Digital Commons Network^™

Peripatetic Words, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

English is perhaps the most mongrel of languages; Spanish and Swahili are the nearest runners-up. Unlike the French, who try to keep their language pure, the English gloat in this mongrelization. In the beginning they had foreign words imposed upon them by conquerors. They have borrowed words from practically every language in Europe except Lithuanian. They have borrowed words from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Polynesia. They have compounded many of these words without regard to their origin (automobile, for example, is a Greek-Latin compound), and they are continuously inventing new words like xerox, googol and blurb …

The Letter Rebus (Part 3), A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

This article continues the survey of the letter rebus begun in the February 1984 Word Ways; readers should refer to that issue for a general discussion including taxonomy.

Kickshaws, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Kickshaws is currently being assembled by a series of guest editors. All contributions should be sent to the editor in Morristown, New Jersey.

A Tale Of Two Crossword Dictionaries, William Sunners

Word Ways

Ever since the American mania for crossword puzzles began with the publication of the first crossword puzzle book in 1924, many authors have compiled crossword dictionaries as an aid to the harassed solver. I have collected many of these books during the past sixty years, but until recently never tried to infer anything about the sources these authors used from a comparison of their entries with other works.

Limits Of The Human Life Cycle, John Henrick

Word Ways

The cosmetology of cliches is commonly regarded as an art not so much black as dismal, comparable to the refurbishment of rubbish. Yet, when the underlying concept of the cliche is sufficiently fundamental and compelling, it is not unusual for a phrase that has grown contemptible through familiarity to be reconditioned in popular usage with the aid of such standard devices as metonymy, metaphor, alliteration and rhyme.

More Tetragram Permutations, Tom Pulliam

Word Ways

In the May 1984 issue of Word Ways, the editor presented Websterian words containing tetragrams consisting of all 24 permutations of the letter-sets AIRT, AIST, and AGIR. He commented "there may be additional letter-sets that can be fully permuted into tetragram-embeddable Websterian words" because of the incomplete nature of the Thomas-Kassler-Wooley legal tetragram list. Indeed there are; I exhibit below three more tetragram permutations.

Upscale Synonyms, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Pick up this quiz and don't pass up the opportunity to pony up with the synonyms for the following expressions, all of which have up in them. If you come up with more than half of them, consider yourself up to the challenge and feel up about it. In some cases there are may be up to two or three possible answers but what I'm up to demands that you ante up with the commonest answer. OK, now it's up to you, and I hope you're up to it. Up up and away!

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions for the puzzles in this issue.

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors who wish to contribute to Word Ways.

Front Cover And Publication Information -- Volume 17, Number 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue, including a table of contents.

Analyzing Wiretaps, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the February 1982 Word Ways, Darryl Francis attempted to form words out of the 255 different subsets of letters from the set NEUSTRIA. There were eight gaps in his list; two, SRT and TRN, were filled in the February 1983 Colloquy as placenames in Yugoslavia. After considerable searching, I was able to plug three more holes.

Come Wade, Dear Maid, Cynthia Knight

Word Ways

The following dialogue (except for italicized words) is written entirely with words consisting of the US Post Office two-letter statename abbreviations. In the May 1976 Word Ways, Darryl Francis listed 130 such words that he found in Webster's Pocket Dictionary, plus over 50 words eight letters or longer from Webster's Second or Third editions (the longest, CACOGALACTIA).

A Sound-Alike Dictionary, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Alan Frank's article, "Consonant-Characterized Words," is related to a topic of considerable logological interest, that of characterizing spoken words by their consonantal sounds. This is best illustrated by rearranging the 150 words that he found containing the consonants NRST plus an assortment of vowels into 24 groups, one for each possible order of consonants. Within each group, words have been arranged by increasing number of syllables.

Names On The Border, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

In H. L. Mencken's The American Language (Knopf, 1977), a reissue of the 1936 fourth edition and the 1945 and 1948 supplements, there is a brief discussion of United States towns whose names reflect their location on state or national borders. These names are often compounded from the names of the two or three b ordering states. This article is a new look at these old names, and a review of more recent atlases for newer ones.

An Olympic Quiz, 1984 Style, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The August 1976 Word Ways carried a quiz of mine entitled "An Olympic Quiz". In it, I offered sixty words, each of which could be added to the letters of OLYMPIC, and then transposed to create a new word or term.

The Letter Rebus (Part 2), A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

This article continues the survey of the letter rebus begun in the February 1984 Word Ways; readers should refer to that issue for a general discussion including taxonomy.

An Elaborate Medieval Mnemonic, John Henrick

Word Ways

Every schoolboy is familiar with such memory aids as ROY G BIV for the colors of the rainbow or FACE for the interlineal notes of the treble clef. Far fewer people are aware of an elaborate but tightly-constructed mnemonic used in an earlier era to remember the various forms of the syllogism. To review, a syllogism consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.

Reaganagrams, Mike Morton, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Anagramming presidential names - rearranging their letters into other words, hopefully bearing some relation to the individual - has been a word pastime for many generations; the February 1977 issue of Word Ways summarizes the best (that is, the most apropos) anagrams for all the presidents from Washington through Carter. However, it is likely that no US president has a more readily anagrammable name than RONALD WILSON REAGAN - eighteen letters well-distributed between seven vowels and eleven consonants, with W the only unusual letter. A large number of his predecessors are saddled with the rare letters J, Z, V or …

The Apple-Sauce Chronicles, Louis Phillips

Word Ways

In this issue, Word Ways introduces a new column which will appear from time to time under the above name, containing a variety of light-hearted wordplay sent by Louis Phillips to a circle of friends. Although in the original different genres are mixed higgledy-piggledy, here an attempt is made to present unified themes in the spirit of Mary Ann Madden's New York Magazine column.

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

Another Charade Crossword, Ernst Theimer

Word Ways

In the August 1970, August 1971 and August 1983 issues of Word Ways, Ernst Theimer introduced the charade crossword to readers. The first two paragraphs below, explaining the nature of this puzzle, are repeated from the 1971 article.

Complete Tetragram Permutations, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

A tetragram is a set of four consecutive letters embedded in a word, as ETRA in 'tetragram' or AINT in 'paint'. Is it possible to take four different letters of the alphabet, rearrange these in all possible ways to form 24 different tetragrams, and embed each of these in a boldface word taken from the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary? The answer to this is yes; in fact, results for four such completely-permutable sets are presented below.

The Soul Of Logology

Word Ways

What is logology, otherwise known as recreational linguistics? There appear to be two ways to define it: subjectively, as an intellectual quest that stimulates and beguiles its devotees, and objectively, as a body of organized knowledge. The advent of the computer has sharpened this debate. Consider this example: in the old days, a fourteen-letter pair isogram (each letter appears exactly twice in the word) such as TAENIODONTIDAE could be found only by lengthy dictionary-searching, and its publication in Word Ways in August 1971 was a celebration of human persistence. However, since the publication of Levine's computer-generated pattern word lists, one …

A Smashing Victory, Bruce Price

Word Ways

It is time to claim victory. There is, unfortunately, no prize, and no contest was ever announced. I'll rectify that soon enough. Suffice it to say that what follows wins going away.

"All right," you ask dubiously, "just what is this contest that hasn't been announced until now?" Well, as best I can say it, the contest turns on finding the Longest List of Rhyming English Words That Have a Common Semantic Feature.

Consonant-Characterized Words, Alan Frank

Word Ways

At the 1981 convention of the National Puzzlers' League, Harry W. Hazard presented a word contest called "Shrdlu". As a part of this contest, a list of words was given to the participants, each word having exactly five consonants. The objective was to find, for each problem word, another word with the same consonants in a different order; for example, one might replace shrdlu (if it were a word) with shoulder. Inflected forms, for example holders, were not acceptable. A variation on this contest is reproduced in this article.

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections, and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in it.

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.

Opusopuscule, Robert Funt

Word Ways

This article contains excerpts from "Opusopuscule", a logological commonplace book containing a mixture of book, newspaper and magazine quotations, song lyrics, proverbs, odd signs in public places, jokes and anecdotes, and original snippets of wordplay. Examples of the latter are given in this article, with editorial commentary provided in italics.

Dinner, Everyone?, Louis Phillips

Word Ways

No scenery necessary. The actors should be in formal evening dress. A single man stands on stage.