Digital Commons Network^™

Aerst Transposals, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

My article "Transposing Rates" in the November 1987 Word Ways has examples for 63 of the 120 possible transposals of the letters AERST. Further research has expanded the collection to 85, with many of the originals entries being improved as well. Abbreviations like ESRTA (Empire State Restaurant & Tavern Association) are excluded; however, a couple of derivatives (RTase, TASer) are listed. Names with initials, such as T.S. RAE, are omitted, as are contrived terms and purely foreign words. Due to the nature of the source (Net), some examples may be suspect.

Upwards Edge Words, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The letters of certain words can be made into one of a series of geometrical forms when arranged, row by row, in the order in which they occur in the word. These forms sometimes exhibit edge words which read upwards, downwards, or both. In Edge Words (WW98274), I searched for right hand and left hand edge words which read downwards.

The "A" List, Steven Kahan

Word Ways

Each entry in the "A" list is made up of two words, names, or phrases that have at least two overlapping letters and in which each blank stands for a consonant, e.g. XAXAXAXXAX (6; 3-4) represents a six-letter word and two-part name or phrase consisting of a three-letter and a four-letter component. As asterisk denotes the word is capitalized. Since there are thirteen letters in all and only ten positions indicated, we can deduce that there is a three-letter overlap.

All-Diagonal 4-Squares With Common Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

This last article in the series deals with 4-letter words, which tend to be the most common in use. In the top 87,000 words, there are 5356 of four letters, including 462 reversible words and 24 palindromic words. From these, it was possible to make 5261 squares.

Reverse Engineering, Eric Harshbarger

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

Word Networks On Wordlock, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Wordlock, a combination lock using words instead of numbers, were created by Todd Basche, a Silicon Valley executive. Sold by Staples for $5.98 (in blue or black) or $3.90 (in orange), it consists of five independently-rotating rings, yielding one hundred thousand different positions, any one of which the user can select. Because words are more easily remembered than numbers, he inscribed four of the rings with ten different letters each, and the fifth with nine different letters and a blank, allowing the user to pick either a four-letter or a five-letter word.

'Palindrome' Trnas-3 Deletions Revisited, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the August 1989 Word Ways I posed the question

Three letters can be deleted from PALINDROME to leave 120 different groups.

How many of these 120 can be rearranged to form genuine words or terms?

Punk Whiz 3

Word Ways

Pun Quiz: what common phrases or words do these misdefinitions refer to? The numbers tell how many letters are in the words of the answer. But (2/4/4) means the answer is one 11-letter word made up of elements of 2, 4, 1 and 4 letters. My answers are at the back of this issue.

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Reversible 6-Squares, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

A reversible word square is one in which every row can be read backwards, and every column upwards. Every word must be either a reversible word such as LANRET (TERNAL in reverse) or a palindrome, which is a special kind of reversible word. In this article, the term reversible word does not include palindromes. In general, counts include valid rotations and reflections.

"Ma Is The Measure Of All Things": A Linguistic Potpourri, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

This is it: the inevitable "desk-clearing" article of miscellanea and ephemera that didn't fit elsewhere.

Wordplay In 1929, Believe It Or Not!, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Starting in the 1920s, the column "Believe It Or Not" by Robert Ripley appeared in more than one hundred newspapers by 1930. Reading this as a boy, I was fascinated by oddities such as the English lad who died of old age before his seventh birthday, the Hindu who hung head downward for three hours at a stretch, and the girl born with a single eye in the middle of her forehead. I was also beguiled by the 210-letter word coined by monastic writers in the Middle Ages to enumerate the varieties of divination using birds, oracles, the Bible, ghosts, …

Canine Capers, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Our domestic animals have given us such terms as buy a pig in a poke, let the cat out of the bag, and get one's goat. Can you (doggedly) work on the following expressions involving Man's Best Friend, some in the slang that calls a frankfurther a hot dog. Some are funny that they would make a dog laugh.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.

Vowel-Consonant Patterns: 10-Letter Words, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

This is a sequel to Vowel-Consonant Patterns which covered V-C patterns in 7-, 8-, and 9- letter words (Word Ways 2002249 and 2003038).

Orchard Words, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

The orchard problem, also known as the three-planting problem in the literature, is to plant n trees so that there will be r straight rows with k trees in each row. The maximum r for various k is unknown except for certain small cases of n and k. We have constructed examples of known maximums using words which we call Orchard Words.

All-Diagonal 5-Squares With Simpler Words, Max Gutmann

Word Ways

It may seem that a 5-square could contain nothing but familiar words, but these 5-squares have eight words which have to fit, of which at least one must be a reversible word, and at least one a palindrome. In the case of six-squares, there was just one square with as many as 7 words (two less than the maximum) among the most used 87,000 words: in the case of five-squares, 3 squares had all 8 words in the top 87,000 (and 66 squares had just 7 words).

All-Diagonal Seven-Squares From The Oed, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

If I have found no 9-square with words for all its diagonals, and needed place names to produce all-diagonal 8-squares, then 7-squares can be produced solely from the OED. Omitting place names reduced the crucial elements from 3386 reversible words and 878 palindromes, 584 reversible and 661 palindromes.

Heterogrammic Word Squares, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

A heterogrammic word square (one containing no repeated letters) is limited to size three or four; a size five square containing 25 different alphabetic letters is impossible to achieve. In Making the Alphabet Dance (St. Martin's , 1996), heterogrammic 4-squares by George Lopes, Jeremy Morse and Jeff Grant are given.

Life's Secret Files, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In each of the groups of 3 words below, the first and second words make a 2-word phrase; the second and third words also make a 2-word phrase. Easy you might say and you would be right, if it wasn't for the fact that a third constraint requires that the first and third words be related. They may both be transposals, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, heterophones, different tenses of the same verb, palindromes, reversals, mutual shifts, rhyming words, AEIOU words, and so on.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 30 Issue 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Embedding Hamlet In Pi, Mike Keith, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Take the text of Shakespeare's Hamlet beginning with its title "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Demark...". Write down the digits of pi (after the decimal point) in successive slices, reduce these mod 26, and convert the resulting numbers to letters using the correspondence A=0, B=1...Z=25.

On Palindromes, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

The accident and popular Art of the Palindrome blazes out from the epicenter of the universe of letter play. Alistair Reid expresses what may be the very heart of the fascination for matters palindromic when he writes, "The dream which occupies the tortuous mind of every palindromist is that somewhere within the confines of the language lurks the Great Palindrome, the nutshell which not only fulfills the intricate demands of the art, flowing sweetly in both directions, but which also contains the Final Truth of Things." There is indeed something magic about the palindromic craft, the platonic form of making …

Vowel-Consonant Patterns In 8-Letter Heterograms, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In Vowel-Consonant Patterns: Part 1 (WW2002249) we found that there are 256 (2^8) 8-letter vowel-consonant patterns - 128 beginning with a consonant (C Patterns) and 128 with a vowel (V patterns). When it comes to heterograms (all letters different), these numbers are reduced. This is because there are only 5 different vowels available (a, e, i, o and u), so that any V-C number of C patterns available in reduced by 8 from 128 to 120; the number of V patterns is reduced by 29 from 128 to 99.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Anacrograms 2: Acronyms; Singles; Phrases

Word Ways

Anacrograms, introduced in May, are anagrams of acrostics of text. Here are numerous examples from common idioms and saying. (Part 3 will be from quotations.) I occasionally cheated by modifying the wording slightly, obviously or unobtrusively. The most interesting anacrograms logologically are spelled without rearrangement. I call these acronyms. They are anacrograms in the sense that charades and half-palindromes are anagrams.

All-Diagonal Six-Squares With Familiar Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

I have previously attempted to find word squares with words as diagonals for squares of order 9, 8, and 7. As the order of the square decreases, it becomes possible to use more familiar words. The six rows and three diagonals of six-squares make nine words: in all the examples in this article, the majority of the nine words are in the most-used 87,000 words (British National Corpus): in the square, just two words do not appear in the top 87,000.

Some Narrative Alphametics, James Mayfield

Word Ways

In an alphametic, letters are substituted for numbers in an arithmetic problem, and the reader is invited to find the solution. If the letters spell out some sort of a message, so much the better; the oldest one known, SEND + MORE = MONEY, was crafted by H.E. Dudeney in 1924. (The term alphametic was coined by J.A.H. Hunter in 1955.)