in reply to Re: (Golf) Gödel, Escher, and Bach, Oh My!
in thread (Golf) Gödel, Escher, and Bach, Oh My!

Had you noticed the former is a self-referential double acrostic?

:-)

The whole book is a self-reference full of self-references and recursions.
I read it twice cover to cover. Once you reach the end, you might as well think you are back at the beginning.

It's like a 'Möbiusband', an 'Eternal Golden Braid'.
That's another self reference, EGB <-> GEB

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(VSarkiss) Re^3: (Golf) Gödel, Escher, and Bach, Oh My!
by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Jul 04, 2001 at 02:47 UTC
    Heh. Only twice? ;-) You've almost certainly missed some of the games.

    I took a seminar with Hofstadter in the early 80's about the book. I thought I'd read it thoroughly, and I was stunned at how much I'd missed.

    I don't have my copy with me, but a couple I remember:

    • A reference in the bibliography to "Copper, Silver, Gold: An Indestructible Metallic Alloy" by Gebstadter, Egbert B. The book is described as "a turgid, confused mess" (something like that), which is an actual quote from one of the first reviews of GEB (pre-Pulitzer, of course).
    • A lot of people miss the second level of "Contracrostipunctus". If you line up the acrostic, it reads: 
      Hofstadter's
Contracrostipunctus
Acrostically
Backwards
Spells
'J. S. Bach'
      And it does, down to the punctuation!
    For more fun, read Le Ton Beau de Marot for some of what they went through to translate GEB into other languages.
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