At 2:45 on Monday afternoon, a few hours before TIME'S April 3 issue went to bed, Researcher Marjorie Burns put in a fast phone call for Ed Heinke, our Indianapolis string correspondent. She told him that a story in Education referred to a poem by James Whitcomb Riley entitled Perfesser John Clark Ridpath, A.M., LL.D., TYTY. What, asked Researcher Burns, did the T-Y-T-Y stand for? Could Heinke find out? Possibly somebody at DePauw University, where Lecturer Ridpath lived and worked before his death in 1900, would know.

Heinke said he'd try -- and later wrote us just how he went about it:

"I put in a call for David Laurance Chambers, president of Bobbs-Merrill, publishers, to ask for the names of those who knew their Riley lore best in this part of the country where Riley lore springs at you from everywhere. He suggested a Riley historian named Marcus Dickey, who has a studio at Bear Wallow down in the hills of Brown

County; and two Riley nieces, Miss Lesley Payne and Mrs. Harry Miesse, the wife of an avid local tax expert.

"I couldn't get an answer at the Bear Wallow number because somebody kept coming in on the party line, saying 'hello,' and then refusing to discuss the matter further. I let Miss Payne's telephone ring a long time, but there was no answer there. I got Mr. Miesse on the phone and he said sure I could talk to his wife but why didn't my paper [the Indianapolis Times, of which Heinke is assistant managing editor] get going on a crusade about taxes? He talked to me for ten minutes. Mrs. Miesse looked through her index books and announced that she couldn't even find the poem in question. She wondered whether the poet had even written it. Anyhow, she had no idea what T-Y-T-Y meant.

"I called DePauw's public relations director who put me on to Dr. O. F. Overstreet, a contemporary and friend of John Clark Ridpath, and also suggested that I call Sam Rariden, editor of the Greencastle Banner. Dr. Overstreet didn't know about T-Y-T-Y and announced further that there were no living Ridpath descendants, thereby quenching that hope. Editor Rariden said I ought to call Mrs. Clyde Wildman, wife of DePauw's president, at Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis, where her husband was convalescing. Mrs. Wildman said it was all right to ask her a question for TIME, that it wouldn't bother Mr. Wildman. Neither she nor her husband knew the answer, though.

"By this time I was running out of names, so I called Jim Carr, president of the Riley Memorial Association. He told me that Judge Will Hough at Greenfield, where Riley was born, might be able to help. The judge asked me why I didn't get hold of one of Rid-path's two daughters. I said that I had been told there were no living Ridpath descendants. He said that was peculiar because he had seen one of them, Mrs. Myrtle Cook, in Greenfield a few days before. The other, a Mrs. Thayer, lived in Indianapolis.

"Mrs. Thayer, who turned out to be living about a mile north of me on my own street, couldn't help me, but when I got Mrs. Cook on the line and explained my predicament she said: 'Sure, I remember the poem. I've got the original manuscript right here.'

"I waited while she went to get it. Finally, she returned and announced that sure enough the T-Y-T-Y was there, all right, although she had never noticed it before. 'But I can tell you it means nothing,' she added. 'It was part of Mr. Riley's humor. By adding T-Y-T-Y at the end of the degrees, he was making fun of them. In earlier years that's the way children learned to spell. You spelled each syllable, then you pronounced it. Like the word amity, for instance: a-m-AM: iI: tyTY; AMITY. Do you see what I mean?'

"I said that I did indeed, and that the explanation made sense to me. I thanked intelligent, articulate Mrs. Cook, who is 71, and phoned her explanation to New York. Time for checking query: 2:45 p.m. to 5:15 p.m."

As those of you who read last week's Education department know, the explanation of T-Y-T-Y ended up as a footnote -- a dogged contribution to the cardinal virtue of curiosity.

Cordially yours,

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