Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) embedded base-numbering, non-Euclidean geometry, and abstract algebra jokes throughout Alice in Wonderland for Oxford mathematics colleagues.
Key Takeaways
The multiplication table scene is a base-numbering joke: 4x5=12 in base 18, 4x6=13 in base 21, each step advancing the base by three, never reaching 20.
The Mad Hatter’s stopped clock is Dodgson’s attack on Riemannian non-Euclidean geometry, which he publicly opposed in his 1879 book Euclid and his Modern Rivals.
The Cheshire Cat’s disembodied smile parodies the rise of pure abstraction in mathematics: properties (functions, groups) detached from physical carriers.
The Mock Turtle’s “lessening lessons” encode a decreasing arithmetic sequence; the four arithmetic branches pun (Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, Derision) targets Victorian curriculum.
Dodgson disliked all later surrealist, Freudian, and countercultural readings; he intended Alice as a solvable logic puzzle with a dream frame as structural device.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters pushed back on the base-numbering interpretation, noting the text itself gives no signal to the reader to switch bases between multiplications, making the reading an external imposition.
The graded-reader framing (Storica adapting Alice at A2+) drew criticism: rewriting canonical prose for reading-level adjustment is seen as dilution, not pedagogy, though one reply noted graded readers are a long-established language-learning format.
Notable Comments
@Chinjut: argues the quoted text gives no in-text cue for per-multiplication base-switching, challenging the article’s core claim.
