Snark (Lewis Carroll) Snark (Lewis Carroll) The snark is a fictional animal species created by Lewis Carroll in his nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark". His descriptions of the creatures were, in his own words, unimaginable, and he wanted that to remain so. According to Carroll, the initial inspiration to write the poem – which he called an "agony in eight fits" – was the final line, "For the snark was a boojum, you see". Carroll was asked repeatedly to explain the snark. In all cases, his answer was he did not know and could not explain. Later commentators have offered many
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