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Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Iouea: A Creative Coup, Stuart Kidd
Iouea: A Creative Coup, Stuart Kidd
Word Ways
In "IOUEA: A Cretaceous Coup" in the November 1003 Word Ways, Susan Thorpe reported her discovery of IOUEA, the name of a fossil sponge genus in The Encyclopedia of Paleontology (1979), written by Rhodes Fairbridge and David Jablonski. (This five-letter-all-vowel word also appears in Nomenclator Zoologicus.) I wrote recently to Dr. Michelle Kelly Shanks, a world authority on sponges, in Auckland, New Zealand after I read in a paper of hers of a living species of the genus IOUEA. I was also interested in how de Laubenfels came to name the genus back in 1955.
On Location With Pair Isograms, Susan Thorpe
On Location With Pair Isograms, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
A pair isogram is a word in which each different letter occurs exactly twice. As a genre, pair isograms can be divided into two types. We can call these split pair isograms (SPIs for short) in which the letters in the first half of the word are repeated, in a different order, in the second half (HORSESHOER); and non-split pair isograms (NSPIs) in which this is not the case (APPEASES).
Azby-Shiftwords: Edify, Story, Richard Sabey
Azby-Shiftwords: Edify, Story, Richard Sabey
Word Ways
The atbash cipher (or athbash, under which name Web3 defines it) is a Hebrew substitution cipher which replaces the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph, X) but the last (tav, n) which is replaced by the first (aleph, x). Jan Anderson described it in "Fledge Ledge Edge" (WW 8. 1997-229). Naturally, the idea can be applied to our alphabet; following the precedent set by "atbash", I name it the azby cipher.
The Sorcery Of Context, Michael Constantine Mcconnell
The Sorcery Of Context, Michael Constantine Mcconnell
Word Ways
There are countless one-word palindromes in the English language, many of them common, such as Mom, Dad, poop, boob, sees, racecar, level, and rotor, as well as the names Bob, Otto, Ava, and Hannah. At their most base level, one-word palindromes signify a concept, and the words themselves are palindromic more by coincidence than anything else; they sound perfectly natural when spoken. Slightly longer phrase palindromes, like a red-eyed era and to prefer pot are evasive as naturally uttered speech and in fact probably have been spoken by many yet recognized by few to no listeners or speakers.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 36 Issue 4
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 36 Issue 4
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
Oiliqo, The Looking-Glass Crab, Jim Puder
Oiliqo, The Looking-Glass Crab, Jim Puder
Word Ways
To set the scene for this leggy crab story, let us first consider a unitary approach to the fallow (but far from exhausted) topic of rotated writing. To begin with some definitions, by "letters" in this context is meant the 52 upper case (u.c.) and lower case (l.c.) letters of the alphabet in their simplest sans-serif forms (in which M and W are stipulated to be exact mutual inverts, the upper and lower loops of B, S and s are stipulated to be equal in size, and so forth); by "words" and "sentences" in this context is meant words and …
English Words From Greek Letters, Darryl Francis
English Words From Greek Letters, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
For some time I've been bemused by the word UNIX, the name of a computer operating system, because it can be spelled out from the names of two letters of the Greek alphabet, XI and NU. Additionally, the two letters are simply spelled in order backwards. This set me thinking about what other words might exist whose letters could be used to spell out the names of two or more Greek letters. And would any of them display their Greek letters in order or reverse order?
Trinanagrams, Jim Puder
Trinanagrams, Jim Puder
Word Ways
These trinanagrams - variants of bananagrams in which there are three mystery words rather than two - are dedicated to Edmund Conti in appreciation of his 21 recently concluded installments of "Bananagrams" in Word Ways. To solve a trianagram, first guess the mystery word at the end of the first line of the couplet, based on clues and context. The mystery word at the end of the second line will be reversal word which rhymes with the first word, and the third mystery word will be the reversal of the second word.
Fumbling And Stalling: More Editorial Lapses, Don Hauptman
Fumbling And Stalling: More Editorial Lapses, Don Hauptman
Word Ways
A few decades ago, IBM and several other high-tech companies invested millions in an attempt to develop a high-speed semiconductor that could operate at low temperatures. The circuit, called a Josephson junction, was ultimately abandoned as impractical. But not before a management consultant referred to the device in a speech. His secretary, transcribing a recording of the talk, rendered the name as Joseph's injunction.
A Dictionary Of Letter Words, William E. Brandt Jr.
A Dictionary Of Letter Words, William E. Brandt Jr.
Word Ways
Letters can be used to represent words. That is to say, the sounds of the letters can mimic the sounds of words. An example of everyday use of a letter word is the promissory note called an IOU, which stands for, and sounds like, "I owe you". Letters used to present words have been called "grammagrams" by Richard Lederer and "ABC language" by Willard R. Espy. Two books with collections of sentences composed with letters as words are CDB! (Aladdin Paperbacks, 1968) and CDC? (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1984), both by William Steig. The most well-known example of letter words …
Aeginrst Transdeleted, Darryl Francis
Aeginrst Transdeleted, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
AEGINRST has over 150 transposals, previously listed and discussed at length in Word Ways and Making the Alphabet Dance. What about the subsets of those letters? There are eight ways of selecting seven letters from AEGINRST, and all of them can be rearranged to form valid words. All are common and in Webster's Third.
Consonants In Order, Susan Thorpe
Consonants In Order, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
AEIOU in Order (WW98037), UOIEA Words (WW2001313) and On Location With AEIOU (WW2002314) examined words in which the five major vowels each occur just once in alphabetical order, and reverse alphabetical order. This raises the question of words in which the consonants occur in alphabetical order or, indeed, in reverse alphabetical order.
Synonagrams, Stuart Kidd
Synonagrams, Stuart Kidd
Word Ways
A previous article ("Importunate Permutation: Aphroistical Parochialist" in the August 2003 Word Ways) explored the often entertaining results when transposals are set adjacently. Looking at transposal sets also reveals pairs (and sometimes trios) of words which are to a varying degree synonymous, related or antonymous. I have coined the term 'synonagrams' for the former and retained the current 'antigrams' for the latter, in a selection below.
The Elusive Triangle, Susan Thorpe
The Elusive Triangle, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
Readers of Word Ways have tried to find a 15-letter word which has 5 of one letter, 4 of a second letter, 3 of a third letter, 2 of a fourth letter and 1 of a fifth letter. In Geometrical Words: Part 1 (Word Ways August 1997), I wrote 'The dictionary-sanctioned word which makes triangle with the letter ratio 5:4:3:2:1 remains as elusive as ever, the only representatives are cleverly coined words such as Sir Jeremy Morse's 'linenlessnesses'.
Extreme Syllabification, A. Ross Eckler
Extreme Syllabification, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Hugo Brandt Corstius has proposed the name oligosyllabic for a word in which the number of letters is more than four times the number of syllables, and hypersyllabic for a word in which the number of letters is less than twice the number of syllables. Oligosyllabic and hypersyllabic words exist for most word lengths, but they are increasingly rare with increasing word length-infact, no Merriam-Webster hypersyllabic words of more than 21 letters or oligosyllabic words for more than 19 letters are known to exist. This is in contrast with the Dutch experience reported by Corstius in the August Word Ways …
Not Seeing Double, Steve Kahan
Not Seeing Double, Steve Kahan
Word Ways
Each group of letters below is a familiar word, phrase or name from which exactly three pairs of double letters have been removed. The remaining letters are then run together. For example, LGRNWD and ROEVIE would represent the singers LEE GREENWOOD and AARON NEVILLE, respectively. The total number of letters in the original formulation appears in parentheses. How many can you reconstruct?
Pick Your "-Lily" Adverbs With Care, John J. Henrick
Pick Your "-Lily" Adverbs With Care, John J. Henrick
Word Ways
When John Henry Newman wrote "Lead, Kindly Light" at sea on June 16 1933, he didn't mispunctuate, intending "Lead Kindly, Light". How can one say this with confidence 180 years later? Very simply, because we know that Newman would never had been guilty of such a syntactical faux pas. Instead, he would have had to write "Lead Kindlily, Light", sacrificing sound to sense.
An Italo-Hebraic Bilingual Homophonous Poem, Ghil 'Ad Zuckermann
An Italo-Hebraic Bilingual Homophonous Poem, Ghil 'Ad Zuckermann
Word Ways
The following is constrained literature, a logological piece, in which the Israeli part sounds identical to the Italian. From the English translations provided below, one can see that the poem(s) make sense, although it has a surreal, evocative flavour, and modernist style. Poetic license is fully employed. As Thomas Paine once said, "The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again".
Definitive Anagrams: D-F
Word Ways
Continued from May 2003. Robert McGough helped me pick the "best" throughout this series.
The Power Of "A" Prefix, Thomas L. Bernard
The Power Of "A" Prefix, Thomas L. Bernard
Word Ways
THe first letter of the alphabet serves many linguistic purposes and numerous grammatical functions. One that has intrigued this writer is the way in which a humble lower case "a" prefix can semantically transform different types of words. This can be in terms of a manner (loud, aloud), a condition (live, alive), a state (lone, alone), or action (rising, arising). Relevant applications can be with nouns, verbs (particularly with present participles), adverbs or prepositions.
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.
Letter Banks From The Chemical Elements, Darryl Francis
Letter Banks From The Chemical Elements, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
This article returns to one of our favorite themes, the names of the chemical elements. We started by taking the names of the chemical elements, running from hydrogen (atomic number 1) to meitnerium (atomic number 109). We included some variant spellings (e.g., sulphur, sulphur) and variant names (e.g., for elements with atomic numbers 104-109).
Kickshaws, Dave Morice
An A To Z Of Ten-Squares, Rex Gooch
An A To Z Of Ten-Squares, Rex Gooch
Word Ways
There have been many discussions over the years on how to make ten-squares, including what kind of words are best suited. A review of all these ideas against the words in my 2000+ squares would be very lengthy, so I provide here some raw material for readers to do this if they wish. At the same time, it will be of wider interest to publish further reasonable examples to add to the four best I have already published.
Shiftgrams Ciphered, Analyzed, Richard Sabey
Shiftgrams Ciphered, Analyzed, Richard Sabey
Word Ways
A list of the shiftwords or shiftgrams in some word stock, classified by the amount of shift, such as Leonard Gordon's "Letter-shift Words in the OSPD" (WW 3.1990-61), shows that some shifts produce more word pairs than others. To get some insight as to why, this article surveys the whole stock of shiftwords and shiftgrams of words of lengths 3-12 from a specified word stock, before going on to analyze words of some specified lengths in further depth.
Caroline And Chums, Rex Gooch
Caroline And Chums, Rex Gooch
Word Ways
Readers may notice the new official name of the town in which I live, the change taking place in 2003, 100 years after the founding of the world's first Garden City (I formerly lived outside the world's second, Welwyn Garden City: both were founded by Enenezer Howard).
Strike While The Irony Is Hot: Humorous Proverbs, Don Hauptman
Strike While The Irony Is Hot: Humorous Proverbs, Don Hauptman
Word Ways
One of my pet linguistic peeves is the widespread misuse of the adjective proverbial. Consider a recent example, from a magazine profile of a government whistleblower: "When she grabs hold of something, she is like the proverbial dog with a bone in its teeth." Of course, this expression is not a proverb; it's a metaphor or simile. Or, less charitably, a cliche or bromide.
Shiftgrams: Spangled Wordplay, Richard Sabey
Shiftgrams: Spangled Wordplay, Richard Sabey
Word Ways
To form a shiftgram of a word, two operations are performed. First, it is enciphered using a shiftcipher, which replaces each letter by the letter n places further on in the alphabet. The result is then transposed to form a word. Howard Bergerson introduced shiftgrams in "Sea-changed Words" (WW 2.1969-24). In "Shiftgrams" (WW 2.1980-22). Tom Pulliam gave more examples and called the operation an n-shift.