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. This may
not be obvious to you at once; you may have thought that it was only
181,439; but you may take my word for it that I am right. (Wait a
moment while I work it out again.... Yes, that's it.) Well, now
suppose that you put down a new order of letters--such as
"raytable"--every six seconds, which is very easy going, and suppose
that you can spare an hour a day for it; then by the 303rd day--a year
hence, if you rest on Sundays--you are bound to have reached a
solution.
But perhaps this is not playing the game. This, I am sure, is not what
Queen Victoria did. And now I think of it, history does not tell us
what she did do, beyond that she passed a sleepless night. (And that
she still liked Melbourne afterwards--which is surprising.) Did she
ever guess it? Or did Lord Melbourne have to tell her in the morning,
and did she say, "Why, of _course_!" I expect so.
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