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Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

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

9x9 Word Squares, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Anyone who has tried to construct a regular word square of the ninth order will understand why there have been so few good examples ever exhibited. The building of large squares flourished in the first half of the twentieth century; according to the Sherlock Holmes memorial issued by the National Puzzlers' League in June 1980, a little more than one thousand 9x9 squares were published between 1897 and 1979. However, nearly all of these squares contain a high percentage of undesirable terms, such as obsolete, foreign and dialectic words, long-forgotten place-names, questionable adjectival inflections, and two-word terms. Out of all …

Tales From The Kingdom Of Tut, James I. Rambo

Word Ways

Editor's Note: Palindromist James Rambo, known by the pseudonym of 'Tut' in the National Puzzlers' League, died on July 27, 1980. Word Ways readers will remember him best for his transposition poems based on well-known phrases such as 'Fools rush in where angels fear to treat' and 'Discretion is the better part of valor'. The stories below, three of which first appeared in The Enigma (July 1972, April 1974, February 1975), show that he was interested in other forms of word-play as well.

The Mangled Raven, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

Editor's Note: The following introduction to the Automynorcagrammatical Raven is taken from a letter from JAL to Howard Bergerson, himself a contributor of a similar construction to Word Ways in November 1975. In an Automynorcagram, the initial letters of the successive words repeat the original message.

On Searching For Vowelless Words, Alan Frank

Word Ways

In the November 1977 issue of Word Ways, Philip Cohen suggested that a collection of all-consonant words would be useful in various logological investigations. In the August 1980 issue, Jeff Grant and Ross Eckler answered with a list of all-consonant words from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (Second and Third editions) and the Oxford English Dictionary. This article presents the results of a further search I conducted for such words.

Touch Blue, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

Some students of linguistics have come to the conclusion that our ancestors were color-blind. Max Muller, for example, points out that there is no Sanskrit root with reference to any definite color.

The Poet's Corner

Word Ways

From time to time, Word Ways receives a variety of short poems related to recreational linguistics, some original, others previously published. As poetic output cannot be easily predicted, these will be presented on an irregular basis.

Show Your Colors, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

The object of this game is to compile a list of different words -- each related to its predecessor to form a compound word or familiar phrase -- and have this chain begin and end with the same word. Our theme is "Color" ... and, to keep the exercise interesting, we ask that your chains be no fewer than fifteen, nor more than twenty-five words in length. This will eliminate a simple BLUE-sky-BLUE combination ... and it conserves on paper by keeping your lists from stretching to infinity.

Is A Picture Worth 1000 Words?, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Recently, Boris Randolph of Los Angeles proposed the following:

"The exact number of words that a PICTURE is worth can be found by forming all the possible words that can be made from the word PICTURE, using them only as often as they occur in PICTURE itself (namely once) ..."

and provided a list of 126 words from Webster's Third. Intrigued, I checked Webster's Second, the OED and the Times Atlas of the World for more, generating the following list of 273 words of two letters or more.

Dictionary Sounds, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The onomatopoeic comic-book words exhibited by John McClellan in the August 1980 Word Ways are undeniably outlandish. However, it is worth noting the fact (dictionary words) can be just as odd as fiction (comic-book coinages). To prove my point, I have selected fifty words from the English Dictionary (two for each letter except X), all having something to do with interjections, cries, moaning, mumbling and so on. To me, the words on this list seem even stranger than many of the ones McClellan cites.

Twenty Stately Riddles, Boris Randolph

Word Ways

A collection of riddles about states. Answers are in the Answers and Solutions of this issue.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue, including instructions to authors and subscribers.

A Pattern Word Quiz, Mary J. Hazard, Harry W. Hazard

Word Ways

For each of the fifty words listed below, you are to supply a non-crashing word having the same pattern of letters. For example, for BEETLE acceptable words include EGGNOG or ATTEST, but not FEEBLE (which has one or more letters in the same place as they appear in BEETLE). Unacceptable words include proper names, regular plurals in -D, regular preterites in -ED, participles in -ING, comparatives in -ER or -IER, superlatives in -EST or -IEST, and slang, dialect or foreign words. All answer words are well-known standard unhyphenated English words in the Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary, and appear in alphabetical order. …

The Abc Of Place-Names, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Here are words (all beginning with A, B or C to make things a bit easier) which have been derived from place-names around the world. We give you the definition, along with a hint concerning the place; you provide the word and the place-name from which it is derived. Answers will be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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.

Onomasticon V, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Following the lead of George Scheetz in compiling lists of words with a common ending, I have chosen words ending in -IFER, the majority of which derive from the suffix meaning 'to bear' or 'to carry'. Numbers of words ending in -IFERA and -IFEROUS have no sanctioned curtailments to -IFER, even though such words would be logical derivations. Except as noted, all words are in the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary.

Crosswords And The Computer, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

There is little question that the crossword is the most popular type of word puzzle in both England and America. Thousands are solved every year in newspapers and magazines by people who are unaware that the field of recreational linguistics stretches far beyond these limits. The cognitive processes that people use to solve word puzzles are of interest to both psychologists and computer programmers: what is human problem-solving behavior? can it be imitated by a computer? It is obvious that a computer is much faster and more accurate than a human being in repetitive arithmetic calculations or in list-sorting. However, …

Kickshaws, Willard R. Espy

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws assembled by a guest editor.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Biblical Colors, Faith W. Eckler

Word Ways

In "Touch Blue", Maxey Brooke is not quite fair to the writers of the Bible by attributing to them a measure of color-blindness for never mentioning that the sky is blue. To begin with, he asserts that the sky is mentioned more than 400 times in the Bible when in fact the word "sky" or "skies" appears only eleven times. More common (and undoubtedly what he had in mind) is "heaven". However, this word in its Biblical usage usually connotes a realm -- the abode of God or of the souls of the faithful departed -- rather than a canopy …

The Assault On Logology, Mejnour Zanoni

Word Ways

A recent word ways article by Philip M. Cohen (May, 1980) enunciates a new logological concept. For a word or name to be regarded as "interesting" it must have some property unique within the group to which it belongs. The article illustrates the concept by applying it to a well-known group of names: that of the 50 states of the United States.

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

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

The Cystine Chapel, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, the words SISTINE, CYSTINE and CYSTEINE are pronounced in the same way -- a homonymic fact which overtaxes my imagination. The latter two are sulfur-containing amino acids, and ambiguity in spoken English is so real that the preferred dictionary pronunciations are seldom used: CYSTEINE most often becomes a three-syllable word, /sis tay een/, accented on the second syllable so the hearer knows with certainty what the speaker means. In the same fashion, HOMOCYSTEINE and HOMOCYSTINE are in practice pronounced differently, although dictionary preference is for homonymy, rhyming with SISTINE. Note also BENZENE and …

Venerable Venery, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

If you thumb through your standard deskside dictionary, you may be shocked to learn that venery is a euphemistic term describing coital commerce.

To stem any blazing tide of flaming pens charging us with smut, sensationalism, prurience and suchlike, let us assure you that our topic concerns another -- wholly respectable -- interpretation of the word.

Dictionary Eodermdromes, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Place the different letters of a word on a sheet of paper, and, without lifting pencil from paper, trace out a path linking on e letter to another, spelling out the word. Such a path may have loops emanating from a letter and returning to it (if the word has a doubled letter), or may have more than one link joining a pair of different letters (if a bigram appears in the word, and the same bigram or its reversal appears elsewhere in the word). This pattern of letters and links is called a spelling net; it can take …

Once More: What Is A Word?, Dana Richards

Word Ways

In recent issues of Word Ways, Dmitri Borgmann and Richard Lederer struggled with the age-old linguistic question "What is a word?" without coming to any very satisfactory conclusions. In fact, both authors convinced me what a word is not: a collection of letters strung together (with or without spaces), or simply a collection of morphemes. This note attempts to shed a little further light on the problem.

Circular Alphabets, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In Language on Vacation, Dmitri Bormann exhibited several words having their letters arranged in alphabetical order (for example, ADELOPS, BILLOWY and AEGILOPS) and also in reverse alphabetical order (for example, ZYXOMMA, SPOON-FEED and SPOON-FED).

However, suppose now that the alphabet is written in a circular fashion, with the letters A to Z written in a clockwise manner, so that the Z ends up next to the A. Two questions immediately arise: (1) reading clockwise, what is the longest word that can be spelled out within one "revolution" of the alphabet? (2) similarly, what is the longest word that can …

Comic Book Coinages, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

My wife and I were on a plane high over the Atlantic en route to England. We occupied aisle seats, and next to us was a young English lad, obviously returning home with his parents (in the row behind us) after a visit to the United States. On the boy's lap was a comic book -- I've forgotten the title -- and an English dictionary was at his side. A Latin dictionary lay on the floor. He had a puzzled expression on his face and it seemed as though he might be close to tears for his chin trembled ever …

Onomasticon Iv, George H. Scheetz

Word Ways

'Wright' is a word whose earliest recorded use was, according to the OED, circa 695 A.D. The word is now considered archaic or dialectic, but in its 1300-year history 'wright' has spawned many attributed and combined words and surnames, the subject of this listing. All words are from Webster's Second, the OED, or S. Baring-Gould's Family Names and Their Story. Words which double as surnames are indicated by an asterisk and are either recorded in Baring-Gould or known to the author; if a reader knows someone whose surname is in this list, but not noted as such, please send …

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.