In an instant, a single word can express several meanings in the human mind. Communication itself relies heavily upon words and their meanings. So what happens when a wordsmith cannot figure out what a word is?
A Lost Masterpiece
Milne wanted to write the essay “The Improbability of the Infinite” but cannot anymore. His mind has been enveloped since one of his “friends” presented him with a scrambled word: “Teralbay.” Now, he can’t focus on anything else but this word.His “friend” tells Milne that Lord Melbourne presented “Teralbay” to Queen Victoria herself. The queen subsequently spent a sleepless night attempting to unravel the mystery, but, whether she discovered the answer or not, Milne doesn’t know. All he knows is that Queen Victoria still remained a friend to Lord Melbourne (another mystery to Milne).
Milne tries and tries to solve this word puzzle, but cannot. Neither “laboratory” nor “alterably” work. He shakes his head and stares at the word, hoping the answer will come. He turns the paper upside down, but no answer appears. He even suggests “stalk[ing] it carefully from the southwest and plung[ing] upon it suddenly when it is not ready for you.” Nothing solves the jumbled word.
The Right Word
Milne then grows very technical, calculating how many possible letter combinations can be created with “Teralbay”: “There are eight letters in Teralbay and two of them are the same, so that there must be 181,440 ways of writing the letters out. ... [N]ow suppose that you put down a new order of letters ... every six seconds ... and suppose that you can spare an hour a day for it; then by the 303rd day ... you are bound to have reached a solution.” With this perspective, Milne declares that he must be able to solve it.Milne’s frustration begins to boil over with the impossibility of “Teralbay!” He declares that, when he dies, this unsolved anagram will be written on his heart. He will invent a new breakfast food and call it “Teralbay,” or he may use it as a pen name and write: “Fly at once; all is discovered—Teralbay.”
Finally, Milne can no longer stand the strain, so he decides to return to the essay he had been planning on writing: “The Improbability of the Infinite.” He sits and turns his mind to this original topic.
Suddenly, “Teralbay!” He believes that he’s found the answer!
Through this wonderful story, Milne demonstrates the comical nature of unsolved puzzles. Yet, in “Walden or, Life in the Woods,” Henry David Thoreau says,
“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour.”
Perhaps Milne’s struggle with “Teralbay” is similar to “an infinite expectation of the dawn,” since he consciously endeavors to and believes he will solve this anagram. In fact, his very attempt to solve this impossible anagram seems to be a wonderful contemplation of the actual probability of the infinite. Thus, perhaps this distraction is exactly what he needs—a means of “reawaken[ing] and keep[ing] [himself] awake.”
So, by all means, try to solve “Teralbay.”
