So there I was in outer center field, trying to figure out what twenty-six times twenty-six times twenty-six is. (As one does.)
You may not have heard of “outer center field”; come to think of it, I haven’t either. It just seems like the right name to give to the position I always played in kickball (called “soccer baseball” in my town) back in elementary school. The captain wanted me far from the action where I couldn’t do any harm, and I was happy with the arrangement; it left me free to daydream about whatever I wanted — such as the product 26 × 26 × 26.
My interest stemmed from initials. I was JGP, my best friend was SBC, my siblings were WHP, STP, and DJP, and everyone I knew had three-letter initials. Even my dad, who had no middle name, had been assigned a middle initial on his birth certificate, perhaps because the blank field on the form had cowed his immigrant parents into improvising one. I wondered how many different possibilities there were. Of course some were unfortunate and a few were even unprintable, but leaving that issue aside, how many first initial / middle initial / last initial combinations could be constructed?