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Giant Synonym Squares, Edward R. Wolpow Nov 1979

Giant Synonym Squares, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

In "Synonym Squares" in the August 1979 Word Ways, Tom Pulliam gave examples using Websterian words of four to eight letters in length. If one goes beyond Webster, it is possible to build squares that are considerably larger. The first synonym square exhibits twelve words or phrases pertaining to NEUROANATOMY; nine are in Webster's, and the other three are in standard medical references. The second synonym square exhibits fourteen generic names for drugs in current use; all are major headings in the Generic and Chemical Name Index of the Physician's Desk Reference. The word Pharmaceutical can be found reading downward …

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Drink To Me Only With These Words..., James I. Rambo Nov 1979

Drink To Me Only With These Words..., James I. Rambo

Word Ways

The following verse continues the tradition of my "Anagramantics" in the February 1976 Word Ways and "Two Cautionary Tales" in the August 1978 issue; each line rearranges the letters of the title in a different way.

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A College-Level Course In Logology, Paul Zaslow Nov 1979

A College-Level Course In Logology, Paul Zaslow

Word Ways

The February 1978 issue of Word Ways asked readers for information on recreational linguistics courses taught in college, secondary school, night school or the like. In the spring term of 1978, when I was a junior at the University of Massachusetts, I taught a one-credit colloquium entitled "Recreational Logology". In the fall term of 1978, I taught a three-credit course entitled "An Introduction to Recreational Logology" to 15 freshmen and sophomores, 13 of whom completed it. This met for three hours on Thursday evenings for 13 weeks from September to December, and covered the following topics.

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Reed Bell / Rebelled, Tom Pulliam Nov 1979

Reed Bell / Rebelled, Tom Pulliam

Word Ways

The zealous logophiles who follow the Word Ways banner are known to be very susceptible to following a different drummer. While pursuing an elusive word through the dictionary, our interest is often detoured into areas completely foreign to the original search. Let's face it -- none of us is completely immune to this!

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Onomasticon Iii, George H. Scheetz Nov 1979

Onomasticon Iii, George H. Scheetz

Word Ways

In his November 1978 article, "Logopoeia," Philip M. Cohen defines his title word as "a coined word meaning 'word-coinging.'" This definition does not do an established word justice. Logopoeia was defined by Ezar Pound -- who may have coined it -- in ABC of Reading (1934); and while "logopoeia" is literally "making of words," Pound gives the word a much richer definition. The accepted meaning of this and most (all?) other -poeia words (from the Greek poiein, to make) are in the following onomasticon. Perhaps this should have been subtitled Much Ado About 'Making'!

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Back Cover Nov 1979

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of the issue, including instructions to authors wishing to contribute.

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Wordy Word Pickers, Helen Gunn Nov 1979

Wordy Word Pickers, Helen Gunn

Word Ways

Rebuses come in several varieties, the two most popular being positional ones (as in SYMPH = unfinished symphony) or pictorial ones (in which an eye represents 'I', or a bee and 4 the word 'before'). The following rebus quiz, employing both kinds, is based on a word game my children and I play via mail. The editor has added a number of rebuses sent in by other readers: George Grieshaber (from the Chronicle of Higher Education) and Maxey Brooke (from the Houston Post).

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Palindromes: The Rotas Square, Dmitri A. Borgmann Nov 1979

Palindromes: The Rotas Square, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

In 1868 a painted fragment of wall plaster was taken from the dirt of a Roman villa under excavation near Victoria Road, county Gloucester, of south-central England. Its removal was attended by a Captain Abbott, then curator of the Cirencester Museum nearby. Scratched into the ochre surface of the unearthed plaster was the following palindrome, arranged in the form of a magic square.

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Everlasting Rearranements, Harry B. Partridge Nov 1979

Everlasting Rearranements, Harry B. Partridge

Word Ways

Except for occasional pieces in "The Poet's Corner", Walter Shedlofsky has been absent from the pages of Word Ways for nearly six years; I welcome his return with "Rearrangement: The Hidden Meaning" in the August 1979 Word Ways. This article is a response to his closing challenge there: "What rearrangements can you derive from EVERLASTING or IN VINO VERITAS, and what vehicles can you create to illustrate the correlations you find?"

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Higher-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant Nov 1979

Higher-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

The highest single-move Scrabble scores have utilized the word BENZOXYCAMPHORS, and it seems unlikely much improvement will be made without a new base-word. In the February 1974 Word Ways there appears a 2037-point solution devised by Josefa Heifetz, which uses the term SESQUIOXIDIZING. Unfortunately this word does not appear in any dictionary, and no one has been able to find a substantive citation in another reference. However, the Oxford English Dictionary lists 'sesquioxidized' as a past participle, which surely implies the existence of a verb 'sesquioxidize'.

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Front Cover And Publication Information Nov 1979

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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Dutch Palindromes, George J. Levenbach Nov 1979

Dutch Palindromes, George J. Levenbach

Word Ways

This is a translation of an article by G. van Buren entitled "Nepapen" (fake monkeys) published in the June 30, 1979 NRC Handelsblad. H. B. Corstius of Amsterdam sent it to Martin Gardner, who passed it on to Word Ways. In the translation, palindromes (and reversals as well) are given in Dutch and emphasized with capital letters; the parenthetical remarks following have been added to aid the understanding of the non-Dutch reader. Many of the palindromes are made-up words, much in the spirit of Dmitri Borgmann's "The Evolution of a Palindrome" in the February 1970 Word Ways.

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Kickshaws, Philip M. Cohen Nov 1979

Kickshaws, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Colloquy Nov 1979

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.

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Ahoy, Maxey Brooke Nov 1979

Ahoy, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

I was browsing through the dictionary display at the local bookstore. They were featuring the Random House Unabridged. I judge a dictionary by the way it handles etymology. Don't ask me why I decided to check the derivation of HELLO. Perhaps the book was open at that page.

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Alphabetic Letter-Shifts, A. Ross Eckler Nov 1979

Alphabetic Letter-Shifts, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

It has been known for at least fifteen years that certain words can be translated into other words by shifting each letter the same number of steps along the alphabet -- thus, the letters of CHEER shifted forward seven steps to yield JOLLY, and the letters IRK shifted thirteen steps, VEX. Strangely, a little logological research has been done in this area; this article attempts to show what can be done by hand, and how much more might be accomplished by digital computer.

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Front Cover And Publication Information Aug 1979

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information of this issue.

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Synonym Squares, Tom Pulliam Aug 1979

Synonym Squares, Tom Pulliam

Word Ways

Synonym Squares is a solitaire variation of the well-known word game of Guggenheim or Categories. From the Second or Third Edition of the Merriam-Webster New International Dictionary, select a word fully spelled out in boldface type (nothing inferred) which shall be known as the base-word. Collect from the same dictionary all possible synonyms of the base-word that specify it in the definition, or specific examples of the same class as the base-word. From these accumulated synonyms, extract those having the same letter-length as the base-word. Arrange examples of your selection one above another, vertically, in such a manner that a …

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High-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant Aug 1979

High-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the November 1974 issue of Word Ways, Ralph Beaman presented a theoretical Scrabble game in which the players cooperate to amass a remarkable 4142 points. By extensive modifications to this solution, I have been able to achieve a total of 4207 points, using only 99 tiles, as in a legal game. Letters with an asterisk represent blank tiles.

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Palindrome Pairs, Scott Hattie Aug 1979

Palindrome Pairs, Scott Hattie

Word Ways

In Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., persons whose lives are tangled up for no very logical reasons are said to belong to the same 'karass'. The table on the following two pages consists of pairs of words which also have this property: although not logically (semantically) related, they are inextricably linked to each other by the fact that together they form a palindrome.

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Word Roots And Branches, A. Ross Eckler Aug 1979

Word Roots And Branches, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Take a word, remove a letter, and rearrange the remaining letters to form another word; the shorter word is known as a transdeletion of the longer one. Conversely, the longer word is called a transaddition of the shorter. This process can be continued, and a chain of successive transdeletions or transadditions formed; let us define the roots of a word to be all those words that can be reached by successive transdeletions, and the branches of a word to be all those words that can be reached by successive transadditions. Naturally, the roots and branches depend upon the dictionary specified; …

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Words Formed By Radio Call Letters, Robert A. Palermo Aug 1979

Words Formed By Radio Call Letters, Robert A. Palermo

Word Ways

Call letters are assigned to AM radio stations by the Federal Communications Commission: four letters beginning with W in the eastern US, four letters beginning with K in the western US. (In the early days of radio, three letters were also assigned, and a few radio stations of this kind can still be found.) it is interesting to ask whether or not AM radio station owners have a preference for call letters which form common English words. According to the 1979 Broadcasting Yearbook, an industry source on broadcasting data put out by Broadcasting Publications, Inc. of Washington, D. C., there …

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Put In A Good Word For Me, Charles W. Bostick Aug 1979

Put In A Good Word For Me, Charles W. Bostick

Word Ways

This is the first of a pair of articles which invites the reader to use his deductive abilities on lists of words. His task is first to find a common property that the 24 words in a list share, and second to insert the word at the head of this list (given in capital letters) into its proper place within the list.

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Rearrangement: The Hidden Meaning, Walter Shedlofsky Aug 1979

Rearrangement: The Hidden Meaning, Walter Shedlofsky

Word Ways

During the ten years I have subscribed to Word Ways, I have been amazed at the emphasis placed on the mechanics of wordplay: words have been transposed to form other words, words have been formed around letters placed in strategic positions, and similar achievements.

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Colloquy Aug 1979

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.

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Geographical Link-O-Grams, Boris Randolph Aug 1979

Geographical Link-O-Grams, Boris Randolph

Word Ways

While watching a TV program, I noticed that the word SANG links the two words of the place-name LOS ANGELES. A little research revealed that many other place-names can be joined in this fashion. Fill in the blanks with letters to complete each two-word place-name. Answers are in the Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.

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Anagrams And Transposals: A Glossary, Maxey Brooke Aug 1979

Anagrams And Transposals: A Glossary, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

In my notebooks I have a large section called logological orthography. One heading under that section is labeled "Anagrams" and contains 28 items. Here are those items in a more or less logical order.

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Uneasy Companions, John Mcclellan Aug 1979

Uneasy Companions, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

We may as well say straight out that this article deals with an unfortunate juxtaposition of two phrases in many of our dictionaries: Camp Fire Girl and Camp Follower. We have put considerable thought on the wisdom of writing this piece, for the subject of Camp Followers may be somewhat taboo in certain quarters, if not actually X-rated. But the fact remains: Camp Follower does follow Camp Fire Girl in a number of dictionaries, and in the ones in which it does not, another questionable phrase may be inserted which does little to help the matter.

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Biconsonantal Words, Edward R. Wolpow Aug 1979

Biconsonantal Words, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Extending Darryl Francis's discourse upon monoconsonantal words in the February 1979 Word Ways, I list below a type collection of biconsonantal words. A biconsonantal word is defined as a word which contains two different consonants, each one appearing once or more, and with no restrictions on its vowels (selected from AEIOUY).

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More Curious Contronyms, Richard Lederer Aug 1979

More Curious Contronyms, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

In the February 1978 issue of Word Ways I unveiled twenty contronyms -- single words for which two contradictory meanings survive. As a result of submissions by readers and my own subsequent research, I am pleased to offer an additional collection of contronyms in the form of a brainteaser.

Readers are invited to supply the single word which can replace the two opposite meanings capitalized in each pair below. Answers repose in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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