in two papers, littlewood studied seemingly unrelated constants: (i) the best $\alpha$ such that for any polynomial $f$, of degree $n$, the areal integral of its spherical derivative is at most $\const\cdot n^\alpha$, and (ii) the extremal growth rate $\beta$ of the length of green's equipotentials for simply connected domains. these two constants are shown to coincide, thus greatly improving known estimates on $\alpha$.