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British Car Registrations, Darryl Francis Feb 1989

British Car Registrations, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In his August 1988 Word Ways article, "Unabbreviation", Stuart Baird offered a license-plate game. This game could be played with various different rules, leading to different "best" solutions.

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Transposals Of 15 Or More Letters, Kyle Corbin Feb 1989

Transposals Of 15 Or More Letters, Kyle Corbin

Word Ways

Two words are called transposals if they use the same letters in a different order. The letters may be rearranged only slightly, as in BACHELOR-BUTTONS and BACHELOR'S-BUTTON (a "trivial" transposal), or they may be quite mixed, as in COUNTERDOCTRINES and RECONSTRUCTIONED ("nontrivial"). Word Ways has published many short nontrivial transposals and a few long trivial and nontrivial ones over the years. In 1987 I discovered several new long nontrivial transposals during related logological research, and I soon began keeping a list of all the trivial and nontrivial transposals of at least 15 letters I could find. That list great into …

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Berserk Revel Grew Tough, Ha!, Mike Morton Feb 1989

Berserk Revel Grew Tough, Ha!, Mike Morton

Word Ways

Not being the sort of publication that normally covers mainstream events, we were a bit puzzled when the White House recently requested that we attend an interview with President Bush. Nevertheless, we contacted a subscriber living nearby, Carol Montheim, who graciously agreed to do the interview. Upon her arrival at the White House, the mystery was cleared up: President Bush had lost his voice in an hour-long shouting match with Dan Rather which was never aired.

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Listen To The Mocking Word, William Tunstall-Pedoe Feb 1989

Listen To The Mocking Word, William Tunstall-Pedoe

Word Ways

I wish you would stop apologising.

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Colloquy Feb 1989

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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A Trivia Challenge, Peter Newby Feb 1989

A Trivia Challenge, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Many word buffs enjoy a solitary investigation, and for them "Pears Advanced Word-Puzzler's Dictionary" (Pelham Books, London: 1987), reviewed elsewhere in this issue, offers a unique feature. Certain words in the dictionary have usual features worthy of recording as footnotes to their individual entries:

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Word Network Spans In The Ospd, Leonard J. Gordon Feb 1989

Word Network Spans In The Ospd, Leonard J. Gordon

Word Ways

A word network is a set of words of a given length in which any two words differing by only one letter in a single position (such as aunt and runt, or hire and hare) are connected by a line. Using these lines, one can trace out a path leading from any word in a network to any other word in the same network. The terminal words, together with the intermediate words in the path, form a word ladder, well-known since the days of Lewis Caroll (who invented the concept, calling the terminal words doublets and the intermediate words …

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10-By-10 Squares: Progress Report, Frank Rubin Feb 1989

10-By-10 Squares: Progress Report, Frank Rubin

Word Ways

In the August 1988 Word Ways, I wrote about my plans to launch a computer attack on the 10-by-10 double word square. I asked for help from Word Ways readers who might help gather 10-letter words from dictionaries and other sources. I received only one reply, from George H. Ropes, who had just written an article on his own search for a 10-by-10 word square. He had the Air force word list from Webster's Second on diskettes, and graciously supplied those diskettes to me.

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The Franklin Wordmaster, Bruce Pyne Feb 1989

The Franklin Wordmaster, Bruce Pyne

Word Ways

In my August 1988 Word Ways article, I described an electronic speller, the Spelling Ace, issued by Franklin Computer of Pennsauken. New Jersey for less than $60. During the summer of 1988, Franklin began retailing a new computer which is called Wordmaster. It can do everything their first model can -- and much more. It is the same size and shape as the Spelling Ace, has a typewriter keyboard, and is powered by four AAA batteries, but that's where the similarities end.

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Transdeletion Nests In Chambers, John Holgate Feb 1989

Transdeletion Nests In Chambers, John Holgate

Word Ways

Successive transdeletions by a single letter from word to word yield a pyramidic structure, as demonstrated by Ross Eckler in "Two New Transdeletion Pyramids" in the May Word Ways. What if we progressively delete all letters of a single word and transpose the remainder?

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The Transmutation Of Lanugage, Robert Schleifer Feb 1989

The Transmutation Of Lanugage, Robert Schleifer

Word Ways

In the fifth century B.C., Empedocles of Acragas, the Greek philosopher, proclaimed that the universe is composed of four primal elements: fire, air, water, and earth. While not, perhaps, the most scientific descriptive cosmology, this doctrine nevertheless dominated Western philosophical thought for twenty-one hundred years and is today still favorably regarded by born-again astrologists. But it did not fully satisfy Aristotle, who, writing a century later, explained that while these four "material" elements could define all earthly substances, a fifth "immaterial" element must define all heavenly phenomena. He called this element pemte ousia, or FIFTH BEING.

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Kickshaws, David Morice Feb 1989

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Slang Forenames, Leonard R. N. Ashley Feb 1989

Slang Forenames, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

You all know about an Adonis, a Tarzan, and such, but here are some slang terms which employ common forenames. You don't have to be an Einstein to identify most of them, but a few may challenge you to be a Sherlock to figure them out. How many can you get right? Answers can be found in the Answers and Solutions in the end of this issue.

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"Alas, Alack!" Revisited, Trip Payne Feb 1989

"Alas, Alack!" Revisited, Trip Payne

Word Ways

In "Gargantua and Pantagruel," Book 4, Chapter XVIII through XXI, Pantagruel and his men are facing a dreadful storm at sea. One of the sailors, Panurge, is convinced of impeding death and spends all four chapter blubbering. While he lets loose with a few "boo-hoo-hoo"s and a few well-placed "woe is me! woe, woe!"s and the like, most of interjections are highly original, packed with logological curiosities.

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Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 21 Number 4 Nov 1988

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 21 Number 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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Borgmann: The Man Behind The Legend, Faith W. Eckler Nov 1988

Borgmann: The Man Behind The Legend, Faith W. Eckler

Word Ways

Dmitri Borgmann has been called the Father of Logology--a term he coined to describe recreational wordplay as a distinguished from academic linguistics. His two books, "Language on Vacation" (1965) and "Beyond Language" (1967), have become classics in the field. In 1968 Greenwood Press selected him as Word Ways' first editor.

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A Lode For Logastelli, Eric Albert Nov 1988

A Lode For Logastelli, Eric Albert

Word Ways

Many readers of these pages are familiar with Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary, a delightful collection of "unusual, obscure, and preposterous words." The above definition shows that Mrs. Byrne recognized a felicitous Word Ways contribution when she came across it. I would like to now return the favor by giving here a portion of my personal list of evocative, illuminating, and just downright bizarre words.

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Mary Had A Little Lampoon, David Morice Nov 1988

Mary Had A Little Lampoon, David Morice

Word Ways

In the August 1969 issue of Word Ways, Ross Eckler introduced the idea of mutating "Mary Had a Little Lamb" by writing five versions of the poem in lipogrammatic form, in which only one of the five vowels was not used throughout each text. Seventeen years later, in the August 1986 issue, Paul Hellweg presented five more versions, this time in univocalic form, in which only one of the five vowels was used throughout each text. Although this isn't the August 2003 issue, I'm continuing the tradition by adding five more poems to the flock.

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Colloquy Nov 1988

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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Spreadsheet Logology On The Pc, Anthony Sebastian Nov 1988

Spreadsheet Logology On The Pc, Anthony Sebastian

Word Ways

Logologists who are computer programmers can exploit the computer's power to assist them in wordplay activities. Logologists who are not computer experts can share in that power by using commercially available, inexpensive, user-friendly spreadsheet programs designed for personal computers (PCs). Such programs, initially developed for manipulation numbers (e.g., financial modelling), have evolved the capability to manipulate non-numeric data--strings of characters other than integers exclusively--according to string-specific formulas.

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An Unabbreviated 26-Letter Pangram, Jeff Grant Nov 1988

An Unabbreviated 26-Letter Pangram, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

A pangram is a sentence of any length containing every letter of the alphabet. Obviously the ultimate achievement in this field is an example containing each letter once only. Unfortunately, all the minimum-length 26-letter pangrams that have been constructed over the years seem to have the same problem: they are in some way an abbreviation. For example:

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Bienapropisms, Richard Lederer Nov 1988

Bienapropisms, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Long-time Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley was known for his frequent beheadings of the English language with such phrases as "I resent your insinuendoes" and "We shall reach greater platitudes of achievement." Mr. Daley's creative word choices must have been contagious because another Chicago politician was heard to shout, "I don't want to cast asparagus at my opponent!"

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Merriam-Webster: Voice Of Authority, Trip Payne Nov 1988

Merriam-Webster: Voice Of Authority, Trip Payne

Word Ways

Since 1909, the three editions of Webster's New International Dictionary (henceforth to be referred to as N11, N12, and N13) have been the most widely accepted references for the coverage of American English. Their reputation is deserved; not only are they through in their coverage of modern words, they are scholarly in their treatment of obsolete terms,important to readers of older literature. (The coverage of obsolete terms in N13 is not as full as in N11 or N12, however.) Their appeal is to both the scholar and the layman. Unlike earlier dictionaries in both England and America, the N1s have …

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Immeasurably Fishy, Don Laycock Nov 1988

Immeasurably Fishy, Don Laycock

Word Ways

In a world where our weights and measures are increasingly being standardised to the efficient but dreary metric system, it is hard not to feel some sort of pang at the disappearance of the gloriously erratice measures of former days: the cubits and the ells, the arsins and the versts, leagues, grains, catties, scruples, and candareens. But all is not lost. "Fishy Measure", which I discovered in a copy of "Loyd's Calendar" for 1955, is hopefully continuing strong in the bleak wastes of the Outer Hebrides, at least. Here is the table in its entirety:

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Is That So? Would You Believe?, Jan Ackerson Nov 1988

Is That So? Would You Believe?, Jan Ackerson

Word Ways

In the 1960s, my father's hobby was inventing games. Although none of his games was ever accepted by a major publishing company, a few were printed locally and sold for a short time in the central Michigan area. One of his games, unfortunately named "Izzat So" by the publishers (another edition was called "Wud-U-Blev"), was my particular favorite. In "Izzat So," players reassembled proverbs which had been printed on small cardboard tiles and divided into three pieces.

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Palingroans And Amalgrams, Lee Sallows Nov 1988

Palingroans And Amalgrams, Lee Sallows

Word Ways

A new genre offering opportunities for amusement involves what I call palingroans. The first one appeared in Williard R. Espy's "Another Almanac of Words at Play," though he seems not to have appreciated the possible extension of his idea:

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The Elegant Double Negative, Kay Haugaard Nov 1988

The Elegant Double Negative, Kay Haugaard

Word Ways

I was always taught that the double negative not only was grammatically incorrect but that it didn't have any class. Only ignorant clods said, "It don't got no class!"

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Kickshaws Nov 1988

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Double Digrams, Timothy J. Wheeler Nov 1988

Double Digrams, Timothy J. Wheeler

Word Ways

Double digrams, such as TUTU, serENENess, or drAMAMine, are not paritcularly common in English words; the editor informs me that in Kucera and Francis's Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English they occur, on the average, in less than one word in a thousand in running text . This article gives a type-collection of the 54 different double diagrams found in boldface entries in the Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary. It is presented in the form of a quiz for the reader. Only solid double diagrams are permitted; words in which the letter are interrupted by a hyphen or a space, as in …

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Back Cover Nov 1988

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue including instructions to authors.

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