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The Chemistry Of Placenames, Dan Tilque May 1997

The Chemistry Of Placenames, Dan Tilque

Word Ways

When asked about the relationship between the chemical elements and placenames, those knowledgeable in etymology will point out the several elements that derive their names from those of cities or towns. Holmium is derived from Stockholm, Sweden; lutetium comes form Lutetia, the Roman name from Paris; berkelium from Berkeley, California; and strontium indirectly comes form Strontian, a village in Scotland. No less than four elements--erbium, ytterbium, and yttrium--are derived from Ytterby, a Swedish mining town.

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Reversals Revisited, Christopher Mcmanus May 1997

Reversals Revisited, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

Words embedded in unrelated words are a frequent source of word play. When the embedded word occurs in reverse order, the surprise factor is further increased. For example, a recent cryptic crossword included the punning clue "We sent up plant monster". The answer was WEREWOLF, i.e., WE followed by FLOWER reversed. Another answer in the same puzzle was DAIRYMAID. It's clue dissected the answer into AID preceded by the reversal of MYRIAD.

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Codebreaker Grids, Peter Newby May 1997

Codebreaker Grids, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Recently two British newspapers have launched the next generation of crosswords -- codebreaker grinds. Resembling a standard crossword in format, the only difference being each blank square has its own number from 1 to 26, there are virtually no clues but let me quote the Daily Mail's Codeword instructions to give you a flavour of the challenge.

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6x6 Magic Word Squares, Leonard Gordon May 1997

6x6 Magic Word Squares, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

This article shows how to construct a 6x6 magic word square using the method described in my "Eulerian Magic Word Squares" (November, 1996). The method is based on starting with an Eulerian square, but since a 6x6 Eulerian square does not exist, I must modify the method to make it work. Figure 2 is a well-known magic square. Figure 3 is derived from it by converting to base 6. Let's convert it to words, first for ordinary gementria, then for wints.

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Cyclic Difference Words, Rex Gooch May 1997

Cyclic Difference Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

As discussed in "Word Arithmetic" in the November 1996 Word Ways, there are two ways to construct difference words. The first was examined in detail in "Absolute Difference Words" in February; the second is the subject of this article. Briefly, a cyclic difference word is formed form a source word such as VASE (22.1.19.5) by subtracting the ith number from the (i+1)st, if necessary adding 26 to the latter to make them different positive (5 = 27.22, 18 = 19-1 = 31-19, yielding the target word ERL).

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Mary Had A Letter Lamb, Richard Lederer May 1997

Mary Had A Letter Lamb, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Perhaps the most famous of all children's poems is the eight liens of verse composed by Sarah Josepha Hale and published in 1830 in Poems of Our Children.

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Murderous Wordplay, Peter Newby May 1997

Murderous Wordplay, Peter Newby

Word Ways

The 1678 murder of Justice Godfrey is known as 'England's longest unsolved murder' despite the fact that three men were hanged, drawn and quartered for the crime. These dupes were--as Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to be--the 'fall guys' for a powerful group of conspirators whose ultimate target was the head to state, the Stuart monarch.

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More Words Newfound, Words Reobserved, Darryl Francis May 1997

More Words Newfound, Words Reobserved, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the February 1994 issue of Word Ways. I offered a collection of 26 words, one for each letter of the alphabet, which had caught my attention over the preceding months. Some of the words were new, most had been in existence for many years. But all of them had some special property worthy of note to logologists.

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The Commonest Double Word Squares, M. Douglas Mcilroy May 1997

The Commonest Double Word Squares, M. Douglas Mcilroy

Word Ways

Draw a stock of n-letter words in decreasing order of frequency from Kucera and Francis's Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English until they yield a double word square. For n=2,3,4,5, word stocks of 15,66,326 and 1444 are needed, in good agreement with Chris Cole's theoretical predictions of 16, 63, 250 and 992 given in "Mathematics of Square Construction" in February 1993. The Kucera and Francis frequencies (in word per million) are given next to the words in each square.

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The Boys Of Summer, Leonard R. N. Ashley May 1997

The Boys Of Summer, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

See if you can hit a home run on this quiz. Play it to the bleechers! Baseball, the national game, has done much for the national language. Give the baseball-inspired slang for the following. Ready? Step up to the plate. Play ball!

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Lame Duck Or Swan Song?, Robert C. Layton May 1997

Lame Duck Or Swan Song?, Robert C. Layton

Word Ways

The media has of late confused the status of reelected officials not eligible for an additional term, referring to them as "lame ducks". Governor George Allen of Virginia and President Clinton are prime examples. Although the animal term is inappropriate for their situation, both men will have to come to terms with the animal kingdom in their respective positions.

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Answers And Solutions May 1997

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

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Back Cover May 1997

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

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Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 30 Issue 2 May 1997

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 30 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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The Unstoppable Aeginrst Machine, Darryl Francis May 1997

The Unstoppable Aeginrst Machine, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Previous issues of Word Ways have contained the various transposals of the letter AEGINRST, building on Dmitri Borgmann's initial attempts in Language on Vacation. Ross Eckler's superb Making the Alphabet Dance presented all known 157 transposals of these letters.

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Avian Tautonyms, Susan Thorpe May 1997

Avian Tautonyms, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In my "AEIOU Words in Biology" in the February 1994 Word Ways, I conjectured that the Boat-billed Heron, Cochlearius cochlearius cochlearius, was possibly unique in having the five vowels once in each of its genus, species and subspecies names. Since then i have discovered a further 51 genus/species/subspecies trinomial tautonyms from the world of birds.

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Single-Letter Words, Stephen J. Chism, Andrea Cantrell May 1997

Single-Letter Words, Stephen J. Chism, Andrea Cantrell

Word Ways

Basic building blocks of the English language, the good old ABCs, are frequently used singly to convey an entire word or concept. More than just popular acronyms or initialisms, single-letter words help communicate simply and succinctly complex processes, well-known organizations, familiar brand names, legal designations, and physical objects from large to small.

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Kickshaws, David Morice May 1997

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Washington For Word Watchers, Christopher Mcmanus Feb 1997

Washington For Word Watchers, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

America's capital city is famous for many features, including its architecture and monuments, historical associations, and ongoing political intrigues. Washington D.C. has been described as "the only place where sound travels faster then light." Unknown to the general public, however, Washington has several claims to the logological hall of fame. The following paragraphs attempt to dispel this ignorance and reveal the true basis of Washington's unique spot in the word lovers' pantheon.

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Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 30 Issue 1 Feb 1997

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 30 Issue 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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Hey, Dog - Run (No Sweat!), Doug Nufer Feb 1997

Hey, Dog - Run (No Sweat!), Doug Nufer

Word Ways

The morning brought a problem that wouldn't go away. Although it sounded like an old putdown, we went to every thrift store in Billyville, Arkansas, looking for the right mixture of chintzy and snappy, so we could show off without thumbing our noses. When we got dressed, nobody was going to tell us "I wouldn't wear that to a dog fight" because we were off to the races.

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New Word Palindromes, Will Shortz Feb 1997

New Word Palindromes, Will Shortz

Word Ways

Michael Donner's fine recent book on palindromes. I love Me, Vol. I. got me thinking about word palindromes and the paucity of examples cited in the standard collections. Besides the classic "All of one and one for all," the cry of the Three Musketeers, the following specimens are among the few that are generally cited in illustrating the genre.

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Computer Jotto And Crash, Leonard Gordon Feb 1997

Computer Jotto And Crash, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

The August 1996 article "Playing Jotto Against a Computer" discusses the game of Jotto as played by a commercial computer program. Toward the end of the article, the authors suggest a "better" (minimax) value of play. I agree that their method is too difficult to implement, but I also believe that it is based on a weak premise and would be useless even if implemented. There can be no compleat strategy to Jotto. Guessing your opponent's word is a matter of bookkeeping plus a little luck. Since the computer is a better bookkeeper and knows its vocabulary better than a …

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Julian Calendar Verse, Jan Anderson Feb 1997

Julian Calendar Verse, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

Dateline Rome:

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A Collection Of Nine-Squares, Richard Sabey Feb 1997

A Collection Of Nine-Squares, Richard Sabey

Word Ways

This article shows some of the results of a computer search for regular nine-squares. My earlier article on eight-squares reported on a search confined to solid all-lowercase eight-letter words. Standards had to be lowered for the nine-square search, and I included capitalised terms, hyphenated words and multiple-word phrases.

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Colloquy Feb 1997

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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A Bilingual Pun Is Twice The Fun, Richard Lederer Feb 1997

A Bilingual Pun Is Twice The Fun, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

The all-time prize for transmitting the fullest message with the greatest compactness must go to Sir Charles James Napier. In 1843, Napier quelled an uprising in the Indian province of Sind and announced his triumph via telegram to his commanders in London. All he wrote was the one word Peccavi.

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Palindromic Habitations, Andrea Cantrell Feb 1997

Palindromic Habitations, Andrea Cantrell

Word Ways

A street's a street, right? Only when you can ignore street signs and maps! I once had to criss-cross an entire city because I had failed to note if an address was on Canyon Lane or Canyon Terrace. Whether they are written out or abbreviated, it is important to pay careful attention to designations for roads, routes, avenues, places, lanes, squares, terraces, circles, heights, and plain old streets.

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Fledge Ledge Edge, Jan Anderson Feb 1997

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 …

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Number Name Equations, Susan Thorpe Feb 1997

Number Name Equations, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

123 can be expressed as a number name in one of two basic ways: ONE HUNDRED (AND) TWENTY THREE (the British include and, the Americans exclude and) or ONE TWO THREE. Dmitri Borgmann illustrated both in the November 1985 Colloquy. Assigning A=1, B=2, etc., he constructed TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE = 251, ONE FOUR SIX = 146 and TWO OUGHT OUGHT = 200. (He defended the last one by noting that ought is given as a variant of aught in the Collegiate dictionaries).

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