces, roofrack straps, or the ribbons on Christmas presents.

Further Reading

• Multiple Remote Controls - Foil her mischievousness!
• Discordanism - This darling creature is almost certainly a minion of Eris, the goddess of confusion.