Neal Stephenson: All I can say is that it does have utility. As soon as I came up with it, it immediately became incredibly useful. Not only in Cryptonomicon , but in the Baroque Cycle as well. It needed to be invented, and I sort of stumbled over it. It's been very useful ever since. Of course Q-W-G-H-L-M is just the transcription of the word from their writing, which is a system of simple runes optimized for people who suffer from a lot of frostbite.