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Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Lyrical Palindromes, Mark J. Russell

Word Ways

Last lash, sugar of suede

Taste yet again

A manic in a pot of rust.

Double Doubles, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

This article searches for words in which 2 pairs of double letters occur adjacently. Previous items in Word Ways have looked for words with 2 pairs of doubled letters but, almost exclusively, words in which the 2 pairs occur anywhere in relation to each other. However, scattered in these lists are examples in which the 2 pairs occur together. The History section below extracts these examples. The words are listed in alphabetical order of the doubled letters. Unreferenced words in the History section can be found in Webster's Second Edition.

Mothers And Their Vowels, Thomas L. Bernard

Word Ways

Born into the Scottish nobility in the first year of the twentieth century, Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon became the Queen Consort on the accession of her husband Prince Albert to the throne (as King George VI) in 1936. When she became a window in 1952 and her daughter became Queen Elizabeth II, she was formally known as the Queen Mother but more informally and affectionately by the general public as the "Queen Mum". Her children Elizabeth and Margaret, though grown, continued to call her "Mummy".

Bananagrams 20, Edmund Conti

Word Ways

Bananagrams--anagrams to drive you bananas--consist of rhymed couplets, each one containing a pair of anagrams to be solved. One of the rhyming words will always be an anagram, and the couplet itself will offer clues to help solve the anagram.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

A Logological Game Of Bridge, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In a game of contract bridge, the four players are assigned the names North, East, South, and West, corresponding to their seats around a bridge table. Among the 52 playing cards, from the Spade Ace to the Club Two, which 13 are most appropriate for North to hold? Which 13 for East? For South? For West? The Spade Ace shares no letters with North, three letters with East (eas), and one letter with South (s), and two letters with West (es). So, it is logologically appropriate to assign the Spade Ace to East.

(W)Holesome Fun, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

Word squares continue to constitute one of the grand research topics of recreational linguistics. The search for a universally acceptable 10-square is still one of the Holy Grails of word play. Like any substantial research topic, the idea of "word squares" suggests a further plethora of interesting related topics by modifying and relaxing its definition.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

The Heptcat Perspicuous Palindrome Producer, Jim Puder

Word Ways

Over the years, various ideas for the mechanical generation of palindromic sentences have been published in Word Ways. Of these, the simplest in concept may have been Dave Morice's Palindromic Slide Rule (August, 1995). This device separates palindromic passages into paired segments comprised of single reversal words; by shifting the positions of columns of such words with respect to one another in slide rule fashion, users can generate up to 10,000 different palindromic passages.

An Insomniac's Research Report, Frederick Crane

Word Ways

Among the many afflictions of my old age is insomnia. I do not extend periods abed when I'm conscious of being asleep, but I am more often aware of being awake.

Outtakes, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

Each group of letters below is a familiar word, phrase, name or title from which any sequence of consecutive letters of the alphabet (in order) inside it has been removed. The remaining letters are then run together. For example, NNION would represent the phrase STUDENT UNION (missing the STU, DE, and TU). The total number of letters in the original formulation appears in parentheses. How many can you reconstruct?

Vowel-Consonant Patterns (Part 1), Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In Vowel-Consonant Patterns (Word Ways 77221), Philip Cohen presented a list of words based on 125 of the possible 128 (2^7) 7-letter vowel-consonant (V-C) patterns. Somewhat belatedly, this has inspired me to undertake similar exercises for 8-letter words and 9-letter words. As Cohen's article appeared more than 25 years ago, before most of us were acquainted with Word Ways, I have also taken the liberty of repeating his 7-letter exercise, using different words wherever appropriate. Part 1 considers 7- and 8-letter words; Part 2 considers 9-letter words, and also analyses the patterns with regard to the number of words they …

Moose Laurels, Part 2: Story Spoonerisms, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

In our previous episode (Word Ways, August 2002), we examined a new crop of transposition puns accompanied by one-line definitions. Now let us turn to a related genre: the joke that contains a more detailed setup and a spoonerized punchline.

The Alphabet Cube And Beyond, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Two-letter words can be plotted as points on a two-dimensional plane. The first letter of a two-letter word is plotted against the x-axis, and the second letter is plotted against the y-axis. Along the x-axis, x=1 is equivalent to the letter A, x=2 is equivalent to the letter B, and so on, with x=26 being equivalent to the letter Z. Similarly, plot the second letter of a word on the y-axis, with y=1 equivalent to A, y=2 equivalent to B, etc. So, for example, take the two-letter word HE. The H corresponds to x=8 and the E corresponds to y=5. …

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 35 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

New Record Pangrammatic Windows, Mike Keith

Word Ways

Most readers of Word Ways are familiar with the "accidental pangram" problem, which is to find a short 'window' (block of contiguous text) in published text that, but accident rather than deliberation, contains each letter of the alphabet at least once. The record for the shortest known accidental pangram in English has stood for 95 years, as it was reported in print by A. Cyril Pearson in The Twentieth Century Standard Puzzle Book, published in 1907. It is from The Beth Book, a popular 1897 novel by Sarah Grand (republished as recently as 1980 by The Dial Press).

The Tebahpla, David Morice

Word Ways

Awake! As actors afterward amass,

An artful agent almost acts an ass

And asks aloud, "Are acting arts about

An artist's act? An actor's art?" Alas!

Some Superior Ten-Squares, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

The following squares are, in my view, the approximate equal, or superior of, the square published as My First Ten-Square (Word Ways August 2002). I invite readers to form their own views as to the relative merits of the three squares below and the August one. I give my own views inverted at the end of the article.

Lattice Play, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

At first glance, lattices seem to offer few attractions as a wordplay form. They are far more abundant than word squares and easier to construct. Although long neglected, lattices yield a previously unknown but elegant pangrammatic set, one involving only 33 total letters and words from a single dictionary.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Sesquipedalianists, Seek No Longer, Peter Delin

Word Ways

Most actual and incipient logologists seem to pass through of being fascinated by long words, and raising such questions as what is the longest word in English or American. One reason for the eventual passing of this phase, for most of us, is the eventual realization of the fact that, as it is by no means simple to decide what counts as a word.

Unusual New Zealand Place Names, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

New Zealand is a small Pacific country about the size of Colorado. A lot of places here bear their original Maori names, the most famous being the 85-letter TAUMATAWHAKATANGIHANGAKOAUAUOTAMATEATURIPUKAKAPIKIMAUNGAHORONUKUPOKAIWHENUAKITANATAHU, a hill about 40 miles south of where I live in Hawke's Bay province.

Word Stools

Word Ways

This is the third in a series exploring meaningful word ladders, the first two appearing in the August issue. "Word Stools" is my nickname for one-step word ladders-pairs of related words differing by a single letter, e.g. indolence & insolence, the primary problems confronting teachers. They've been noted often and are the basis of amusing typos plus a true abundance of popular alliterative or rhyming phrases like tick-tock, hip hop, fat cat, brain drain, teenie weenie, nappy-happy. Like these the following pairs crash in all but one position, "high crash". A couple are charades. With one heartfelt exception, I've limited …

Word Girders, Chris Cole

Word Ways

On p 160 of Language on Vacation (1965), Dmitri Borgmann issued the challenge "For the logophile who feels the urge to explore virgin territory, word girders are just the thing." A word girder is constructed by exchanging letters between a pair of words to form another pair of words. Borgmann lists three 5-letter examples.

Ladder Words, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

PERVERSER, HASHISHES and INSINKING are examples of what I call Ladder Words. Each word is a self-contained ladder (PER-VER-SET, HAS-HIS-HES, INS-INK-ING) in which each trigram (3-letter group) differs from its trigram neighbour(s) by a single letter, just as do the words in a word ladder. All the examples of ladder words below are either solid words or hyphenated words. Hyphens are not shown. All 3 trigramism must be different, so that GONGOLGON (in New South Wales) is not acceptable. A few words of this genre appeared in Colloquy 98116 and these are identified in the lists below by an asterisk*. …

Bananagrams 19, Edmund Conti

Word Ways

Bananagrams--anagrams to drive you bananas--consist of rhymed couplets, each one containing a pair of anagrams to be solved. One of the rhyming words will always be an anagram, and the couplet itself will offer clues to help solve the anagrams.

Consonant Cascades

Word Ways

Concluding a series on meaningful word ladders, here's another special type of ladder. Consonant cascades (CCs) are meaningful cases of "consonant movements" (CMs) in which all substitutions occur at the same position. They are modeled on vowel cascades and vowel movements (02-53), so ideally the ladders are alphabetical or anti-alphabetical. The Word Stool bake cake, if a Japanese fish cake, can expand to Bake cake (fake hake?), make sake.