Digital Commons Network^™

Full-Name Palindromes, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

For many years, wordsmiths have been devising anagrams based on the first name and surname of all sorts of people, usually famous ones. Some examples:

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Answering The Sallows Challenge

Word Ways

In his February 1990 Word Ways article, "The New Merology," Lee Sallows challenges the reader to find more than 46 self-descriptive number names between 0 and 99 by assigning suitable integral values to the different letters in each name. It's easy! The key idea is to "square" the array as described in the article "38 Self-Descriptive Number Names" in the February 1990 Word Ways.

The Alphabet Cube, David Morice

Word Ways

You've just bought an Alphabet Cube for $26 from K-Mart. It measures one foot long and each side, and it comes with a remote control panel displaying a course of buttons. A sign on the box says: "Operates on triple A batteries (included)." It's ready to work.

Set Squares, Peter Newby

Word Ways

It would appear that the contributors to Word Ways have abandoned interest in the lower orders of word squares in favour of computerized 8-by-8s and 9-by-9s. May I suggest, therefore, an original challenge to rekindle the spirit of the pure pencil and paper practitioners: Set Squares.

Concrete Considerations, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

On reading that a number of priests had gathered for a CONCELEBRATION of the Mass, it seemed that a formula had presented itself for the generation of collective verbs which might be used in the manner of the spate of collective nouns with which we have become familiar. James Lipton's "An Exaltation of Larks" (Grossman Publishers, 1968; paperback edition Penguin Books, 1977) sets forth large numbers of legitimate collective nouns and adds many new coinages, from a colony of bacteriologists to a cc of Mexicans.

Minimum-Length Pangrammatic Ladders, Leonard J. Gordon

Word Ways

A pangrammatic word ladder is one which contains at least one of every letter of the alphabet. Since letters in a ladder can be changed only one at a time, a minimum-length ladder of n-letter words contains 26 - n + 1 words.

Oxymoronology, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Not long ago, a couple I know tooled down to a local car emporium to look over the latest products. Attracted to the low sticker price on the basic model, they told the salesman that they were considering buying an unadorned automobile and had no inclination to purchase any of the long list of options affixed to the side windown of the vehicle they were inspecting.

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

People Of The Nineties, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

As we enter the last decade of this century, we are using the terminology of the Seventies and Eighties. Who are these different group of people? You know about wimps and yuppies, and recall hippies and such; who are these in Mod Squad?

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

We Regroup To Lie Off The Spanish Main, Pete Stickland

Word Ways

Following "To Free Up a Wealth of Shining Promise" in the November 1989 Word Ways, I constructed another 300 anagrams of WHAT IS THE MEANING OR PURPOSE OF LIE: 75 quatrains extending what originator John Henrick envisions as "a significant collection in its own right." Having passed the 500 mark, I propose to limit annual output to 1000 anagrams so that Henrick may more easily keep track. Perhaps he might comment on the number of considers "significant"? After glimpsing the vast potential, I now see a million anagrams as insignificant, requiring a mere man-millenium of title shuffling.

The New Merology, Lee Sallows

Word Ways

Old merology, or that branch of anatomy which deals with the elementary tissues and fluids of the body, we know about. What of the new?

Scrabble In Nursery Rhyme, John Holgate

Word Ways

There was an old woman who hid in her shoe

Some esses for gaining a point (sometimes, two).

SHe sneaked them in one at a time

And no one detected the crime --

But when she played SASSAFRAS, SISSY and SMILES,

Her opponent demanded a recount of titles.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 23 Issue 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Who's Flaithbhertach Macloingry?, Murray R. Pearce

Word Ways

In the November 1989 Word Ways George H. Scheetz presented a list of 51 words ending in -gry. His fascinating article piqued my interest and I immediately set out to find some additions to his list.

38 Self-Descriptive Number Names, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

If one sets A = 1, B = 2, .... Z = 26, the number-name ONE scores 15 + 14 + 5 = 34, the number-name TWO scores 20 + 23 + 15 = 58, and so on. In the August 1981 Word Ways, Edward Wolpow observed that no number-name is self-descriptive; that is, no number-name is equal to its score. (However TWO HUNDRED NINETEEN has a score of 218, and TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE, 254.) In the November 1989 Kickshaws, David Morice suggested that this melancholy state of affairs could be rectified by rearranging the alphabet; for example, if …

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Word Ladders Of Today, Leonard J. Gordon

Word Ways

In an earlier article, I showed how many of the classic word ladders proposed by Lewis Carroll could be shortened with the aid of the computer. In this article, I use the computer to construct many new word ladders having various characteristics.

Common Acronym Words, Chris Cole

Word Ways

As computerized word lists become readily available to the loglogists, many of the previously difficult problems that have filled the pages of Word Ways become trivial. It is therefore interesting to begin researching problems that cannot be solved with word lists. A dictionary provides four pieces of information about a word: spelling, pronunciation, etymology and meaning. This suggests three types of problems for systematic logological research, in ascending order of difficulty: pronunciation (homophones, refractory rhymes, syllables, etc.), etymology (this article) and meaning (homographs, autantonyms, contronyms, etc.). Although these topics have appeared in Word Ways, they have not received the kind …

Carnival Speech: Making The Jump, Sarah Hautzinger

Word Ways

If one day you decide to forsake conventional life and run away with a carnival, one of the first things you'll notice is that you don't understand a lot of what is being said. Often persons just hired to a carnival crew aren't even called by name until they have made the jump, or traveled to a new location, at least once. In a subculture with such transient population, newcomers are mere first o'May, wing nuts or often simply green help.

Further Struggles With A Ten-Square, G. H. Ropes

Word Ways

In the May 1988 Word Ways I described my struggle to construct a non-tautonymic ten-square -- with less than stellar results. Since that time, I have collaborated with Eric Albert of Auburndale, Massachusetts, who has programmed his PC to search for useful combination of the three or four bottom words. By useful combinations, I mean that these words are chosen to generate plausible ending such as -ENCE, -ING, -TION, etc., for all ten proposed words of the square.

Sumwords: A New Crossword Game, Peter Newby

Word Ways

The letter B occurs, on average, once in every hundred letters of standard English prose. So, too, do the letters G and V. By contrast, those same hundred letters will include 13 E's, 9 T's, and 4 D's, but J, K, Q, X, and Z will, in all probability, be completely absent. Assigning individual letter values which reflect a realistic view of their frequency of use int he language and including decimal points up to 0.5, we have the following tables:

Fresh Silo Polish, Serf!, Patrick O'Brien

Word Ways

I find the art of palindrome creation both fascinating and ridiculous. The difficulty, especially with longer ones, is trying to insure that everything makes sense. It never does, so I content myself with developing a theme of sorts and hope the other 70 or 80 per cent of the words are not too bothersome.

Sumwords: Record Scores And Anagrams, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

I first present a list of just over a hundred sumgrams (words with equal numerical value) of the longest words I was able to conquer. Note that one pair of reasonably common words could be construed as opposites: EXTRAORDINARINESS and STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS. Note also that all pairs of words with endings -IST and -ISMS are sumgrams, as the values of M and S sum to the value of T. I have included the longest such specimens in my list.

The Palindromicon, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

The Palindromicon is a collection of over 2000 palindromic terms accumulated over many years of searching. Most of the words listed can be found in major English reference words; however, many are drawn from more obscure sources, and a good number of the best inferred examples are also entered. Trade-names have been included, as well as a few two-word terms. Given names, surnames and full names of people are listed, but no abbreviations, acronyms, numerals, symbols or names containing initials. A substantial number of foreign-language palindromes are also cited, together with various nonce-words from the likes of "Finnegan's Wake" by …

Letter-Shift Words In The Ospd, Leonard J. Gordon

Word Ways

In the November 1979 Word Ways, the editor explored the subject of letter-shift words (words which can be trasmuted into each other by constant shifts along the alphabet, as CHEER to JOLLY or PECAN to TIGER). Confining himself to the Merriam-Webster Pock Dictionary, he showed that letter-shift words come in 13 varieties, according to the distance shifted along the alphabet. More recently, the topic of letter-shift words was reopened by Dave Morice (who exhibited an analogue device for more quickly finding such pairs) and Anthony Sebastian (who showed how it could be done using a spreadsheet program). About the only …

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

Joel David Funk, Joel David Funk

Word Ways

An article with the title identical to the author's name? It's not that I'm an egotist, it's just that one has a lifetime of experience with one's own name and it's logological permutations.

Wild West Words From The Spanish, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

The history of the American West is full of the adventures of the Spanish explorers. They have left their mark on the American language in both words from the Spanish and words via the Spanish from the Amerindians; for instance, barbecue is from the SPanish version of Taino Indian for "a structure of sticks." In these pages, I often confront readers with rather difficult quizzes about words. This time the quiz may be easy for you, no problema, for these are odinary American words and SPanish is the language of a large and growing minority in this ocuntry, familiar …