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Games On Word Configurations, Jeremiah Farrell
Games On Word Configurations, Jeremiah Farrell
Word Ways
The rules of our proposed games are very simple. Two persons alternately draw letter titles until one of them is first able to form a word and wins. To avoid arguments, we supply for each game its own dictionary of allowed words. To make the games more interesting, we have certain symmetry demands on dictionary word lists and will call such lists configurations.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 27 Issue 4
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 27 Issue 4
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
Getting It All Together, Leonard Gordon
Getting It All Together, Leonard Gordon
Word Ways
Recently, several Word Ways contributors have suggested relationships between wordplay and chemistry (see "The Linguistic Genetic Message" Feb 1992, and the note on The Scientist Speculates in Feb 1994). Although none of the ideas appealed to me, I found the concept intriguing, and devised something of my own. In this article, I model protein chemistry wit ha combination of two different types of directed word chains. In addition, constructions from the combination chaining leads to interesting logology.
The Morristown Fables: Part 3, Peter Newby
The Morristown Fables: Part 3, Peter Newby
Word Ways
"Tuesday" said the hen perched on the mantelpiece.
Split Wit Definitives, Howard Richler
Split Wit Definitives, Howard Richler
Word Ways
The following is an outgrowth of two articles I wrote for National Lampoon in 1990 entitled "Split Definitive". It was thus titled because it featured word definitions that depend upon the splitting of words to effect the definitions. For example, romantic was defined as "Conturion's twitch" because it can be divided into Roman and tic. Similarly, heathen was defined as "barbecued chicken" and it breaks down into heat and hen.
Half-Palindromic Words, Mark Saltveit
Half-Palindromic Words, Mark Saltveit
Word Ways
I have never understood all of the interest in finding palindromic words. It requires no imagination; they just sit there in front of the reader, like a large gold nugget on the sidewalk. And, like gold nuggets, all but the most hidden and obscure ones have long since been grabbed.
Caulfield And Copperfield, Robert F. Fleissner
Caulfield And Copperfield, Robert F. Fleissner
Word Ways
Surely a major irony of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is that its would-be hero, though openly disdaining what he calls all that "David Copperfield" kind of nonsense on the very first page, is in fact described in terms of the self-development novel as stemming to a large extent from Dickens. What is more, though he repeatedly exhibits revulsion at what he dubs the "phony" type of individual, he himself turns out to be the biggest fake of them all.
Mammary Vowelindromes, Jeff Grant
Mammary Vowelindromes, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
The association between vowelindromes and the female breast, noted by Stephen Chism in the August 1993 Word Ways, is even more widespread than he realizes. Besides PAP and TIT, both part of the vowelindromes PAP-PEP-PIP-POP-PUP and TAT-TET-TIT-TOT-TUT, there exist BUB (a woman's breast) and DUD (a teat). The words in the corresponding vowelindromes BAB-BEB-BIB-BOB-BUB can all be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, and DAD-DED-DID-DOD-DUD in the English Dialect Dictionary.
Cheater's Palindromes: Part 4, Walter Fretlaw
Cheater's Palindromes: Part 4, Walter Fretlaw
Word Ways
David Jennings Morice is the fourth of the Kickshavian school of Cheater's palindromists and, essentially, the pioneer of the concept of utilizing obscure terminology in this form of creative construction. David is the Cheater's playwright and all quotes are from his short-short-lived play which was first performed in Iowa City in 1990.
Playing The Numbers Game, Al Greengold, Richard Lederer
Playing The Numbers Game, Al Greengold, Richard Lederer
Word Ways
The joys of word play abound all around, even in numbers. We often view figures as coldly symbolic rather than vibrantly verbal, but numerals really can be a lot of fun when we look at them logologically.
Mixed Reviews, A. Ross Eckler
Mixed Reviews, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
In the February 1993 issue, Games Magazine editor Will Shortz announced a new puzzle contest based on a Word Ways idea: anagram a movie title to form a concise review of the film (for example, "oh. OK" for Hook, "I, trash" for Ishtar, or "non-cinema" for Encino Man). More than 700 readers submitted several thousand entries for the prize, $1000 worth of puzzles and books from the Bits & Pieces catalog; it was awarded to James Sempsrott of Raleigh NC who suggested "not worth a fire engine" for The Towering Inferno.
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.
Kickshaws, David Morice
A Challenge Answered, Leonard Gordon
A Challenge Answered, Leonard Gordon
Word Ways
In the August Word Ways I challenged readers to find the smallest rectangle in which one can pack the 37 different US presidential surnames with at least one name in each of the eight possible directions (but connectivity not required). My answer to this challenge is shown below, an 18x12 = 216 rectangle in which FILLMORE does not connect to nay other; each diagonal direction has a single representative.
Clipped Words
Word Ways
The increasing practice of comitting large amounts of text, such as dictionaries and thesauri, to computer-based utilities has produced a number of text-compression techniques for reducing the amount of storage space. There are several industry-standard-file-compression utilities in the public domain, any of which may be used to condense the space requirements of text files. My WORDS-WORTH files, now containing over 508,000 dictionary words and phrases, were first processed in this fashion, resulting in roughly a 50% saving in disk space. However, files treated in this way need in the majority of cases to be restored to full length in order …
Balanced Words, Susan Thorpe
Balanced Words, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
'Balanced Words' anagrams to 'An ABCDE's World'. It is certainly that! Ironically, the word 'balanced' is not itself a balanced word, but INTRODUCTION and CONTRARILY are. (In this article, words in capital letters are balanced.) So, what is a balanced word? When the sum of the letters of a word (using A=1, B=2 etc.) is divided by the number of letters in the word, the result is the 'average letter weight' of that word which, in the case of balanced words, is 13.5, halfway through the alphabet between M and N.
Anagramania, Charles Suhor
Anagramania, Charles Suhor
Word Ways
Some lovers of language are merely smitten, others are outright crazy. I'm in the former category, so I devised an even dozen anagrams for the word anagram and let it go at that.
Getting Around In Wordland, Leonard Gordon
Getting Around In Wordland, Leonard Gordon
Word Ways
Over the years, Word Ways has presented several articles on word chains and networks. It was obvious that the networks could be developed into mazes, but I, for one, did nothing about it because I considered mazes kid stuff. However, John Harris sent me a copy of a maze by Robert Abbott that appeared in the May 1991 Discover magazine which is not kid stuff.
Cheater's Palindromes: Part 3, Walter Fretlaw
Cheater's Palindromes: Part 3, Walter Fretlaw
Word Ways
Darryl Francis is the third of the four compilers of Cheater's palindromes which were originally featured in the November 1990 Kickshaws. As he is a Scrabble fanatic, many of his constructions are concerned with his adjudication of words played in games between the Greek god Janus and Jeff Grant.
The Alphabet And The Golden Ratio, Monte J. Zerger
The Alphabet And The Golden Ratio, Monte J. Zerger
Word Ways
Place the letters of the English alphabet (capitals) in a row and count five letters inward from either end. You will arrive at letters which are quite similar to their neighbors (on their inside), E to F and V to U. There is one other adjacent pair of letters resembling each other -- M and N. Because M and N mark the center of the alphabet, the three couples EF-MN-UV induce a natural pairing of the entire alphabet.
A Myth About The Bard, J. Karl Franson
A Myth About The Bard, J. Karl Franson
Word Ways
"Hidden Bard" by Richard Lederer in the May 1994 Word Ways perpetuates what is almost certainly a myth, the Shakespeare assisted in the translation of the King James Bible (KJV) and encoded his name in the text. Mr. Lederer correctly points out an astonishing fact, known for many years, that in Psalm 46, the 46th words from beginning and ending, respectively, are shake and speare (if the final word Selah is omitted).
The Myseterious Advertisement, Ted Clarke
The Myseterious Advertisement, Ted Clarke
Word Ways
We are all amused by the results of foreign countries; efforts at translating their brochures and operating instructions into English. We should, however, give credit to them for at least trying. Would we, for example, do any better than the following letter, were we to try to translate our message into a foreign language.
New Palindromes, Jeff Grant
New Palindromes, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
The Palindromicon contains over 2300 palindromic words and names drawn from a wide variety of sources. Since publication of this work, hundreds of additional 'dromes have been added to this collection, and the current total is now approaching the 3000 mark.
The Ontological Problem, Lee Sallows
The Ontological Problem, Lee Sallows
Word Ways
Paying a recent call on my old friend Professor Eischwein, Transylvania's former leading logologist, I discovered him busy at work in his laboratory. "How's tricks, Professor?" I asked noting as I did that he was using a Bunsen burner to melt chocolate letters into a glass flask that was perched on one side of late letters into a glass flask that was perched on one side of the chemical balance.
A Maximal Panning Tree, A. Ross Eckler
A Maximal Panning Tree, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
The five-letter word network given below is partitioned into 27 subnetworks, each having a unique vowel-consonant pattern (Y in first position is deemed a consonant, otherwise a vowel). All words are in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary; each subnetwork lists the total OSPD words in it.
The Mating Game, Susan Thorpe, Peter Newby
The Mating Game, Susan Thorpe, Peter Newby
Word Ways
Shakespeare and Bowdler, Boswell and Johnson - the world has been holding its breath for the next great literary teaming, and here it is... Thorpe and Newby! To celebrate their association, they wish to pioneer in Word Ways a mild amusement, The Mating Game.
Coinicons: A New Word Game, Nyr Indictor
Coinicons: A New Word Game, Nyr Indictor
Word Ways
Here is a new word game that can be played by any number of people. To play the game, you must first learn these definitions. A coinicon is either a protoproot, and moreform, or an interreinevitive. A protoproot is a made-up word comprising a common prefix, followed by an anagram of that prefix.