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Quarterly Riddle Roundup, Jim Puder Nov 2011

Quarterly Riddle Roundup, Jim Puder

Word Ways

Each ot the last four issues of Word Ways has offered one or more articles discussing Eliza Hurst's 1782 Ladies' Diary riddle or enigma, and this article continues the fad. Herewith the latest on this topic so far as I am aware of it at press time, plus some items of related interest.


Vowels V Consonants, Susan Thorpe Nov 2011

Vowels V Consonants, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The Vowels and Consonants are playing football but not exactly as we know the game. The matches are either 2 a side, 3 a side, 4 a side or 5 a side games. Amazingly, each game always ends in a score draw, in some cases an extremely high-scoring draw!


A Puzzle, Jeremiah P. Farrell Nov 2011

A Puzzle, Jeremiah P. Farrell

Word Ways

A crossword puzzle


Vintage Plastic Sliding-Letter Puzzles, Mike Keith Nov 2011

Vintage Plastic Sliding-Letter Puzzles, Mike Keith

Word Ways

One artifact from my childhood in the 1960's that I still remember vividly is the series of plastic sliding block puzzles manuafactured by The Roalex Company of Forest Hills, NY (no relation to the maker of fine timepieces).


Punk Whiz 16, A. Anil Nov 2011

Punk Whiz 16, A. Anil

Word Ways

Oh, no, yet more Pun Quiz misdefinitions! In paranethesis are the letters in the answer, (3|6) is a charade, a nine letter word that spilits into a three plus six letter pun. My answers are out back.


Truthful Arithmetical Charades, Mike Keith Nov 2011

Truthful Arithmetical Charades, Mike Keith

Word Ways

In (WW, May 2011, p.99) Anil introduces a construct which I will call a Truthful Arithmetical Charade. In the simplest kind, the name for a number (say, FIVE) is converted to its sequence of letter values (6, 9, 22, 5) and then an arthimetic expression (using just the elementary operations of add, subtract, multiply, and divide) is sought that uses these numbers in order to produce a value equal to the original number.


Colloquy Nov 2011

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.


Phonetic Aeiou, Susan Thorpe Nov 2011

Phonetic Aeiou, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

According to the phonetics list in the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed., the phonetic symbols which represent the 5 major vowels as they are pronounced in the alphabet are:


Riddles: Sherlockian, Joycian, Freudian "Eye", Tomoyuki Tanaka Nov 2011

Riddles: Sherlockian, Joycian, Freudian "Eye", Tomoyuki Tanaka

Word Ways

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" I love hard riddles. Even if a riddle was designed to have no solution, we can often think of good answers anyway (e.g. Poe wrote on both).


Kickshaws, David Morice Nov 2011

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.


Fractional Phrases, Susan Thorpe Nov 2011

Fractional Phrases, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The phrase HAND OVER FIST could be interepreted as an instruction to place the word HAND over the word Fist. When the letters of HAND and FIST are assigned their aphabetical values (a=1, b=2 etc.) HAND (8+1+14+4) = 27 and FIST (6+9+19+20) = 54. So HAND over Fist = 27/54 which can be reduced to 1/2. Hence, HAND OVER FIST ia a fractional phrase equal to one half.


Anagram Quiz 4 Nov 2011

Anagram Quiz 4

Word Ways

The clues are definitve anagrams or polyanagrams of the answers. Answers are out back.


On The Distinction Between "Phonetic" Palindromes And "Phonetically" Reversible Words, T.A. Hall Nov 2011

On The Distinction Between "Phonetic" Palindromes And "Phonetically" Reversible Words, T.A. Hall

Word Ways

1. Defining three types of words By definition, a palindrome is a word, phrase or sentence that reads the same in the reverse direction as in the forward one. Simple examples of four letter English palindromes include SEES and DEED, but a moment's reflection reveals there is a fundamental difference between these two words.


The Antiquity Of The Dreidle, Solomon W. Golomb Nov 2011

The Antiquity Of The Dreidle, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

Dear Rabbi Dov, As I mentioned to you a few days ago, the dreidle is actually an ancient toy, but I may be one the very few people who knows this, and I discovered it by accident.


Simon's 2000 Christmas Card, Simon Nightingale Nov 2011

Simon's 2000 Christmas Card, Simon Nightingale

Word Ways

Dear Jerry, This is my 2000 Christmas card. It is hard! The obvious clue is: If you want HELP!, then "... --- ..." How to assign Morse code to the objects is not easy.


Invertible Word Squares And Rectangles, Mike Keith Nov 2011

Invertible Word Squares And Rectangles, Mike Keith

Word Ways

Eric Harshbarger recently posed an interesting question: what are the largest word squares or rectangles that can be found which transform into another, valid word square or rectangle when turned upside down?


Unsociable Diplomats And Misnamed Wombats: More Funny Bloopers And Barbed Ripostes, Don Hauptman Nov 2011

Unsociable Diplomats And Misnamed Wombats: More Funny Bloopers And Barbed Ripostes, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

In a Wall Street Journal forum on terrorism, published on September 9, 2011, a former top government official wrote: " We went to war with Germany in 1941 not because it had attacked Pearl Harbor but because it was dangerous." Does he really think Germany rather than Japan attacked Pear Harbor? Or is it just a sloppily crafted sentence?


Not All One-Letter Words Are Palindromes, T.A. Hall Nov 2011

Not All One-Letter Words Are Palindromes, T.A. Hall

Word Ways

Virtually any discussion of palindromes - regardless of the source - reveals a complete lack of interest in small words. In particular, one will rarely encounter a list of one-letter palindromes, presumably because that type of word should be palindromic by any definition. While this is clearly the case for the most common, garden-variety examples (e.g. A, I, O etc.) the naive view will have us believe that one-letter words with an adjacent apostrophe -typically contracted words in English - should be palindromes as well.


Mnemonics In Second Language Acquisition, Ghil'ad Zuckermann Nov 2011

Mnemonics In Second Language Acquisition, Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Word Ways

When my son Giulio Xingtian Yehuda Zuckermann, a.k.a. Giulio XYZ, was 2 years old he already knew the Israeli word for 'fish' : DAG. Due to the general tendency towards final devoicing (see, for example, German kind, pronounced kint, or a German immigrant to Israel pronouncing Negev as Negef), Giulio often pronounced DAG as DAK.


Neologisms Beginning With The Letters Q Through S, J. James Mancuso Nov 2011

Neologisms Beginning With The Letters Q Through S, J. James Mancuso

Word Ways

Neologisms beginning with the Letters Q through S.


Celestial Magic- Another Magic Spell, Jeremiah Farrell Nov 2011

Celestial Magic- Another Magic Spell, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

Our celestial magic is a variation of the effect in "A Magic Tour" (February 2011) which in turn was an adaptation from Jim Steinmeyer's Subsequent Impuzzibilities.


Answers And Solutions Nov 2011

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.


Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 44 Number 4 Nov 2011

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 44 Number 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.


Back Cover Nov 2011

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back Cover of this issue including instructions for authors.


Celebration Of Mind, Scott Hudson, Tom Rodgers Aug 2011

Celebration Of Mind, Scott Hudson, Tom Rodgers

Word Ways

Information about the second Martin Gardner Celebration of Mind.


Stinky Pinkies: Variations, A. Ross Eckler Aug 2011

Stinky Pinkies: Variations, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The standard stinky pinky is a two-word rhyming phrase such as FLOWER POWER or HAIRY LARRY. Common variations are achieved by inserting words such as THE or 'N' (as in SLICE IT 'n' ICE IT, to skin and freeze an animal, or CATCH the SCRATCH, to contract a case of poison ivy). Buzzwords (Crown Publishers, 1993) has a variety of unusual variations; a type-collection is given below.


Pieces Of Centaurs, Mike Keith Aug 2011

Pieces Of Centaurs, Mike Keith

Word Ways

The poem below is a sequel to "Octopi" (WW, Feb. 2009, p. 43) and obeys a similar lexical constraint to its predecessor. There is a hint regarding the constraint hidden in each stanza. What is the constraint, can you find the eight hints?


Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 44 Number 3 Aug 2011

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 44 Number 3

Word Ways

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


Fortunate Reversals, Richard Lederer Aug 2011

Fortunate Reversals, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

We intrepid logologists love to switch around letters within words -- adjacent letters (UNITED UNTIED), separated letters (CONVERSATION CONSERVATION), and initial and terminal letters (LATCHES SATCHEL). In some words we can interchange each half to form new words. Dmitri Borgmann called these leapfrogging specimens "cyclic transpositions." I prefer the more playful "fortunate reversals."


Close Call, Louis Phillips Aug 2011

Close Call, Louis Phillips

Word Ways

A poem.