Winning a Bet

Fact: Green Eggs and Ham is made up of only fifty separate words. Count 'em. Or don't, since we already did it for you (check out "Writing Style" for the master list).

Rumor: Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham to win a bet. His co-better said that he couldn't write a book with less than one hundred words, or depending on what you read, with exactly fifty words. We're not sure if Seuss collected on the bet, but we do know this: Bennett Cerf, founder of Random House, was the guy who proposed it. Thanks, Cerf. We owe you one. (Or fifty?)