This work belongs to Indiana's 1962 Polygon series, small paintings featuring a numeral from 3 to 12 placed inside a polygon of the corresponding number of sides (i.e. 3-Triangle, 4-Square, etc.). The series features extensive wordplay, with references that are playful, personal, literary, and alliterative. The text in the painting reads “Unco Undecagon.” The term “undecagon,” which describes an eleven-sided polygon, is unusual in that it combines a Latin prefix with a Greek suffix. Some prefer the Greek term hendecagon for the figure.
“Unco” is Scottish slang for “a stranger," and may have been known to Indiana from the year he spent in Edinburgh as a student in 1953–54. The word "unco" can also be used as an adjective to describe something strange, uncanny, weird, awkward, or clumsy, which describes the nature of the term "undecagon" and the mathematics needed to draw the figure.