I’m beginning to dive into Mirkwood, Word Fans. We all know that something special is going on in Chapter 8, but what? Yes, it’s true, I awakened at 4am because I am excited to get going! Ready for some spicy numbers?

Chapter 8 has

• 10,301 words
• 1,789 distinct words
• 954 of which are used only once. My goodness. 53%. Now, that’s actually not statistically different from the 42% unique-to-total ratio of the whole work, it’s only one comparison, and we don’t know how widely the other chapters vary. But it is absolutely mathematically accurate to say “My goodness.”

Introducing a new tag this morning: “eight”, meaning “let’s talk about Chapter XIII, shall we? I’ll put the kettle on.”