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Articles 1201 - 1230 of 4911
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
A Wordy Digression: The Game Of Hipe, Peter Winkler
A Wordy Digression: The Game Of Hipe, Peter Winkler
Word Ways
In Mathematical Mind-Benders, Peter Winkler. Wellesley, MA: A.K. Peters, 2007. Reprinted by permission of A.K. Peters, Ltd.
What's In? - A Name! - Part V, Steve Kahan
What's In? - A Name! - Part V, Steve Kahan
Word Ways
The consolidations in the list below are the result of eradicating four-letter male names from thirty words and closing up any subsequent spaces formed. (Perhaps a more apt title would have been "Four - The Boys"?) Restore as many of these guys as you can to their rightful positions in order to identify the original words. Fear not, however - MENsa membership is not a prerequisite for a successful pursuit of this challenge!
Awesome Will Be Laid To Rest, Michael Turton
Awesome Will Be Laid To Rest, Michael Turton
Word Ways
The word awesome was taken off life support today and declared legally dead. The demise of the incomparable word that once caused users to quake when appropriately employing its meaning was announced at a press conference hosted by Thesaurus.net and Dictionary.org.
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.
Instructions To Authors
Word Ways
Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.
A Poem, Jeremy Morse
Reversible Verses, David B. Woodside
Who's Afraid, Oscar Thumpbindle
Cubic Word Squares, A. Ross Eckler
Cubic Word Squares, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
In a letter dated 16 Mar 2005, Anil proposed constructing word cubes consisting of six word squares, one on each cube face, with edge words shared by squares on adjacent faces. To avoid confusion with the word cubes introduced by Darryl Francis in the Aug 1971 Word Ways, I propose that these structures be called cubic word squares. (Darryl's n-by-n-by-n word cube consists of a set of 3n word squares oriented in three different planes, having a total of 3n2 words.)
New Word Recreations, Oscar Thumpbindle
New Word Recreations, Oscar Thumpbindle
Word Ways
In the November issue, Jim Puder nicely extended Harold Jacob's "Three Jog Knight" (WW Aug 2008) to a Five-Jog Knight puzzle. Puder and the editor solved the problem and its solution appears in this issue. I wish to extend their results and point out some new puzzles and games that can be performed with their words.
Inane Addenda, A. Ross Eckler
Inane Addenda, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
The May 1994 Word Ways exhibited a set of sentences constructed by National Public Radio listeners, each using only two consonants. This sequel shows how respondents treated one of the most frequently-chosen combinations.
Front Cover, Publication Information
Front Cover, Publication Information
Word Ways
Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents
Websterisms: In Search Of Noah's Headwords, Arthur Schulman
Websterisms: In Search Of Noah's Headwords, Arthur Schulman
Word Ways
Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) is a browser's paradise, revealing many words whose meaning has changed since Noah's time and others that lie idiosyncratically defined. I offer fifty of Webster's definitions below, and challenge the reader to guess the headwords that Webster was trying to define. To make the task more approachable, wordlengths are provided for the to-be-discovered headwords, which are listed in alphabetical order of their appearance in the dictionary. All of these headwords, if not Webster's definitions, should prove to be familiar to readers of Word Ways.
Knight's Challenge Answered, Jim Puder
Knight's Challenge Answered, Jim Puder
Word Ways
Only one solution was received for the Five-Jog Knight puzzle contest posed in the November Word Ways. Submitted in mid-December, editor Jeremiah Farrell's solution managed to achieve a 20/20 Collegiate score, which is to say that every word in its 20-word word set is an entry in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. Such perfection had not been expected.
Tense Exchanges, Susan Thorpe
Tense Exchanges, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
Tense exchanges occur when the past and present tenses of the same verb lock on to, or interlock with, another letter or letters to make two other words. Thus FALL and FELL appear in FALLOW and FELLOW, locked on to -OW; RUN and RAN appear in RUIN and RAIN, interlocked with -I. The tenses always appear in the same position(s) in the two words.
What Now? Not "Wow!": New Spoonerisms, Don Hauptman
What Now? Not "Wow!": New Spoonerisms, Don Hauptman
Word Ways
Each August, cartoonist Jim Siergey and I collaborate on a collection of illustrated spoonerisms for Word Ways. Invariably, however, I have more specimens than space allows. And some don't readily lend themselves to visualization, requiring instead a verbal setup or a narrative or shaggy-dog-story form. Here then is a fresh batch, along with a few examples - that, to be strictly accurate, are not spoonerisms but word reversals.
Kickshaws, David Morice
Kickshaws, David Morice
Word Ways
Readers are encouraged to send their favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Kickshaws editor at [email protected]. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.
Octopi, Michael Keith, Diana Keith
Octopi, Michael Keith, Diana Keith
Word Ways
The composition of the poem below was governed by one major and a couple minor lexical constraints. Can you discover the rules behind it?
A Poem, Martin Gardner
A Poem, Martin Gardner
Word Ways
This is an excerpt from Gardner's 1969 book Never Make Fun Of A Turtle, My Son (Simon and Schuster, illustrated by John Alcorn).
Properties Of Sequences, Simon Norton
Properties Of Sequences, Simon Norton
Word Ways
Anil (WW 41 (2) p223) asks whether there is a theory which explains how the periodic behaviour of Fibconacci letter-sequences works. The answer is yes, there is indeed such a theory, and it has many other applications, both mathematical and practical. Though this theory has nothing to do with words, I hope that readers will he interested in its results. However, most of the proofs will be beyond the scope of this article.
A Poem, Martin Gardner
A Poem, Martin Gardner
Word Ways
This is an excerpt from Gardner's 1969 book Never Make Fun Of A Turtle, My Son (Simon and Schuster, illustrated by John Alcorn).
An Amazing Spelling Trick, Martin Gardner
An Amazing Spelling Trick, Martin Gardner
Word Ways
One of the most mysterious of all spelling tricks with cards, not well known today even to magicians, was invented by the American magician Howard Adams. He published it in his now rare 1984 booklet with the strange title OICUFESP (Oh, I see you have ESP). Since then it has appeared with slight variations in several others books. I urge you to get a deck of cards and astonish yourself by following these instructions.
Shiftgrams Again, Darryl Francis
Shiftgrams Again, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
The November 2002 Word Ways ran an article of mine entitled Shiftgrams Revisited. In that article, I explored the concept of shiftgrams, and presented examples of shiftgrams for various logical groups of words.
A Pseudo-History Of Alphabetical Characters, A. Anil
A Pseudo-History Of Alphabetical Characters, A. Anil
Word Ways
These are naivist, intuitive pictograph theories of whence ow alphabet got into the shape it's in today, based on what today's letters look like. Try you head at imagining pseudo-credible origins for them, freely allowing anachronisms. With luck, you won't get arrested for it. And with my examples as standards, you can't possibly embarrass yourself.
Five Language Beauties, Joop Van Der Vart
Five Language Beauties, Joop Van Der Vart
Word Ways
Interesting phrases in various languages.
Crostic Puzzle, Julie Sussman
Hello And Goodbye, A. Anil
Hello And Goodbye, A. Anil
Word Ways
This is the title of a game in Word Games by Ken Russell and Philip Carter (Foulsham, 2000; p.130) that involves the matching of greetings or farewells to apt people, eg, by profession.