WASHINGTON -- It may be highly improbable mathematically, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that the encoded profanity contained in one of his veto letters was "a wild coincidence."

Speaking to reporters at the White House, the Republican governor said: "That was a total coincidence. It was one of those wild coincidences."

The first letter in seven lines of the message, when read from top to bottom, combine to spell out "F--- you."

Schwarzenegger sent the letter to Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who earlier had told the governor to "kiss my gay a--."

Stephen Devlin, the chair of the math department at the University of San Francisco, told the San Francisco Weekly that the odds of the letters appearing in proper order in seven consecutive lines to spell out the profanity was one in 10 million.

"Not surprisingly, it's virtually impossible for this to happen," Devlin told the newspaper.