Word quiz - explanation

This is an old English class "study" on English grammar. To understand it, we need to think of a situation in a classroom. A school test of past tense grammar.

Two boys are in the class; one called James and one called John.

John had chosen "had " in the grammar test and James had chosen "had had"

Let's use a hypothetical example: John chose to write:

"I had a nice cup of tea yesterday when someone offered me a cake"

However, James chose to write:

"I had had a nice cup of tea yesterday when someone offered me a cake"

so, John chose "had" and James had chosen "had had"

The teacher preferred James' choice of "had had"

So, with punctuation: "Where John had "had", James had had  "had had". "Had had" had won the teacher's praise"

So, using English past tense, adding the other "had" will make it a correct English sentence grammatically speaking.

However, it is just a classroom game. We would never explain this idea in this way in reality.

I hope you can understand it now

Bye for now

Alan