Digital Commons Network^™

A Logological Tribute, Walter Shedlofsky

Word Ways

I propose that the following definition be entered into the English language:

My Struggle With A Ten-Square, G. H. Ropes

Word Ways

The genesis of the work described herein was a conversation with Murray Parce ('Merlin', in the National Puzzlers' League) at the Carlottesville convention in July 1987. We agreed on collaborative efforts to construct a nine-squre, something no NPL member had done for an umber of years. The first result appeared in the December 1987 issue of the Enigma: a nine-square by him based on STEERLESS, and one by me on TERSENESS.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

How To Name The Residents, Vernon D. Maclaren

Word Ways

I read Mary Stewart Craig's article "Do Mamaroneckers Like to Neck?" in the November issue of Word Ways with great relish. As an upstanding citizen, I immediately sat down and set down some regional epithets that popped into my head, trying to follow her example. I mailed them to Word Ways and returned to my mystery novel. In a few days I received a note from the editor, suggesting that I "elucidate and illustrate those principles that make for clever citizens' names."

Websterian Synonym Chains, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In "Beyond Language" (Scribner's, 1967), Dmitri Borgmann presents two synonym chains in "Beauty in Ugliness" on pages 38-9 and 191:

Dream Sequence, Matthew K. Franklin

Word Ways

I had the strangest dream last night, I deamt that I was flying over Washington, D.C. toward the White House. As I passed the front gates, I could see a line of picketers pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The pacing got me so dizzy that i could hardly tell which way was back and which was way forth! They were shouting something about the Attorney General, who was refusing to leave office despite mounting evidence against him and continuing calls for his resignation. I caught a glimpse of one of their signs and I flew …

Minimal Word Ladders, Kyle Corbin

Word Ways

A word ladder is a sequence of words of the same length in which each word is successively transformed into the next word by changing only one of its letters and not rearranging the other letters. For example, QUITE becomes SUITE by changing Q to S. The sequence could continue with SUITE to SPITE. SPITE to SPINE, SPINE to SPINS, SPINS to SPANS, and so on, theoretically continuing for hundreds of words. In the six words of this ladder from QUITE to SPANS, though, no letter-position is changed more than once (e.g., after Q has been changed to S in …

The Electronic Speller, Faith W. Eckler

Word Ways

I recently bought a new typewriter--one of those super-duper electronic marvels which does everything but slice bread. Among its many features is a built-in 50,000-word dictionary against which I can check the spelling of words, either as I type them or after and press the space bar, the machine will beep angrily at me and I will have two options: either I can press the space bar again, in which case the machine will reluctantly type the word as I spelled it (probably laughing quietly to itself at my idiocy), or I can ask the machine to search its dictionary …

Lexicographers' Lib, Kay Haugaard

Word Ways

Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first dictionary of the English language, included in its his definition of the word lexicographer, "a harmless drudge."

The Word Calculator, David Morice

Word Ways

In letter-shift word pairs, the letters in one word are an equal number of alphabetic steps away from the corresponding letters in the other word. CHEER to JOLLY is perhaps the most well-known example, with a letter-shift value of seven (C to J, H to O, etc.). FAT to NIB with a letter-shift value of eight works the same way, except the shift from T to B involves counting letters on a circular alphabet where Z is followed by A. Because the letters are equidistant, letter-shift words can be considered parallel to each other.

Naming The Chronisms, Paul Dickson

Word Ways

Not long ago, I went into a store and told the man behind the counter that I needed a needle for my record player.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

Yuppies, Buppies, Oinks And Dinks, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

The middle class (or, often more accurately, the upper lower class who have got fairly high-paying employment) have become part of the sociological trend and a rich source of new words or old words used in new ways. Some of the following are easy to define, some rather more difficult. Do they have meaning in your lifestyle? Answers more difficult. Do they have meaning in your lifestyle? Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

Logo Rythms, John Henrick

Word Ways

An invoice here?

Aye, due.

Was that a tear?

Eye dew.

Who needs a beer?

I do!

Kickshaws, Eric Albert

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue including instructions to authors.

His Final Bow

Word Ways

This issue of Word Ways ends Dmitri Borgmann's articles, written not only under his own name, but also using the pseudonyms Merlin X, Houdini IV, Ramona J. Quincunx, Jezebel Q. Xixx, Mejnour Zanoni, Rod P. Selden, and Ravenscroft J. Cloudesley.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 21, Number 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

A Puzzler's Paradise, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

Listed below are 34 kinds of word puzzles, games and curiosities, each one in scrambled form. Your assignment is to rearrange the letters of each one into its correct order. Simple enough? Of course! Why 34 scrambles, instead of some number that shows a healthy respect for the decimal system? Because 34 happens to be the total of each row, column and main diagonal in a magic square of the fourth order - sufficient reason!

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue including instructions to authors.

Sets Of Mutually Antonymic Words, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

Two words - life and death, yes and no, black and white - precisely or approximately opposite each other in meaning are called antonyms. By and large, antonyms have received little attention in the logological realm. Exceptions have been two opposite concepts expressed by the same word (TEMPER means both "to harden" and "to soften") and two words anatomic in their most obvious senses which are synonyms in some other sense (to "best" and to "worst" both mean "to get the better of"). Some words have numerous antonyms, phenomenon one of synonym rather than of antonymy.

Robots On The Rampage, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

In 1920, the Czech playwright Karel Capek thrust Rossum's Universal Robots upon an unsuspecting world. The robots in his play, "R.U.R.", were artificially manufactured persons, mechanically efficient but at first devoid of sensibility. They eventually acquired souls and began acting like human beings, revolting against their masters and destroying them.

Death: A Logological Perspective, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

In my continuing search for answers to Life's Great Questions, I have run across a major imbalance between Birth and Death. That imbalance is by no means obvious to the casual observer, however. Both BIRTH and DEATH are five-letter, one-syllable words ending in the digraph TH. In addition, their first letters are only two spaces apart in the alphabet, and the printed lowercase forms of those letters, b and d, happen to be mirror images or reversals of one another. One can, accordingly, not really ask for greater congruence between BIRTH and DEATH, unless one seeks a single word conveying …

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

A Tribute To Greatness, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

More than two millenia have passed since the "brutal" murder of Julius Caesar. Such was the stature of this giant among men, however, that his influence continues to dominate our lives today.

Mystery Mammals, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

A form of wordplay antedating the start of the twentieth century, but still alive and well, is that of hidden or buried words. The following sentence, taken from page 31 of the June 1972 issue of the British magazine Games & Puzzles, illustrates the technique:

The Eternal Feminine, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

Careful observers of the word scene have long known that some of the simplest English words can be anagrammed or arranged to form feminine first names. Thus, STINKER is a rearrangement of KRISTEN, the word TOASTER may be transposed into ROSETTA, LEARNED is an anagram of DARLEEN or DARLENE, and INTERNEEDS converts into ERNESTINE. (Parenthetically, the word LEARNED may also be rearranged o form a "masculine" name, LEANDER, but we don't want to think about that just now.)

Order In A Resistentialist World, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

Earlier in the twentieth century, some French intellectual whose name escapes me now advanced the philosophy of resistialism. The possibly central tenet of this philosophy was the idea that inanimate objects have an intrinsic tendency to resist us, thwarting our objectives. Resistentialism appears to have made little headway in the world, for I do not find the word in my dictionary. Yet, nowhere is the truth of resistetialism more evident than in logological research. As we all know, if we need a word or name to complete some logological structure such as a word square, or a word set exemplifying …

Singer, Singer!, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

What well-known singer does the definition "to cross a river" bring to your mind? Why, Tennessee Ernie FORD, of course. similarly, "fish country" suggests Judy GARLAND (= gar + land) and the clue "the evidence: a joint!" enigmatically refers to Rosemary CLOONEY (= clue + knee, in pronunciation).

The Calligraphic Decalogue, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

Western man has always felt the need to find a unifying principle, an underlying uniformity, in terms of which to explain the apparent diversity surrounding him. In logology, the search is on for a sort of universal catalyst - an operation or transformation in which all words and names, regardless of their length or letter constitution, can be subjected, changing them to other words or names. In the larger world of which logology is a part, scientists are trying to identify one tiny particle, of various aggregations and arrangements of which everything in the universe consists.