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Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information of this issue, including table of contents.

Yugoslav Puzzle Periodicals, Slavko Peleh

Word Ways

Riddles have been part of the folklore of the Yugoslav nations since very early times, and the first were written down at the beginning of the sixteenth century. During the nineteenth century, riddles appeared regularly in literary magazines and collections of folk riddles were published. The first modern crossword puzzle appeared in Zagreb on March 1, 1925.

Word Transposability, Darryl Francis, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The transposability of a word can be defined as the ease with which its letters can be rearranged to form another word. This can be quanitified in two ways -- the number of different words into which the letters can be rearranged, and their rarity. As demonstrated by Dmitri Borgmann in "Elementary Transpositions" in the August 1978 Word Ways, it is usually possible to transpose a word if one is willing to stretch the concept of a "word" to its outer limits (and beyond).

The Great Dictionary Quest, Warren N. Cordell

Word Ways

Why do you have a house full of old dictionaries?

What are they good for?

What do you plan to do with them?

Palindromes In The Oed, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

For some time I have been looking out for long palindromic words in the Oxford English Dictionary. I recently decided to try and find the longest palindromes in each letter of the alphabet, starting with A and working right through to Z. The results of this search are set out below. Reduplications such as TOOT-TOOT, WAW-WAW and TUT-TUT have not been included.

Logopoeia, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

Logopoeia (a coined word meaning 'word-coining') is a natural activity of English-language speakers; this paragraph, in fact, contains three words in addition to logopoeia that are probably not in any dictionary. But the word-coiner, if not being deliberately nonsensical, is constrained by the desire to get a message across. The practice is more suspect in logology, where the only acknowledged constraint may be the logological goal. Here it is easy to slip from coining words to coining 'words' and thence to words?.

Orthograffiti, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

With the possible exceptions of presidents, baseball commissioners, and property taxes, there is no more popular object of abuse and ridicule than our "system" of English spelling. "Spelling," declares Mario Pei, "is the world's most awesome mess." J. Donald Adams adds: "It is wildly erratic and almost wholly without logic. One needs the eye of a hawk, the ear of a dog, and the memory of an elephant to make headway against its confusions and inconsistencies."

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections, and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.

Alfalfa And All That, Leroy F. Meyers

Word Ways

It all began with a party -- one that I did not attend. The next day, someone mentioned to me that word games had been played at the party, and that a word with the pattern 1231231 (where different letters are represented by different digits) had been sought. I replied (immediately, so I like to think) with alfalfa and entente, and later with the German words Kuckuck ('cuckoo') and endende ('ending', as a weak adjective).

From Ab--- To ---Yz, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

In the May 1978 Kickshaws, I pointed out that five-letter words still have unexplored logological aspects. For example, I showed that all 130 possible combinations of each alphabetical letter in each position exist as words, nearly all common enough to be in the Pocket Webster.

Word Relationships, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

The May 1974 issue of Psychology Today featured an interesting article about efforts under way to "teach" computers to understand and use human language.

Ernest's Revenge, Boris Randolph

Word Ways

A crossword puzzle with answers containing E as the only vowel.

Symmetric Crash Groups, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Two words of the same length are said to crash if they have matching letters in one or more positions, such as tIger and pIous, or roTuND and atTeND. A symmetric crash group is a set of words in which (1) each word crashes exactly n times with each other word, (2) every letter participates in a crash, and (3) each letter is used exactly m times in a given position.

An Eleven-Letter Positional List, Jeff Grant, Roger Hannahs

Word Ways

In the May 1978 Word Ways, John Meyer exhibited a list of 26 seven-letter words in which the central letter took each alphabetic value (A to Z) and the two three-letter ends were also words. In the August 1978 Word Ways, Leslie Card extended this exercise to nine-letter words, finding examples for all central letters but Q. In this article, we extended it further to eleven letter words.

A Horse Of Another Color, William Sunners

Word Ways

William Van Sant, a government clerk in Washington D.C., won 50 thousand dollars in 1950 by using the word CAMELOPARD to identify an illustration of a giraffe in a contest puzzle. This unfamiliar word united perfectly with other object-names in a diagram that yielded a higher numerical total (based on letter-values) than it would have had he used GIRAFFE. His achievement demonstrated the importance of having a large collection of synonyms as an aid in contest puzzle-solving.

Double Pangram Lists, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The November 1971 Kickshaws introduced the problem of finding thirteen four-letter words which together contain each of the 26 letters twice. Leslie Card exhibited a list of fourteen four-letter words, with four extraneous letters. Dave Silverman commented "we don't expect anyone to come up with a 13-word list in the near future" -- and he was right.

Kickshaws, Mary J. Hazard, Harry W. Hazard

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Where There's Smoke ..., Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

In the August 1978 issue of Word Ways, James Rambo showed how "Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health" could be repeatedly anagrammed to form a cautionary tale in verse. It's time, therefore, for a quiz on smoking terminology.

Can You Dig For The Nub?, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Well, can you? Freely translated, this enigmatic title invites you, the reader, to discover what is logologically unusual about it. Obviously, it is composed of three-letter isograms (words with no repeated letters), but the property is more subtle than this. Read on only if you have given up.

A Complex Of Compounds, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

Simeon Potter's Modern Linguistics (Andre Deutsch, London, 1957) states that there are seven types of compound words.

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication and the back cover of this issue.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Literary Criticism And Composition Theory, Steven J. Mailloux

English Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

The front cover and publication information for this issue, including the table of contents.

Two Cautionary Tales, James I. Rambo

Word Ways

In both of the poems below, the letters of the titles are repeatedly rearranged to form the successive lines in each stanza.

More Basic Questions Of Linguistics, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

In the spring of 1970, the Cornell linguistics faculty prepared a list of basic questions that graduate students could use as a guide for reading and study. Finding it incomplete, Prof. Charles Elliott prepared the following supplementary list.

More Figures Of Speech, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

Some time ago, a short piece of ours appeared in these pages -- a tale invented as a vehicle to illustrate Figures of Speech. It has been criticized as being saddening and inconclusive, as it undoubtedly is. For those who may not have seen it, it traces the movements of a couple of city-dwellers who had dreamed all their lives of taking a tropical vacation, but each time that it seemed within their reach, some unexpected expense had arisen, putting an end to the project. However, at long last they did get off, and all went happily with them until …

Doubled Prefixes, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Herman Melville's Moby Dick is prefaced by a section entitled Extracts, consisting of eighty quotations about whales and the author's acknowledgement of the efforts of a Sub-Sub-Librarian, referred to subsequently as a "poor devil of a Sub-Sub". Despite the impeccable credentials of this source, neither word appears in Webster's Second or Third.

Elementary Transpositions, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

Transposition of the chemical element names is not elementary -- often, they are extraordinarly difficult to find. Word Ways articles by Darryl Francis in November 1977 and Jeremy Morse and Edward Wolpow in February 1978 tacitly recognize the obstacles by allowing transadditions of element names instead: rearrangements after one or more letters have been added.

Twenty Questions, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

Twenty clues to four words you know well are given. Use an egg-timer to limit yourself for each clue, in turn. Rate yourself for the position at solving in any way you choose. The authority for all statements is Webster's Third Unabridged.