The Hunting of the Snark letters asking for the meaning of the poem, Carroll often replied that he did not know. However, in an 1896 reply to one letter, he agreed with one interpretation of the poem as an allegory for the search for happiness. Widely varying interpretations of "The Hunting of the Snark" have been suggested: an allegory for tuberculosis, a mockery of the Tichborne case, a satire of the controversies between religion and science, the repression of Carroll's sexuality, and a piece against vivisection, among others. According to Cohen, the poem represents a "voyage of life", with the Baker's disappearance caused by his
Lewis Carroll early version of what today is known as Scrabble. He appears to have invented – or at least certainly popularized – the "doublet" (see word ladder), a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today, changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG. The games and puzzles of Lewis Carroll were the subject of Martin Gardner's March 1960 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Other items include a rule for finding the