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Neustria, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

If one selects eight different letters from the alphabet, they can be arranged in 8! = 40320 different ways. If one allows any subset of letters from 1 through 8 to be chosen, the number of arrangements increases from 8! + (8)7! + (8x7/2) 6! + ... + 8 = 109600. Obviously, no more than a tiny fraction of these arrangements is likely to form words, and choosing a set of eight letters and seeking to verify as many as possible as real words would be a lifetime's work.

Trapping The Light Fantastic, Leonard R.N. Ashley

Word Ways

There are all sorts of new names for dances and many old ones too: ballet, bolero, Black Bottom, buck and wing, etc. Some names reveal old customs, some have amusing names, some are names easy to trace, and some offer unsolved puzzles to the etymologist. Here are some hints from which you are asked to provide the names of popular dances.

Palindromes With Central Pairs, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

A recent survey of over 1000 palindromes has shown that 71 per cent pivot on a single letter, as in SEXES, EVE and MESEM, whereas only 29 per cent have a double letter in the centre, as in TIBBIT, OPPO and REDDER. From the palindromes with an even number of letters I have selected 26, starting with AA and working through the alphabet to ZZ.

Kickshaws, Charles W. Bostick

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Punctuation Marks In Play Titles, Louis Phillips

Word Ways

In a recent article in the New York Times, Mickey Spillane -- the creator of that hard-hitting 1950s detective Mike Hammer -- discussed a forthcoming musical based upon his work, Oh, Mike! In the course of the discussion, the best-selling author observed "Any title with punctuation is fantastic." Now, Mr. Spillane is a shrewd man and I think he has a point. Indeed there is a recent trend to add exclamation marks to titles in order to elicit a sense of excitement. Oh! Calcutta!, for example, has two exclamation marks and a number of musicals, such as Fiorello!, …

Geometrical Patterns Of State Names, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most people are reasonably familiar with the two-letter abbreviations for state names introduced by the U.S. Postal Service a number of years ago. These abbreviations have occasionally been the subject of word play in past Word Ways issues: I connected them in a cross-word-style array in February 1976, Darryl Francis constructed words out of them in May 1976, and Philip Cohen programmed a computer to find a maximum-length chain of overlapping abbreviations in February 1977.

Morbid Musing, Jezebel Q. Xixx

Word Ways

From time to time, those of us who contribute to the pages of Word Ways turn to the subject of illness. Now is such a time!

Widow Wondering, John Campbell

Word Ways

Poor widows! Three out of four women survive their husbands. In some cultures remarriage is taboo. In other cultures the widow is (was) burned on the funeral pyre of her husband. Yet the word has made a major contribution to the language. The root sense of the word means 'divided from.' In card playing, a widow is an extra hand. In printing, a widow is a line separated from the rest of the text. The very poisonous black widow spider was so named because the female sometimes eats its mate. See if you can match up the following phrases with …

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of the issue, including instructions for authors.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Out-Of-Place Words In Webster's 2nd, William Sunners

Word Ways

For almost fifty years Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, has been the official authority in most word-building puzzle contests. This huge tome of 2987 pages is a veritable storehouse of information; the edition I own and treasure is actually an encyclopedia. My sympathetic wife first purchased it in 1933 from an unemployed father, and I paid for it in monthly installments. Those regular payments helped provide for some of his physical needs for a time, while the book's contents have nourished my mind all these years.

A Potpourri Of Palindromes, D.L. Polonsky

Word Ways

"Dogma is a deified evil," I stress
A madam on every lane
Vile, bad-egg uteruses run a store,
But I'm, alas, a senile fairy.

Trite As A Cliche, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

A cliche is a stale, commonplace, worn out word, phrase, or figure of speech that many speakers and writers fall into using out of hurry or sheer laziness.

English Is A Crazy Language, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

The English language is the most widely spoken in the history of our planet. The English language had acquired the largest vocabulary and the noblest literature in the history of the human race.

Nonetheless, English is a crazy language.

Reversible Word Squares, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most people are familiar with reversible overcoats; by turning them insight out, one gets two garments for the price of one. The logological equivalent of this is the reversible word square, a square array of letters that contains words when read in normal left-to-right and top-to-bottom fashion (as in a crossword puzzle), but also contains words when read right-to-left and bottom-to-top.

A Word Root Quiz, Lee A. Gilman

Word Ways

The twenty words listed below all contain the root loqu or locu, which is derived from the Latin loci, locutus, meaning ' to speak'. Can you match the words with the definitions at the right? Answers are given in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

Diagonal Reversible Word Squares, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the preceding Word Ways article, the editor defined and gave examples of various types of reversible word squares. An interesting and more complex variation of the reversible word square occurs when the main diagonals also form words which can be read from either the top or the base of the square. This adds a further four words to the totals possible in conventional reversible squares.

Barbadian Dialect, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

My wife Doris and I have spent several Winter vacations in Barbados, that delightful Caribbean island lying approximately at Latitude 13, a bit of information quite unnecessary to the average voyager who prefers to leave such details to the boat- and air-people whose proper business it is; nor is it our intention to trespass into the field of the travel agency. However, that low latitude indicates that Barbados is close enough to the Equator to guarantee decent weather in the Winter months.

Assorted Avocational Adventures, Amelia Austrian

Word Ways

Adults, an array, are abjectly abashed at alliteration's ancient appeal as attractive (and auspicious?) abracadabra. Another array abhors and abominates alliteration as airy artifice. An additional array appreciates and admires alliteration's artfulness, aptness, applicability, and adaptability.

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 that issue.

Brand Name Palindromes, Robert Funt

Word Ways

In 1844 a group of eleven school teachers discovered a small waterfall near Ellenville, New York and agreed to give it a name by reversing the number of their party. The Nevele Hotel, founded in 1911, now includes Nevele Falls on its property, with a plaque permanently recording the history of its name. Stories like these are, of course, extraordinary, but there exist a good many other brand names and company names which are either palindromes or are based on similar word reversals.

Collective Works, David Weinberger

Word Ways

Poetry written by committee? It should not be possible, yet my family and friends often play a game which produces something like poetry. Short stories, too.

Websterian High-Scoring Scrabble, Kyle Corbin

Word Ways

The article "High-Scoring Scrabble Revisited" in the May 1981 Word Ways presented a set of rules for determining in a SCRABBLE Brand Crossword Game what words are to be allowed. Applying these rules, a single Scrabble move of 1757 points was devised, based on words in Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition. The article further stated that it would be an excellent idea to find the highest scores for the entire range of Merriam-Webster dictionaries to show their variation with dictionary size.

Imaginary Governments, Laurence E. Seits

Word Ways

Hetaerocracy a. Government by hetaerae (upper-class concubines) b. Government by college fellows (Webster's Second)

Can one imagine a more delightful definition than this? Inspired by Paul Hellweg's "Pick a Government" in the August 1981 Word Ways, I offer the following collection of governments that might have been.

Names In Theater Slang, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Can you identify the British and American stage slang given in the following list? The first twenty items are of British origin; I have not included those which might be too specialized for an American audience, such as 'Basildress' or 'Adelphian'. The second twenty items are all of American origin and many of them are in current speech.

Neologisms Revisited, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the February 1974 issue of Word Ways, I presented a review of A Dictionary of New English, edited by Barnhart, Steinmetz and Barnhart. That dictionary was a collection of words, initials, phrases, abbreviations, acronyms and meanings which had entered the vocabulary of the English language during the period 1963-1972.

Kickshaws, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Eodermdromes And Non-Chesswords, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the February 1968 Word Ways, Temple G. Porter presented a word chess puzzle; he asked readers to trace out as many words as possible using only King's moves on a 5-by-5 chessboard inscribed with 25 different letters. In the February 1970 issue, Jean Sabine posed an interesting and still unanswered chess problem: how should one arrange the 25 different letters to maximize the number of words that can be so traced?

Can Stress Induce Homography?, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

NEIGHbor, NEIGHborhood, NEIGHborliness: no matter what suffix we add, the emphasis stays on the first syllable. This is bound stress. PHOtograph, phoTOGraphy, photoGRAPHic: the emphasis changes from syllable to syllable without any good reason. This is free stress.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue, including information for authors and subscribers.