Is it definitely the case that you now have N of them, and not N-2?

I just assume that a certain number of socks disappear into the black hole which mixes them with teaspoons and biros in order to generate tupperware lids and wire coathangers.

Yes, definitely – these are sports socks of which I only had two pairs to begin with, so I'd know the difference if I now only had N-2!

(I think sports socks are more easily lost in general, because you tend to use them in ways that violate the Fundamental Principle of Sock Safety, that being that any sock leaving your house does so on one of your feet and stays on that foot until it comes back into your house, thus guaranteeing that any lost sock can only ever get lost inside the house and does not require you to search the rest of the world to find it again. Engaging in sports is therefore fundamentally dangerous, in that it involves going somewhere else and changing your socks :-)

I was going to make a joke about you being a hoopy frood who really knows how many socks he has (I have little idea how many ordinary everyday socks I have), but if it's only two pairs of special socks, that's a bit different.

Oh yes, for normal socks I certainly couldn't tell. My usual scheme is to buy in bulk, gradually throw socks away one by one as they become too worn out and holey to wear, and when it's starting to look as if I've only just got enough left to get between laundry days, buy more. (And to buy them all identical, avoiding the need to tediously pair things up.)

I was going to suggest exactly this, but it seems like you're ahead of me.

I'll also add, at some point I invented a category for "hard to figure out but not very illuminating when you" for things like "maybe it was caught inside the washing machine, or in a pillow case, or left behind in the laundry basket, and if you'd searched thoroughly you would have found it, but it's too much work to do so," and have been more relaxed that I don't have to understand *every* puzzle.

There's a small n-dimensional portal in one of your t-shirts that periodically eats a sock. And periodically, it gets annoyed by socks, and burps one back into its originating universe.

Not sock-related, I hope, but I notice Pizza Hut have started doing GF pizzas, in case you desire pizza-related variety.

I have a similar approach to e-mail, not in regard to losing them, but in the perfect being the enemy of the good: if I waited until I felt able to put together a decent reply then I'd rarely write anything. Ironically, the messages whose responses are the most important to me have to wait longer for me to write those responses, because at any specific time I am less likely to feel up to making them sufficiently good.

I didn't lose socks, even in communal college laundry, until I allowed others to become involved in doing my laundry. Where the lost socks went, I've no idea, especially given the large quantity that vanished. Now I've taken over my own laundry again; I've been drying some socks tonight. Unfortunately things are no longer in a sufficiently regular state that I can easily judge if normality has thus returned.

While I don't want to patronize you: you did check that the missing sock wasn't stuck to the top of the washing machine drum when damp after rinsing?

We have the added complication that our cat Pippin likes to ferret (or, er, cat) around in our clothing and pull things out and move them around. He'll find adult-sized pyjama trousers in the bedroom and drag them downstairs. I don't think he has a special hidden sock pile though.

Between me knowing I had the sock and knowing I'd lost the sock I didn't actually do any laundry (because no weekend intervened), so yes, I'm pretty sure that isn't how it got lost.

I vry much sympathise with the first sentence :( I have a long list of interesting post topics I never have the mental energy to write up.

Our socks (and toddler T-shirts, and sometimes even adult T-shirts) get lost in the corners of pillowcases and duvet covers. If that happened, it's plausible it came back out again next time it went through the wash.

Yes! Pillowcases and duvet covers.

Personally — and I should prefix this by saying I'm not obsessive-compulsive, honest — I seem to have devised a system where I wash seven "units" of laundry at a go. One unit is t-shirt+pants+socks or a sweatshirt. Jeans, duvet cover, or fitted sheet+two pillowcases are each two units.

This means I know if something's gone missing between loading and unloading the washing machine, and invariably I find it in a duvet case. Or not: having got frustrated at how things trapped in a duvet case didn't get rinsed or spun properly, I now wash duvet cases done up and the problem has gone away.

*takes notes*

Stuck to the inside of the drum tucked down in the invisible corner where one of the three turny-handly-bits meet the inside rim by the door. Always.

That effect saved me money once! I always spin the drum round as part of checking for hidden socks, and in this case did so in the presence of the washing-machine repairman who had just proposed to replace an expensive bit. The unusual noise it made caused him to change his opinion to "it's totally broken, buy a new washing machine".

The solution is to install RFID tags on your socks. *nods*

In our case it was usually sitting in the bottom of the laundry basket still, and hence went in the next load. Or got sorted into the delicates pile rather than the will-tumbledry pile.

Clearly the sock hid in a recess of the washing machine....
Or you now have n-2 socks and haven't realised that a pair have eloped away together...