A popular puzzle asks the solver to punctuate the following:

John where Willie had had had had had had had had had had had full marks.

The common answer is

John, where Willie had had “had,” had had “had had”; “had had” had had full marks.

But in 1955 a contributor to Eureka pointed out that a competing solver might have reversed the two phrases:

John, where Willie had had “had had,” had had “had”; “had had” had had full marks.

And in that case we might observe:

In the punctuation of the above, A, where B had had “… had had ‘had,’ had had ‘had had’; ‘had had’ had had …”, had had “… had had ‘had had,’ had had ‘had’; ‘had had’ had had …”; “had had had had had had had had had had had” had had two possible interpretations.

That observation itself can be punctuated in two different ways — a remark that might be communicated using an even longer string of hads. And so on forever — “there exist intelligible sentences containing (14 × 3ⁿ – 3) successive had‘s, where n is any non-negative integer.” “The solution of this recurrence relation is left as an exercise for the student.”

(“By Induction,” Eureka 18 [November 1955], 14. See Over and Out.)

Unusual words used in Antarctica, from Bernadette Hince’s The Antarctic Dictionary (2000):

antarcticitis: a yearning for Antarctica
beachmastership: the territorial dominance of a breeding seal
degomble: to disencumber of snow
diomedeicide: the killing of an albatross
dogloo: an igloo for a dog
fingee: “fucking new guy”
frozen chosen: those who work in Antarctica
ice widow: a woman whose husband is in Antarctica
pinnipedophage: one who eats seal meat
polar ennui: a darkness of the soul in the polar night
snotsicle: a thread of frozen mucus suspended from the nose
sphenisciphile: a lover of penguins
unweka’d: unaffected by weka birds
whale-sick: depressed by a lack of whales to hunt

Some entries are almost moving: greenout is “the overwhelming sensation induced by seeing and smelling trees and other plants after spending some time in antarctic regions.”

(Jeff Grant, who reviewed this book for Word Ways in 2005, points out that the first entry, AAAAAH, surpasses AAAATAMAD in W.R. Cooper’s 1876 An Archaic Dictionary as alphabetically the first published dictionary entry containing a consonant. It’s a sled dog command meaning “halt.”)

apolactize
v. “to spurne with the heele” (from Henry Cockeram’s English Dictionarie of 1623)

tripudiary
adj. pertaining to dancing

Any stranger behind the scenes at Her Majesty’s Theatre on the opening night of Adeline Genée and the Imperial Russian Ballet would have been amazed (stated The Melbourne Age on Monday) at a little incident that was enacted just before Mlle. Genée made her entrance from the wings. Mr. Hugh Ward approached the great dancer, and, raising his foot, kicked her on the leg. The astonishment would have increased on it being noticed that Mlle. Genée, far from being incensed at this apparent liberty, was greatly pleased at it, and rippled with laughter. Mlle. Genée explained the incident in this way. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘while I am not exactly over-superstitious, there are still some little things I pay regard to, and one of them is that before I make my first appearance anywhere I must be given a ‘good luck kick’ prior to making my entrance. I mentioned this jokingly to Mr. Ward when I arrived in Sydney, and he said it would give him the greatest pleasure to present me with the lucky kick on the opening night of the season. So he has come all the way from Sydney to do so.’

— Adelaide Register, June 25, 1913

In the 17th century natural philosopher John Wilkins set out to create a universal language for scholars, to replace Latin, whose sometimes arbitrary features made it difficult to learn. His solution, laid out in the 1668 Essay Towards a Real Character, is a system of symbols that could classify every thing and idea in the world, somewhat like the Linnaean system in biology. There are 40 main genera, each of which supplies the first two letters of a word. Each genus is divided into “differences,” which supply the next letter. And a “species” gives the fourth letter. So, for example, Zi indicates the genus “beasts,” or mammals; Zit specifies the difference “rapacious beasts of the dog kind”; and Zita gives the species “dogs.” The symbols weren’t necessarily meant to be spoken, though Wilkins later assigned phonetic values to the various characters — rather they were meant to provide an unambiguous way of classifying the world so that scholars (and, perhaps, diplomats, travelers, and merchants) could communicate clearly.

Wilkins presented the system to the Royal Society, who were impressed but concluded that it was impractical — its descriptions of similar (and confusable) items might differ by a single letter, and it would be difficult to remember all the distinctions, which seemed to invite trouble. Borges later lampooned it with his (fictional) Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, which divides animals into 14 categories:

1. Those that belong to the emperor
2. Embalmed ones
3. Those that are trained
4. Suckling pigs
5. Mermaids (or Sirens)
6. Fabulous ones
7. Stray dogs
8. Those that are included in this classification
9. Those that tremble as if they were mad
10. Innumerable ones
11. Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
12. Et cetera
13. Those that have just broken the flower vase
14. Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

(Thanks, Alex.)

ceduous
adj. suitable for felling (as a tree)

Lumberjack argot, from L.G. Sorden and Jacque Vallier’s Lumberjack Lingo, 1986:

two streaks of rust: a logging railroad
cougar milk: Prohibition-era woods liquor
quinine jimmy: a camp doctor
bunch it: to quit work
kegging up: getting drunk
tree squeak: an imaginary bird to which the noise made by trees rubbing together was attributed
she’s a rainbow: What a day!
house of hesitation: a jail
traveling dandruff: lice
iron burner: the camp blacksmith
sawdust city: Eau Claire, Wisconsin

“It’s five a.m. and the gabriel blows. The bark eaters fall out of their muzzle loaders and head for the chuck house to bolt down a pile of stovelids with lots of blackstrap, some fried murphys or Johnny cake and maybe some logging berries. They dunk their rolling stock into their jerk water, growl at the hash slinger, pull up their galluses and head for the tall timber.”