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Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

The Bellamy Charades, Doris Nash Wortman

Word Ways

Fifty years ago in Boston, there was a best-selling author who had been enjoying a most successful limelight for six or seven years when, to the surprise of everybody, a shy retiring brother of his - an excellent public accountant not supposed to be a writer at all - leaped with a book into a successful limelight of his own.

Nobody's News, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A few blocks form here, there lived a man named Nobody. He used to have a normal first, middle, and last name, but he officially changed all three to just one word, Nobody. When anyone asked him why, he said "I'm a nobody, like billions of other people in the world, but they're afraid to admit it."

Classic Latin Palindromes, Ove Michaelsen

Word Ways

In his book Literary Frivolities; Fancies, Follies, and Frolics (London, 1880), William T. Dobson related the following medieval story (taken from Hone's Everyday-Book) showing that his Satanic Majesty was a master of palindromic wordplay.

Selfish, Selfless, And Equable Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Selfish words (from 1,200 examples)

I have often been taught that I would be rude to readers if I continually used the pronoun I in sentences I wrote: I would be accused of solipsism as well as a publishing solecism. Indeed, people who are enthusiastic about political correctness might say, without even thinking (too difficult for them anyway), that one ought to avoid words with too many of the letter i.

Enlarging English Tautonyms, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In a companion article, Hugo Brandt Corstius exhibits a set of Dutch words consisting of a tautonyms to which have been added an additional letter of the alphabet in the beginning, in the middle, or at the end. This article exhibits corresponding English words drawn from Webster's Second or Third (except when noted). When the extra letter is the middle, these words were christened by John Ferguson as Heads 'n' Tails Words, and a type collection was presented by Murray Pearce in the August 1971 Word Ways (with some better examples in February 1972).

Sub-60-Letter Pangrammatic Windows, Mike Keith

Word Ways

The November 2005 Kickshaws reported the discovery of Dave Moore of a 61-letter pangrammatic window (contiguous string of letters in a published text that contains every letter of the alphabet at least once) in Bret Harte's Flip: A California Romance. Although reported as a new record, that discovery just ties the 61-letter example found in 2004 by Dan Tilque in The Detroit News and mentioned in Word Ways at the time - though it is nearly undeniable that the Bret Harte example is of higher quality, as the Detroit News window contains proper names as well as two numerals, whereas …

How To Increase Your Vocabulary

Word Ways

The easiest way to increase your vocabulary is to MAKE UP WORDS! Like the amusing "interocitor" from an old s-f movie. Here is a new way to make up words: combine prefixes and suffixes with no substantive element in between, forcing them to take on substantive roles themselves. Here are some new words of that style. The big bonus for logologists is that these may now be treated as legit words since they have appeared in print as bold entries in a linguistics journal!

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Answers To Bellamy's 500 Charades, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

For those fortunate enough to own one or more of the Bellamy books, here are the solutions to his puzzles. The answers to A Century of Charades are contained in Harland Ballard's Open Sesame, and the answers to A Second Century of Charades are contained in Re-Open Sesame. I am indebted to Will Shortz for supplying the answers to More Charades.

Elementary Transadditions, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The names of chemical elements are an interesting group of names to conjure with. First of all, there's over one hundred of them, depending on how you can count them. Secondly, there's a good mix of short names, and in-between names.

Shifts Progress, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A shift is the process which occurs when the letters of one word are all shifted the same number of steps along the alphabet (looping from Z to A) to make another word. For example OHM + 1 = PIN, whilst CHEER + 7 = jolly. Here, I refer to these as basic shifts. This article examines other types of shift in which the shift values are not all the same but which abide by various rules. Each series of shift values makes a shift pattern.

An Alphabet Reversal Verse, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most Word Ways readers are aware of alphabet poems. Nyr Indictor gave a brief history of them in the August 1995 Word Ways, citing both simple-minded one for children (popular a couple of centuries ago).

Top-Eye, The Peyote Man, Jim Puder

Word Ways

I was much impressed by Susan Thorpe's article "Constrained Pyramids" in the February issue of Word Ways. Her constrained word pyramids seems almost magically ingenious. Her creations, along with Anil's recent discussion of the impregnate-permeating anagram, inspired the keyboard doodle below. In my little transposing sailor man (to avoid copyright infringement, let's call him Top-Eye which neatly transposes to what he's got in his pipe), the makeup of a letter group changes only to add or drop letters when the word length changes.

Meaningful Offspring, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Rearranged, the letters of a parent word may give rise to two perfectly legitimate offspring. Some parent words produce pairs of offspring which are related to meaning to each other and also, in some cases, to the parent word. MUSLINETTE hides the synonyms SILENT and MUTE; BAPTISE hides the antonyms TIP and BASE; WORTHILY hides the phrase HOLY WRIT, and so on.

Letter Lengths, Eric Iverson, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Define the length of a letter as the sum of the lengths of its component straight lines and arcs (ignoring details such as serifs). Thus, the length of V is a little more than twice the length of I in most fonts, as O is greater than C, and B and R both greater than P. To fix ideas, we define the uppercase letters as a combination of straight lines and arcs of circles. Nearly all the letters can be embedded in rectangles 2 units by 1 unit in size, except for C, O, W and Q, all of which …

Frequency Heterograms

Word Ways

I. Transposals of ETAOIN SHRDLU

Etaoin shrdlu, the twelve most used English letters in order by an old count, is an entry in Webster's 3rd (W3) as the Linotype not-to-be-printed marker slug. When I noticed that malnourished misses by one letter (t) being a transposals of it I was tantalised and sought a full transposal.

A New Fourteen-Letter Transposition, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The Saturday 17 December 2005 World Wide Words (Issue 472), edited by Michael Quinion, exhibited the neologism SINISTROSPHERE: "This has started to appear online as a disparaging collective term for bloggers with left-wing political affiliations. Its opposite is the dextrosphere, a sweeter-sounding and must less sinister term. Both words are based on blogosphere, a collective term for the whole blogging environment."

Enlarging Dutch Tautonyms, Hugo Brandt Corstius

Word Ways

In the table below, I present a near-complete set of Dutch words that consist of tautonyms to which have been added a single letter, either in front, in the middle, or behind. A few of the words (italicized) can be used either in the first or third column. Koekoek and wouwouw are bird names.

Brain Teaser, Ove Michaelsen

Word Ways

Place a new word in front of each word on this list, forming either word or a common two-word phrase. What do the 102 new words have in common? Where does LOOSE belong on this list?

Un-Truthful Words

Word Ways

Four is the definitive "truthful word" because it has four letters. "Unfour" is also truthful as it doesn't have four letters, but is untruthful as it's not a real word. Following an excursion into the un-section of the dictionary I found heaps of truthful and untruthful words, as well as some both truthful and untruthful--like unfour but real words. Here's a sampling, mostly of linguistic interest.

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Etymology Of Sexual Terms, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Sex is often discussed in the allegedly more respectable terminology derived from classical languages, but sometimes Anglo-Saxon "four-letter words" are boldly employed. Seldom do we think of where these words came from. Can you state the terms derived as follows? Some are of debatable origin, but i do not include those (such as pimp) "of unknown origin". Extra points for virtue if any or all are unfamiliar to you!

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.

Bookstore Names For Fun And Profit, Bennie Hollingsworth

Word Ways

If the Internet has done anything, it has caused a proliferation of "bookish" activity - dusting off, re-reading, swapping, borrowing, buying and selling. I, for one, has gotten caught up in this melee. My general modus operandi is to do garage sales and pass the wonderful bargains I find on to other anxious Internet book freaks.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 39 Issue 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

"Did You Just Make That Up?" Puns In Everyday Conversation, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

The hallmark of the compleat punster is the ability to work puns into real-life situations - and to do so in an appropriate, natural and spontaneous way. Unless one is skilled at ad-libbing, it's best to have a repertoire of material to draw upon. Your objective is to be regarded as clever and witty rather than irritating. But opinions may differ.

Infants’ Perception Of Rhythmic Patterns, Tonya R. Bergeson, Sandra E. Trehub

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

We explored 9-month-old infants perception of auditory temporal sequences in a series of three experiments. In Experiment 1, we presented some infants with tone sequences that were expected to induce a strongly metric framework and others with a sequence that was expected to induce a weakly metric framework or no such framework. Infants detected a change in the context of the former sequences but not in the latter sequence. In Experiment 2, infants listened to a tone sequence with temporal cues to duple or triple meter. Infants detected a change in the pattern with duple meter but not in the …

The Promiscuity Of Print: John Clare’S ‘Don Juan’ And The Culture Of Romantic Celebrity, Jason N. Goldsmith

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This essay offers a new reading of John Clare's "Don Juan," a hard-hitting and deliberately vulgar denunciation of English society and letters. In his extended Byronic performance, Clare harnesses Byron's famed sexual appetite and strong Romantic irony to dramatic effect, defiantly redeploying the machinery of literary celebrity that had produced him as "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet." Tracing Clare's imaginative and textual investments in prostitutes and boxers, figures located at the margins of London's criminal underworld, I show how the compulsive misogyny of "Don Juan" and its obscene sexual punning form part of a concerted, if not entirely coherent, response to …