This morning Matt wrote:
The math of Hazel's barn transcription doesn't seem to work. In Hazel's Remarks, she says she began the alphabet eighty times but seventeen times got no response. That should leave us with 63 positive responses, but Hazel's transcription only contains 61 letters. We seem to be two letters short. Did VN (or Hazel, or Kinbote?) do the math wrong?
I saw the problem slightly differently. This was the first Pale Fire puzzle I posed to the list:
From: "Carolyn Kunin" Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 3:10 PM
Subject: 'pada ata' doesn't add up
I would like to ask the list members if anyone has dealt with this problem regarding the spirit message in 'Pale Fire':
Mrs Provost tells Kinbote that Hazel made 80 attempts to get an alphabetic response from the light. Of those she got 17 responses. This information allows us to realize that this was how Hazel broke the message up into 'words,' i.e. she interpreted a non-response as a word-break. However the message as transcribed doesn't add up. There should be 63 letters and 17 breaks, but there are only 61 letters and 16 breaks.
It seems that one word of two letters is missing.
So many years later & I don't have any further insight to offer.
Carolyn Kunin