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Wright, Write 'Rite' Right, A. Ross Eckler
Wright, Write 'Rite' Right, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
The May, August and November 1996, Word Ways described the results of a National Public Radio competition of December 1995 in which listeners were challenged to write grammatical and understandable sentences containing the same word four or more times in a row. Some listeners incorrectly assumed that a stutter of sounds would qualify, and constructed sequences of homonyms instead of identically-spelled words. These logologically-interesting results are presented in the following (and final) article. (A few are questionable, relying perhaps on regional pronunciations.)
Word Sums (No Carrying!), Frank Rubin
Word Sums (No Carrying!), Frank Rubin
Word Ways
The simplest form of arithmetic that we all learn in grade school is addition. Each of us has spent countless hours over problems like 123 + 456 = 579.
A Reedable-Deerable Alphabet, Nyr Indictor
A Reedable-Deerable Alphabet, Nyr Indictor
Word Ways
Word pairs such as REJECTED-DEJECTER, RESERVED-DESERVER, and REDUCED-DEDUCER fall into the special class of anagrams which we may call "reed-deer pairs". One member of the pair begins with RE- and ends with ED-, while the other begins with DE- and ends with -ER. If the pair is DEDEERED and DEREEDED, we are left with an identical middle component. A person who isolates these middle components is both a DEDEERER and a DEREEDER. The middle ocmponent can be REREEDED and REDEERED (by a REREEDER and REDEERER) to form the original pair again.
Top-Down Seems Best In Full Searches, Leonard Gordon
Top-Down Seems Best In Full Searches, Leonard Gordon
Word Ways
In "Designing a List of Word Squares" (August 1996), I showed that a word list intended for finding squares is improved by balancing the beginning and ending letter-frequencies of words. In "Bottom-Up Finds Some Squares Faster" (November 1996) I showed that under certain conditions the old formists' bottom-up strategy is superior to a top-down one.
Numerical Palindromes: Part 2, Rex Gooch
Numerical Palindromes: Part 2, Rex Gooch
Word Ways
"Numerical Palindromes: Part 1", by Susan Thorpe in the November 1996 Word Ways, dealt with what I described as numerical palindromes of order 2. It was her work that led to my own effort.
Fledge Ledge Edge, Jan Anderson
Fledge Ledge Edge, Jan Anderson
Word Ways
From the last issue's Ledge Edge we peered mostly at the missing: intentionally omitted words, vowels and syllables. Now we flap away from the "eschewed" and go espying the askew--odd assortments and arrangements of what is there. But as with my mother's elves, you have to start flying before you can see them. You didn't know about my mother's elves? They were a family secret, and my father never admitted to getting the note she wrote about them, but then maybe he didn't get it -- "Ed: odd, I am nuts. I flew. As I did, I saw elf! I …