A bit drier than Gardner’s other writings, this is more of a recount of Carroll’s books, letters and notes focusing on games and mathematical recreations than Gardner’s usual, insightful analyses, but it is one I had not read yet.

Gardner said of his Annotated Alice: “It occurred to me some 35 years ago that it was impossible for an American reader today, so far removed from Victorian England in both time and space, to appreciate fully the hundreds of hidden jokes in the Alice books without the aid of footnotes.”

And predating Douglas Adam’s and the 42 tropeAs we shall see, 42 had for Carroll some sort of special significance. […] Carroll was […] of Tuesdays, and of the number 42. When the Baker (Fit 1) comes aboard the ship, he leaves on the beach 42 carefully packed boxes with his name "painted clearly on each." According to the third Fit, stanza five, the Baker is in his early forties. It has been suggested that the Baker represents Carroll himself, who was 42 when he began writing the ballad. The 42 boxes are the 42 years he left behind when his imagination joined the ship's crew. A Rule 42 is cited in the book's Preface. In the first Alice book, during the farcical trial of the Knave of Hearts, the King invokes Rule 42. The number enters Carroll's writing in many other places, but no one knows just why.

Gardner always amazed me with his access to so much material that was not generally available (especially pre-Internet)… I thought one share interesting: “How does a doll know that a hand which came off was her right hand? Because the other hand was left. (I failed to note in which letter I came across this.)” A admission of a rare non-documentation on the part of Gardner. ( )