PAGES : And You Thought You Knew It All

Encyclopedias, atlases and almanacs have plenty of useful information, but even they don’t know quite everything.

For example, what if you wanted to know which U.S. city has the most hospital beds per person? Or which breed of dog is responsible for the most fatalities from bites?

The answers to these questions are in “What the Odds Are,” just one of a number of recent volumes that are not only sources of somewhat unconventional knowledge, but are fun, too.

In his volume of “A-to-Z Odds on Everything You Hoped or Feared Could Happen,” author Les Krantz offers statistics in a wide variety of categories. They’re arranged alphabetically, from Abortion to Worries , with Bus Accidents , Dating , Left-Handedness and Pizza Pies among the headings.

Incurably well-organized readers will appreciate “Laws of Order” by Jeff Rovin. It’s a book of “hierarchies, rankings, infrastructures, measurements and sizes” that “puts everything in its place.”

If you need to know the point values--in order, of course--of Scrabble tiles but there is no copy of the game handy, this book will tell you that the tiles are valued from zero (for the blank) to 10 (for the Q and Z tiles).

Also at your fingertips are all 14 points, “in order of importance,” of President Wilson’s Fourteen-Point Program; an explanation of those printed numbers on personal checks, and the pecking order of bees.