Static front page pagination documentation amy be wrong?

I couldn’t get the instructions for making pagination work on a static home page

A static home page is, by definition, a single page and doesn’t require pagination. It is “page 1 of 1 pages”.

So where are you trying to get pagination to appear?

On “static front page.

All pages are static “page 1 of 1 pages” but pagination works on them. It’s only the “static front page” where you need special code to make pagination work.

Sometimes, some people do want a front page that is a blend of static content and paged posts.

To that end, that instruction page on Pagination tells you how it *should* work. To quote the whole section:

static front page

If the pagination is broken on a static front page you have to add the “paged” parameter this way:

<?php
if ( get_query_var('paged') ) { $paged = get_query_var('paged'); }
elseif ( get_query_var('page') ) { $paged = get_query_var('page'); }
else { $paged = 1; }

query_posts('posts_per_page=3&paged=' . $paged);
?>

But without the global $paged; it doesn’t work for me.