When I was growing up, my family had an enormous unabridged dictionary featuring what must surely have been an intentionally designed Easter egg. I'm not sure which of us discovered it or how, but if you look up four-a-cat in this particular dictionary, you get this:
four-a-cat n. See four old cat
If you do as instructed, you find this:
four old cat n. three old cat played with four batters
Okay, but what's three old cat? Glad you asked.
three old cat n. See three-a-cat
By this point, one is scarcely surprised to discover that three-a-cat is defined thusly:
three-a-cat n. two-a-cat played with three bases and three batters
Okay, great! Now if we can just find out what two-a-cat is . . .
two-a-cat n. See two old cat
Are we stupid enough to keep falling for this trick? We are.
two old cat n. one old cat played with two batters
We're down to one! Now we're finally going to get the definition, right?
one old cat n. See one-a-cat
And if you look up that, you finally discover -- eight definitions later! -- that all these games were precursors to modern baseball. But the definitions of these various games remind me of a different American sport.
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