How a $50 Challenge Turned Into Multimillion Dollar Deal

In 1960, Bennett Cerf, the founder of Random House, slid a fifty-dollar bill across the table. He dared Theodor Geisel to do something most thought was impossible.

The bet was simple but difficult: write an engaging children’s book from start to finish using only 50 different words.

Cerf didn’t believe it could be done. At the time, that $50 wager equaled over $500 today. This showed how serious he was about the challenge.

Geisel accepted the bet. He was no stranger to writing with constraints. Under his pen name, “Dr. Seuss,” he previously wrote “The Cat in the Hat” with a limited vocabulary of 236 words. However, this was a far more demanding task.

He worked tirelessly on the project, reportedly finding the strict limitation to be an immense creative struggle. He filled pages with drafts, searching for the right combination of his 50 chosen words to tell a complete story.

Finally, on August 12, 1960, the result was published: “Green Eggs and Ham.”

The book used exactly 50 unique words, with 49 of them being just one syllable. Seuss not only won the bet but also created a literary masterpiece.

Here’s a list showing numbers of occurrences and each word that appears with that frequency (there are 25 unique frequencies):

84: not
82: I
61: them
59: a
44: like
40: in
37: do
33: you
26: would
25: and, eat
21: will
19: with
16: Sam
14: could
13: am
11: green, eggs, ham, here, the
9: there, train
8: or, anywhere, house, mouse
7: box, fox, car, on, dark
6: tree
5: say, so
4: may, see, let, me, be, rain, goat, try
3: that, boat
2: they, are, good, thank
1: if

“Green Eggs and Ham” became one of the best-selling and most beloved children’s books in history. It taught generations of children to read through its clever repetition and simple rhymes.