Down For The Count

One day, while searching around on Google, I discovered that a self-referencing sentence is a sentence that describes itself. For example, "This sentence has five words," or "This sentence contains nine syllables." Very interesting.

However, as with most 'stuff' like this, there were folks who would not leave well-enough alone. As a result we find out that - "In this sentence the word 'and' occurs twice, the word 'eight' occurs twice, the word 'four' occurs twice, the word 'fourteen' occurs four times, the word 'in' occurs twice, the word 'occurs' occurs fourteen times, the word 'sentence' occurs twice, the word 'seven' occurs twice, the word 'the' occurs fourteen times, the word 'this' occurs twice, the word 'times' occurs seven times, the word 'twice' occurs eight times, and the word 'word' occurs fourteen times."

Going a little further round the bend we find that an autogram is a self-referencing sentence that describes its letter content. Here are some autograms:

"This sentence contains only three a's, three c's, two d's, twenty-five e's, nine f's, four g's, eight h's, twelve i's, three l's, fifteen n's, nine o's, eight r's, twenty-four s's, eighteen t's, five u's, four v's, six w's, two x's, and four y's."

"This sentence employs two a's, two c's, two d's, twenty-eight e's, five f's, three g's, eight h's, eleven i's, three l's, two m's, thirteen n's, nine o's, two p's, five r's, twenty-five s's, twenty-three t's, six v's, ten w's, two x's, five y's, and one z."

and

"This sentence employs two a's, two c's, two d's, twenty-six e's, four f's, two g's, seven h's, nine i's, three l's, two m's, thirteen n's, ten o's, two p's, six r's, twenty-eight s's, twenty-three t's, two u's, five v's, eleven w's, three x's, and five y's."

Of course, someone had to take even this a few more steps down the path - "This sentence contains one hundred and ninety-seven letters: four a's, one b, three c's, five d's, thirty-four e's, seven f's, one g, six h's, twelve i's, three l's, twenty-six n's, ten o's, ten r's, twenty-nine s's, nineteen t's, six u's, seven v's, four w's, four x's, five y's, and one z."

The final stop on this wild ride comes with this gem -

"Only the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sixteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens and, last but not least, a single !"