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Mathematics Of Square Construction, Chris Long Feb 1993

Mathematics Of Square Construction, Chris Long

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

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Alphabetical Patterns, A. Ross Eckler Feb 1993

Alphabetical Patterns, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Readers of Word Ways should be familiar with the concept of word patterns, exemplified by Jack Levine's three-volume rearrangement of Webster's Second and Third Editions into groups of words having the same pattern such as EXCESS and BAMBOO. (Word patterns have even been discussed in large-circulation magazines: see physicist Sheldon Glashow's "The Game of Bop" in the Sep/Oct 1992 issue of Quantum.)

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Elvis Lives, Darryl Francis Feb 1993

Elvis Lives, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

ELVIS LIVES says the graffiti. You've seen it on tee-shirts, in headlines in the popular press, and on dozens of other items of an ephemeral nature. While the average reader of this particular item of graffiti probably notices that ELVIS and LIVES use the same letters, he or she probably muses over it for not more than a second or two, thinking how appropriate/cute/sad, before dismissing the matter. The serious logologist, however, gives the matter more attention.

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Colloquy Feb 1993

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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Crossnumber Forms, David Morice Feb 1993

Crossnumber Forms, David Morice

Word Ways

At a local soda fountain last year, Lloyd Quibble, a create poet friend of mine, showed me a grid that linked four number words in an unusual way. On first glance, I thought such a creation must be a rare glitch of language, maybe unique.

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Sliding-Block Anagram Puzzle, Leonard Gordon Feb 1993

Sliding-Block Anagram Puzzle, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

Here is a project that might appeal to the anagrammers among Word Ways readers. Anagramming is not my game, but maybe others can come up with something clever.

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1970-Point One-Move Scrabble, Jeff Grant Feb 1993

1970-Point One-Move Scrabble, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the May 1979 issue of Word Ways I modified Ron Jerome's 1961-point single-move Scrabble score using open sources, adding another point to it. Then in the August 1979 issue further modifications enabled another three points to be eked out. By altering four of the scouring words, I have now been able to push the total up to 1970 points, which may be approaching the limit for the bets known base-word BENZOXYCAMPHORS.

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Name Those Presidents!, Richard Lederer Feb 1993

Name Those Presidents!, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

I wish that Ross Perot had been elected president of the United States.

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A Survey Of Directed Word Chains, Leonard Gordon Feb 1993

A Survey Of Directed Word Chains, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

The idea of making chains by overlapping words is due to H. E. Dudeney, and is probably a follow-on of Lewis Carroll's word ladders. Dudeney used words of uniform length and constant overlap. Christopher McManus introduced Word Ways readers in November 1990 to Ana-Gram-mar (AGM) chains, ones in which the word length may vary, but there is always single overlap (each letter appears in exactly two words): house-man-slaughter-house, and gossy-pol-yester-morning-tide-water.

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Century Words, Susan Thorpe Feb 1993

Century Words, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In the use of alphanumeric scoring (A=1, B=2, etc.), attention has been given to the discovery of the 'lightest' and 'heaviest' words of a given length (Darryl Francis, 'Lighweights and Heavyweights', November 1972; Charles Bostick, 'Word Weights', May 1974; and Tom Pulliam in the November 1979 Colloquy). An alternative exercise, also based on alphanumeric scoring, is to discover the longest and shortest words having a given score, in this case 100.

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Opera's Not Over 'Til Arepo Returns, Peter Newby Feb 1993

Opera's Not Over 'Til Arepo Returns, Peter Newby

Word Ways

With the recent discovery in the north of England of yet another example of the famous Latin palindromic square illustrated at the left, it is time to review the mystery surrounding this clever construction. Found at an archeological site in Manchester, this joins the other discoveries in various sites throughout the lands of the former Roman Empire.

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Cryptickles, Vernon D. Maclaren Feb 1993

Cryptickles, Vernon D. Maclaren

Word Ways

In the November 1992 Kickshaws, Dave Morice quotes Mike Reiss "I'll wager that there is a word, common phrase, or well-known title that will cryptically clue every letter of the alphabet". Indeed there is; cryptic crossword constructors have been weaving their magic for over half a century. I add the following to the original list (also included).

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Tom Swiftie Potpourri, Mary Christie Craig Feb 1993

Tom Swiftie Potpourri, Mary Christie Craig

Word Ways

I've found a productive way to pass the time when I'm waiting unpatiently in a doctor's or dentist's office: I manufacture Tom Swifties. Remember them? They were the word game rage 25 years ago. Maybe it's time for a comeback, she reparteed.

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Kickshaws, David Morice Feb 1993

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Answers And Solutions Feb 1993

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

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Back Cover Feb 1993

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

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Reading Between The Lines, Christopher Mcmanus Feb 1993

Reading Between The Lines, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

Computers are usually blamed for the rise in newspaper linesetting errors. We have all frequently had the experience: reading to the end of one line of text, only to find that the next line has no grammatical connection. The answer is usually a dropped line or transposed lines. If several lines are printed in scrambled order, the rest can be a challenge to re-order.

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Bottoms Up! Feb 1993

Bottoms Up!

Word Ways

The evidence provided by the work of over a century of expert human formists, combined with that of several years of computer experiments by me, is unequivocal: all other things being equal, there is an enormous advantage to building large forms from the bottom word up, instead of from the top word down.

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Book Review: "Theology After Vedanta: An Experiment In Comparative Theology", Harold Coward Jan 1993

Book Review: "Theology After Vedanta: An Experiment In Comparative Theology", Harold Coward

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A review of Theology After Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology by Francis X. Clooney.

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It's Raining, It's Pouring, Kay Haugaard Nov 1992

It's Raining, It's Pouring, Kay Haugaard

Word Ways

Do teachers still tell students not to say "They say summer's going to be cool" or "They say magenta and turquoise are the hot new colors" because "they" in this usage is too indefinite? "Who does it refer to?" was always the standard question my teacher posed. "Who are 'they' and who are doing all these things?" she would ask emphatically, then go into something about antecedents.

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New Phonetic Name Search Algorithm, Alan Frank Nov 1992

New Phonetic Name Search Algorithm, Alan Frank

Word Ways

Telephone books work because the listings are generated in a way that ensures that the company has the correct spelling of your name, and when your friends look you up, they'll also generally have a pretty good idea of how it's spelled.

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Roller-Coaster Word Chains, Leonard Gordon Nov 1992

Roller-Coaster Word Chains, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In the Nov 1990 issue of Word Ways, Christopher McManus suggests finding ana-gram-mar chains in which word lengths increase and then decrease along the chain. Since jillions of ana-gram-mar chains are possible,k this is a good way to provide limits, but his idea can be improved by a more restrictive rule: increase or decrease in word length must be without halts, i.e., without inclusion of the chains of words of the same size. What is the longest chain with this new rule? Some fairly long ones are given below.

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On Word-Botching, Ted Clarke Nov 1992

On Word-Botching, Ted Clarke

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

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On Teaching Palindromes, Steven J. Chism Nov 1992

On Teaching Palindromes, Steven J. Chism

Word Ways

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines palindrome as "a word, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward as forward". As is often the case with limericks, sonnets, and other highly-structured but nowadays seldom-pursued literary creations, the few frequently-anthologized examples have come to be the only examples we know. This is certainly the case with the palindrome.

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Pygmalion: A Pappus Word Game, Jeremiah Farrell, David Wright Nov 1992

Pygmalion: A Pappus Word Game, Jeremiah Farrell, David Wright

Word Ways

The theorem of Pappus is a result from projective geometry about nine points and nine lines. It can be used as a basis for a word game similar to the game of David Silvermann using the word stockpile ARMY CHAT FISH GIRL HORN KNIT SOUP SWAN VOTE (A. Ross Eckler, "Word Recreations" (Dover Publications, 1979), p. 113).

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Climbing The White-House Ladder, Leonard Gordon Nov 1992

Climbing The White-House Ladder, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In a recent radio contest, Will Shortz asked for a Carrollian ladder with WHITE to HOUSE using all common words, and not allowing four-letter words pluralized with S. The Central ladder below is the solution he accepted. Lets see what one can do using less-common words form various dictionaries, or capitalized words.

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Greenwood Grammar, Douglas Greenwood Nov 1992

Greenwood Grammar, Douglas Greenwood

Word Ways

I don't know whether these (mostly) four-line verses of rhymed couplets deserve to be called recreational linguistics - but it has been fun comping them! There are many more figures of speech which could have been similarly treated; perhaps other Word Ways readers would care to try. These quatrains have the named figure of speech built in as an example: I hope the additional commons don't belabor the point too much. My thanks to the editor for improvements on some of the verses.

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Colloquy Nov 1992

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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X-X Word Update, Jeff Grant Nov 1992

X-X Word Update, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

The letter X has always fascinated people. It represents that unknown, the indefinable, the mysterious. An X may be used to designate a kiss, a ten-dollar bill, a type of chromosome, and a strength of ale, as well as a person's signature, a mistake, hybridity, and a movie rating. The X-Lexicon is an unpublished collection of approximately three thousand terms beginning with X (there are 486 solid-form X-words in the Air Force list of Webster's Second Edition). To further illustrate its comprehensiveness, the X-Lexicon contains 376 terms starting xanth-, from Xanthaea to xanthylium.

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Siamese Triplets, Peter Newby Nov 1992

Siamese Triplets, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Alongside is a nine-letter word example of my latest development in the technique of the insertion/deletion. As many long words consist of two or more simple words, one can, by considering these elements independently, bring into the realm of wordplay many long words otherwise denied standard treatment. Beauty of presentation is maintained by restricting all actions to within the confines of a rectangle, though other possibilities will be mentioned later. For convenience, therefore, I will refer to the original example as a rectangular triplet.

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