Word of the Day

For all their vaunted powers of ratiocination, grand masters of chess tend to be a skittery lot.

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes proved so popular that it became a given that mystery tales should include a sleuth who investigates a murder or other crime, and by virtue of intelligence, ratiocination and perseverance solves a case that initially seemed unsolvable.

There is no question that Joyce and Nabokov. . . brilliantly explored and expanded the limits of language and the structure of novels, yet both were led irresistibly and obsessively to cap their careers with those cold and lifeless masterpieces, "Finnegans Wake" and "Ada," more to be deciphered than read by a handful of scholars whose pleasure is strictly ratiocination.