Digital Commons Network^™

Homophonic Variations, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Sets of homophones that fall into three categories.

Some Elementary Questions, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Make a list of the names, symbols and atomic numbers of the chemical elements. Assign the values 1-16 to the letters A-Z. For each chemical element, calculate the sum of the 1 or 2 letter values forming its symbol. (You can ignore the chemical elements with 3-letter symbols.) Now see how quickly you can answer these questions.

What's The Significance?, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

A logic puzzle.

Neighbours, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Some words accommodate a pair of alphabetically-adjacent letters such as S and T. These can either be separate in a word or together in a word. In both cases, the letters can be in alphabetical (as Here) or reverse alphabetical, order.

Subtracting And Mixing, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

These words pairs fall into one of two categories. Either a letter is removed from the first word; the remaining letters are rearranged to make the second word Or a letter is removed from the second word; the remaining letters are rearranged to make the first word. The two words together make a phrase.

Another Three Doublets, Daniel W. Galef

Word Ways

A set of three word ladder puzzles known as doublets.

Naked J-Birds, . Anil

Word Ways

A listing of 173 birds whose names begin with the letter J.

Poems, John Bannon

Word Ways

A collection of poems

Instructions To Authors, Editor Word Ways

Word Ways

Instructions to authors.

Word Squares With Wordy Knight's Tours, Mike Keith

Word Ways

The word square displayed below has a remarkable property. On the surface it is an ordinary double word square, with a different word in each row and column. In addition, starting in the upper left corner and following the knight's tour indicated by the lines reveals another five 5-letter words.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 49, Number 2, Editor Word Ways

Word Ways

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

Answers And Solutions, Editor Word Ways

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles and quizzes in this issue.

Contributors, Manuscripts Staff

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.

Interview With Laila Lalami, Cassandra Christopher

Manuscripts

In an interview with National Public Radio, Laila Lalami mentioned that she believed the “closest we come to truth is in the form of fiction.”

Truth: the supernatural powers that be do not spare anyone based on race or religion. In shared adversity we all become equal.

Truth: humans are complex creatures, equally capable of cruelty, kindness, and unimaginable darkness in desperation. No one is purely hero or villain.

Truth: Mustafa, the titular character of Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account tells us what he knows as fact, but we must infer our own truth, so that each reader discovers his …

Combatting Biases: Illusory Imagery In Us News Coverage On Central American Immigration, Katharine Poor

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper comprises of original research and analysis of contemporary news media discourse surrounding Central American immigration in the United States. Subjects of study included more than 50 news articles, images, and videos from a variety of major politically-unaffiliated news outlets for English-speaking audiences. Rhetoric was analyzed in representations of the Central American immigration “crisis” that sparked a trend of media coverage in 2014, as well as several articles that covered events leading up to the “crisis.” Common rhetorical analogies ascertained through media analyses include the representation of immigrants as aliens, diseases, parasites, floods, criminals, natural disasters, terrorists, and drug …

Kate Jones – A Tribute, Karen Farrell, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Kate is also an accomplished recreational mathematician and poet. To try to match in a small way her creative ability, we offer three puzzle-games in her honor: O'BEIRNE's TRI-HEX, PAPPUS and "KATe JONES". These three are specific examples of (9,3) symmetric configurations. More generally an (n,r) configuration is a collection of n "points"and n "lines" subject to the following requirements:

Rl: Any two points belong to at most one line.

R2: Each line has r points, and each point belongs to r lines.

Sir Jeremy Morse (1928-2016), Editor Word Ways

Word Ways

An obituary from the Times of London, February 6th, 2016 submitted by Darryl Francis.

Repetitive Monograms-1, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

A puzzle in which each answer is a repetitive monogram.

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws

Transposing Phrases, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A list of words and phrases that have been transposed.

Metalleges Containing All Possible Letter Pairs, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Examples of words made by shifting two letters in a base word.

Squares From Pairs, David Shaw

Word Ways

A puzzle.

The Growth Of A Directed Word Network, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

A word network is a set of words and links. Two words are joined by a link if they differ by a single letter. More specifically, this is an undirected work network- one can move along a link in either direction. But what if only one direction is allowed? It is the purpose of this article to show how such a network evolves as one adds words one at a time.

A Sam Loyd Puzzle?, Will Shortz

Word Ways

A Puzzle

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 49, Number 1, Editor Word Ways

Word Ways

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

Word Questionnaire-27, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

A logology quiz

All Good Things Must Come To A Trend: More Quirky Linguistic Observations, Conundrums, And Miscellanea, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

A compilation of language oddities, queries, quips, and other trivia the author has observed.

Kybo, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Every so often a peculiar word makes itself known and invites further investigation. One such recent word is KYBO. New Zealand Scrabble player John Foster brought KYBO to the attention of long time Word Ways contributor Jeff Grant. In turn, Jeff queried it with me. The remainder of this article describes the results of Jeff's and my searches about the word.

Carry On Up The Kybo, John Foster

Word Ways

Recently when talking to Jeff [Grant] I queried the word KYBO which has been with us since the adoption of Collins Dictionary in 2007. I was not challenging its validity but rather the definition which is given as "Australian slang". I pointed out that I had used this word as a child at a YMCA summer camp where it was the official term to be used for the toilet. Jeff is doing further research into the origin of this word but I thought I might relate how I first encountered it and the conclusions that I have drawn as a …

Colloquy, Editor Word Ways

Word Ways

A Collection of responses to previously published articles.