ROTE IS NOT A FOUR LETTER WORD. Joanne Jacobs has some stories of what passes for learning how to figure these days. I don't see what all the fuss is about. The simple act of working problems provides the mind with many shortcuts. You'd think that even with a calculator or an abacus-emulator, 45-6=39 would register eventually. Same thing with multiplication. Here are a couple of tricks for kids. To multiply any number by 11, tack a zero at the right end of the number, then add the number to the result. (Why it took me so long to figure out the distributive law is another matter.) To multiply any number by 9, tack a zero at the right, then subtract the number from the result. It's still automatic after all these years. And why people persist in the whole-language obsession continues to baffle me. I read a memoir by an Omaha Road telegrapher who noted that after you get adept, you start picking out the rhythms of individual words such as Chicago or extra rather than the dots and dashes. But first you have to learn the dots and dashes. Your Army or American Radio Relay League experience was no help, either: the metal sounder has a double-click unlike any buzzer or oscillator, and the code itself is different.