Filed Replies, Vol. 14
From P. Okonkwo, Tulsa:
I submitted a photo of my neighbor's above-ground pool three weeks ago and have heard nothing. Is the Thiccctionary accepting submissions or not?
Letter dated August 11, 2026.
Above-ground pools occupy a documented gray zone, specifically the Volume Question as addressed in Style Guide Section II.4, which requires that a Subject's girth be self-evident without supplemental annotation. A photograph taken from a residential driveway, in my experience spanning seventeen years and a filing cabinet that now requires a rubber mallet to open, almost never satisfies the Silhouette Test (Amendment 1991-08, /about/documents/amendment-1991-08/). Beyond that, the Submissions Desk is operating at reduced capacity because Teddy has been reoccupying the intake tray with successive drafts of the Saturn V brief since, by my records, February of this year, which is a separate matter I have addressed to the Personnel File. Submit again with an aerial photograph and a scale reference that is itself not also a pool.
From D. Featherstone, Bath:
I'm a longtime reader and I must say the recent decision to list the Caspian Sea as a thiccc body of water is frankly embarrassing. It is a lake. Its classification is a matter of settled science.
Letter dated August 19, 2026.
The Caspian entry, Catalogue No. 7741, was filed under the Bounded Watermass subheading in 2002 following a methodology review I opposed in writing, a position I maintain and which is documented in Grievance No. 31 in the Personnel File. Whether it is technically a sea or a lake is, for our purposes, secondary to whether it satisfies Section III of the Style Guide, which it does, abundantly, in all horizontal dimensions. You are correct that it is a lake. I was also correct in 2002. These two positions are compatible. Filed objection to the records desk, cross-referenced to the original 2002 intake memo, which Constance has described as "something we can definitely circle back on."
From W. Tallent, Fargo:
My submission of the Cheesecake Factory menu was returned with no explanation beyond the word "NO" written on the cover sheet. Could you elaborate?
Letter dated August 24, 2026.
The menu is a document describing thiccc things; it is not itself a thiccc thing, which is a distinction the Style Guide has maintained since the original 1974 Charter (/about/documents/founding-charter/) and which I personally reinforced in Section I of the Style Guide revision I completed in 2007 during a period when submissions had begun arriving in formats I will not dignify by listing. A catalogue of thiccc subjects is not a thiccc subject eligible for the catalogue, for the same reason that a filing cabinet is not a drawer. I will also note that the Cheesecake Factory menu had a damp corner and arrived in an envelope with no return address, which suggests either poor postage habits or Spider Hennessy, and in either case the "NO" was, I feel, proportionate.
From R. Stiles, Reykjavik:
Has the Thiccctionary taken a position on the ongoing trade negotiations between the EU and the current administration? Some of us feel publications like yours have a civic responsibility to weigh in.
Letter dated August 28, 2026.
A tariff schedule is, in structural terms, a submission form: it lists subjects, assigns values, and attempts to establish criteria for what qualifies for elevated treatment at the border. The current administration's approach to this form is what I would call a volume-first, methodology-never submission style, which the Thiccctionary has been rejecting since before the Submissions Freeze Proposal of 2014 (/about/documents/submissions-freeze/). The EU's counter-schedule has better internal organization but buries its girth criteria in footnotes, which violates Style Guide Section IV on legibility. My position on civic responsibility is that an institution performs its civic function by maintaining rigorous standards and a functioning coffee machine, the latter of which this office has not had since March, a grievance logged as No. 47 and parked, per Constance, for a Q4 2026 review that I am not optimistic about.
From H. Bramwell, Cork:
Someone in your office told my nephew that the credenza in your office has its own entry in the catalogue. Is that true? It seems like a conflict of interest.
Letter dated August 30, 2026.
The credenza was assessed in 2019 by two independent reviewers, neither of whom was me, and it passed the Silhouette Test on all sides, including the back, which faces a wall and which I have not moved in eleven years because moving it would require Teddy's assistance and Teddy is, as noted, occupied. The entry, Catalogue No. 9103, was processed through standard intake, is cross-referenced to the 1991-08 Amendment (/about/documents/amendment-1991-08/), and was not expedited. Whether a Senior Cataloguer's personal furniture can be a Subject is a question the Style Guide does not explicitly preclude, a gap I consider an oversight and have noted to Constance, who responded with a reply that opened "Hi Bart!" and suggested we "table it for the next all-hands." There has not been an all-hands since 2021. The credenza remains in the catalogue.