Digital Commons Network^™

New Categories Of Typewriter Words, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In the November 1999 Word Ways, Michael Keith introduced Misplaced-Hand words, in which one hand is in the wrong place on the keyboard. When both hands are offset, I call these Typewriter Shifts, defined by the direction (right or left) and the number of keys offset. For example, in a Left Shift PIMP - 5 = TEXT, and in a Right Shift REDS + 6 = POLK (OED).

The Star Wars Anagrams, Mike Morton

Word Ways

With the return to theaters of "Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace", I got to thinking about the meaning of the film. Critics like to talk about how George Lucas draws on the work of Joseph Campbell, whether the Force is God, and so on. But it turns out the meanings run much deeper. Here are various topical collections of anagrams constructed from these 32 letters.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Seventeen Synonyms Of Semordnilap, James Puder

Word Ways

One finds in the published literature on palindromes and their ilk an odd disparity: whereas there is presently only one name of any significance in the language for a palindrome, there exists a bewildering plethora of names for the palindrome's sibling, the word (or words) which forms a different word (or words) when read in reverse, an item which forms a different word (or words) when read in reverse, an item hereinafter referred to generically as a half-palindrome, to select a neutral term. Even among the current majority of those who favor some form of the word REVERSAL, there is …

Luis Goytisolo’S La Paradoja Del Ave Migratoria As Postmodern Allegory: A Critique Of Absolutism, Terri Carney

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Luis Goytisolo’s short work of fiction, La paradoja del ave migratoria, was published in 1987 in a Post-Franco Spain and a Postmodern world. I will investigate this unusual novel as a postmodern allegory, relying on Brian McHale’s assertion that postmodern allegory challenges the “unequivocalness of traditional allegories” by problematizing the naive assumption that abstract concepts can be communicated transparently through language (1987, 141). Luis Goytisolo populates his allegory with mythical, and historical characters that hail from a dizzying array of time periods, creating a heterotopic universe in which no one context of references serves as the key to interpretation. …

Reports & News

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

News and reports relevant to the organization and its topics.

Book Review: "Swami Vivekananda And The Modernisation Of Hinduism", Harold Coward

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism by William Radice.

Book Reviews, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of His Star in the East by Augustin Sauliere, Disputed Mission: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century India by Ines G. Zupanov, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America 1542-1773 by Gauvin Bailey, and The Call of the Orient: A Response by Jesuits in the Sixteenth Century by Anthony D'Costa.

Pc Madness, O. V. Michaelsen

Word Ways

The past decade has given rise to the amusement of creating politically-correct definitions. Merriam-Webster researchers have found the term "politically correct" in H.V. Morton's book In The Steps of Saint Paul, (1936). It was reported that the term was used in a 1793 US Supreme Court decision.

The Pi Code, Michael Keith

Word Ways

Martin Gardner's fictional Doctor Matrix used to say that, property interpreted, the number pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, whose decimal expansion begins 3.14159265897932384626...) contains the entire history of mankind. In this article I give some results of looking at pi in a relatively new way: as an infinite string of letters derived from its expansion in base 26 or base 27.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 32 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Literary Lipogrammatic Windows, Michael Keith

Word Ways

In this article I describe some results of looking for long sections of text in literary works that happen to be lipograms of various sorts. The investigation was carried out by a computer search of the 15000 books (mostly well-known works such as the Bible, the novels of Austen, Dickens, Twain, and so on) that have been put into electronic form by Project Gutenberg.

Headlines I Have Loved, Mary Christie Craig

Word Ways

The headline writers for our local newspaper, the Town Talk, have to be closet punsters. There's no other explanation for the play-on-words banners which so frequently appear in boldface. Here are my favorites, most of which are self-explanatory.

Swapping Terminal Letters, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Richard Lederer in the Nov 1997 Word Ways mentioned words which become other words when their terminal letters are interchanged (the first and the last letter are swapped), as SWINDLES to SWINDLED. He gave seven examples of four-letter pairs, five examples of the "rarer" five-letter pairs, and three examples of six-letter "prize" pairs, given them the title "simultaneous loopers" since the two letters are looped to the other end of the word at the same time.

Geometeric Letters, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

STRAIGHT LINE LETTERS ONLY (AEFHIKLMNTVWXYZ)

Longest word made from straight line letters: possibly METHYLHEXANEAMINE (Dorland's Medical Dictionary). (ZENZIZENZIZENZIc and sym-METHYLETHYLETHYLENE have straight line strings of 15, 19 letters.)

Longest straight line letter heterogram: several, including WILKHAVEN and WYKHAMITE, have 9 letters

Sex And The Taxman, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

This is an extension of the classic palindrome SEX AT NOON TAXES. Originally the piece was titled POLL OR TAX A TROLLOP, but I discarded it, because Vi, Eve, Kate, and Noelle are not loose women. Here, then, are the afternoon and evening trails and temptations of a dedicated, but accommodating (and energetic) revenue collector. Or perhaps it's all just the product of an overactive imagination!

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

All That She Had On Was The Radio, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In De Logologische Ruimte (Meulenhoff, 1984), Rudy Kousbroek honored the French Oulipan Gorges Perec with many wordplay variants of Marilyn Monroe's famous remark about the calendar picture of her in the nude: "All I had on was the radio." The following is a translation of his article (with interpretation for non-Dutch readers).

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

The Adeinrst Alphome, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the May 1999 Word Ways, Rex Gooch introduced the term alphome to readers. This is used to refer to the letters of a word arranged in alphabetical order. For example, AEGINRST is the alphome of the words ASTRINGE, GRANITES, and so on. Elsewhere in the same issue. Ross Eckler noticed the relative paucity of ADEINRST transposals in published sources: DETRAINS, STRADINE, STRAINED, TARNSIDE. According to the statistics presented in his article, ADEINRST should be marginally more fecund than AEGINRST in producing transposals.

Word Trees In Running Text, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In "Mysterious Precognitions" in the August 1998 Word Ways, Martin Gardner showed how to generate the sequence of words in running text. Start with any word, and use the following (iterative) rule: if the ith word in the sequence has n(i) letters, then the (i+1)st word is located n(i) words further in the running text. For example, take the first sentence of this paragraph: pick IN as the first word, count two words to PRECOGNITIONS, count thirteen more words to A, count one more word to SEQUENCE, and so on.

Yes, We Have No Ascenders (Part 2), Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In the first part of this article (May 1999), we presented words consisting solely of ascenders (bdfhiklt], descenders (gjpqy), body letters (acemnorsuvwxz), or ascenders or decenders. In this part, we consider words consisting of cyclic mixtures of the various types. For example, Darryl Francis gave SINCIZING and LUTEINIZING as alternating body

Typewriter Words, Michael Keith

Word Ways

In this article we probe the subject of wordplay based on the typewriter keyboard. Dmitri Borgmann devoted two pages to this topic in Language on Vacation; we start by re-examining his findings and then consider some new topics.

Unlimited-Bag Scrabble, Stephen Root

Word Ways

In the November 1984 Word Ways, Alan Frank presented a 7096-point Scrabble game using an unlimited bag of titles. His dictionary of record was Webster's Second, allowing unsanctioned words like BENZDIOXDIAZINE. Here is a 6250-point solution based on Scrabble-sanctioned words from the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary and the 10th edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Drawn Inward And Other Poems: Part 1, Mike Maguire

Word Ways

In Umbrage

At one mention,

lying ravens

peck soft hearts.

See kind images

in a memento.

Go dig at her scar.

Let no test end.

Anger

slays her, elapses.

Words Of A Feather, William Young

Word Ways

Have you ever encountered a white-whiskered hermit or a festive coquette? How about a rifleman or a firewood-gatherer? Have you seen a village weaver or a bearded mountaineer? What about a red-tailed comet or a shining sunbeam? If you answered in the affirmative to any of these questions, you are probably a birdwatcher, because these are all names of birds from around the world. The common names of birds reflect a use of language almost as colorful as their plumages.

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Split Sentence Transposals, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Most of us are familiar with words like HORSESHOER in which the letters making the first half of the word are transposed to make the second half of the word. The following examples can all be found in previous issues of Word Ways, and most recently appeared amongst Rex Gooch's list of pair isograms in the February 1998 issue.

Changing Male Name Fashions 1870-1950, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

This article is based on a talk given to the 23rd Annual Names Institute of the American Names Society on May 5, 1984.

Bananagrams 7, Edmund Conti

Word Ways

Bananagrams--anagrams to drive you bananas--consist of rhymed couplets, each one containing a pair of anagrams to be solved. One of the rhyming words will always be an anagram, and the couplet itself will offer clues to help solve the anagrams. Answers will be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.