One of his favorite games (aged 8 to 9 years) was to assign a numerical value to each of the 300 shades and then to list them for "highest honors." "Royalest red" nearly always won in these contests.
Origination of new concepts and new words. From earliest childhood D has felt a need for concepts and for words to express them that are not to be found in dictionaries. His occupation in this field he calls "wordical work." Some examples are recorded by his mother in the following note dated December, 1916.
Was having his dinner and being nearly finished said he didn't care to eat any more, as he had a pain in his actum pelopthis. He explained that his actum pelopthis, actum quotatus, serbalopsis, and boobalicta are parts of the body where you sometimes have queer feelings; they don't serve any purpose. He said he also had a place called the boobalunksis, or source of headaches; that the hair usually springs out from around the herkadone; that the perpalensis is the place where socks end, and the bogalegus is the place where legs and tummy come together. He also named one other part, the cobaliscus or smerbalooble, whose function is not explained. The definitions are exactly as he gave them in each instance.
On February 23, 1917, his mother wrote:
He has not referred to these places since. I do not know where he got the idea for such names, unless possibly from The Water Babies. He would probably refer them to some Bornish source.
The invention and classification of the Bornish language already referred to is another example of D's "wordical work." He has also invented hundreds of words which have not been included as Bornish. An example of his hand-writing, illustrative of words he has invented, classified, and recorded for pleasure, is here shown.
FIG 6. ONE OF D'S VERBAL INVENTIONS.
[The word defined is written as "Ob(b)iquicki(e)us" (the "e" is circled, perhaps suggesting a later revision to combine the "o" and "e") The definition which follows is: "Obiquickeous is a cube sensibilitant word. One of the most important words. It is an adj. and a noun.">[
Invention of games. D has invented many games. To illustrate this aspect of his mental capacity, there are his designs for three-handed and four-handed checkers. [4] D held that these would be better games than two-handed checkers because they are more complicated. A description of the games invented by D, together with his mathematical calculations concerning the chances and probabilities in each, would fill many pages.
Calculation and mathematical ingenuity. It is difficult to say that D is more gifted in one mental function or group of functions than in others, for his ability is so extraordinary in all performances that without means of measurement one cannot tell in which he deviates farthest from the average.