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Articles 2161 - 2190 of 4911
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Kickshaws, Dave Morice
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 33 Issue 2
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 33 Issue 2
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
Bananagrams 9, Edmund Conti
Bananagrams 9, 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 to be an anagram and the couplet itself will offer clues to help solve the anagram. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.
The Dispatchful Byeworkman, Michael Keith
The Dispatchful Byeworkman, Michael Keith
Word Ways
In this article we introduce the Dispatchful Byeworkman, a fellow closely related to the Gunpowdery Blacksmith (who is, as readers of Word Ways are well aware, the longest Unabridged Merriam-Webster two-word isogram). By contrast the Dispatchful Byeworkman is an example of the longest two-word isogram crossword, with 21 letters in the two words but only 20 distinct letters (diagram at left below).
Celebrity One-Word Anagrams, Michael Keith
Celebrity One-Word Anagrams, Michael Keith
Word Ways
Did you know that guitar legend ERIC CLAPTON is a NARCOLEPTIC? Or that singer BRITNEY SPEARS is a member of the PRESBYTERIANS? Or that actress MEG RYAN hails from GERMANY? Well, actually, such observations are only true loglogically; these are examples of famous people whose combined first and last names can be anagrammed into a single English word.
Sequential Snakes And Ladders, Rex Gooch
Sequential Snakes And Ladders, Rex Gooch
Word Ways
In a private communication I recently received an example and a challenge. The example was to change COLD to BARE by changing each letter in turn (all words to be valid), then to return to COLD in the same fashion: COLD BOLD BALD BARD BARE CARE CORE COLE COLD. I have previously called such sequences of there-and-back (regardless of the order of change) Snakes and Ladders, so I termed these sequences Sequential Snakes and Ladders, or SSLs for short.
Presidents, Pairs And Primes, Monte J. Zerger
Presidents, Pairs And Primes, Monte J. Zerger
Word Ways
Which of the two major presidential candidates will be elected on the first "2's Day" in November of the year 2000, and take office on the 20th day of the following year? Linguistically and numerically, Bush seems to have a definite edge. His last name begins with B, the second letter of the alphabet, and if elected he would be the second George Bush to serve.
Magic Square Magic, Jeremiah Farrell
Magic Square Magic, Jeremiah Farrell
Word Ways
I had heard the rumors for years. Somewhere, deep in the back woods, there existed an enclave of mentalists with some clever new prediction tricks. In fact, I finally learned that the group, the mysterious MOUSTERIAN cult, is led by my good friend Edith, known to readers of Word Ways as Scrubwoman Edith. Her last appearance of these pages was in the August 1999 issue in "Edith Plays Word Treblecross".
Palindromania: Do Nod, Roland A. Duerksen
Palindromania: Do Nod, Roland A. Duerksen
Word Ways
In this companion article to "Palindromania: Don't Nod", the reader is invited to complete the following palindromic sentences (with all vowels except Y identified). Each palindrome is clued by a rhymed couplet, with capitalized words are labeled with an asterisk. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.
New Palindromes, Susan Thorpe
New Palindromes, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
If Malayalam is typed backwards, malayala M, it is different from Malayalam. When the word is spoken, the first letter 'a' is short but the final 'a' is long, which means that it also sounds different backwards. Because visual and phonetic discrepancies are rife amongst the words we unhesitatingly accept as palindromes, is there any question why we should not accept dowod (Polish: proof), rugur (Icelandic: rye), or ucuru (Turkish: flying: volatile) as palindromes? Unlike these three words, the palindromes below have no stress or sound accents, and all but the 2nd and 4th are new to Word Ways.
Ed's Palindromic Trickery, John E. Connett
Ed's Palindromic Trickery, John E. Connett
Word Ways
The Nov 1998 Kickshaws presented two palindromic poems starting and ending with ED I HIDE, plus one consisting of ED, I HID A...-AD, I HIDE. In this article we analyze their structure in detail, and also exhibit a number of palindromic variations that Ed can exploit.
An Anecdote: Agile Acrobat Avoids Accident, Lionel R. Simard
An Anecdote: Agile Acrobat Avoids Accident, Lionel R. Simard
Word Ways
Alma Anderson, an avid American amateur acrobat, asked admiringly, "Are all Asians as agile as Anita Akihito?"
Room For Expansion, Enoch Haga
Room For Expansion, Enoch Haga
Word Ways
How many words are possible using the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet? I've made some speculative calculations and I believe provide a preliminary answer to this question. Since languages other than English make use of the Roman alphabet, and probably more Romanization will occur in the future, my numerical estimates include their usage. But I will focus on English, and assume that English alone may look to the entire pool of possible words as needed for future expansion.
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.
Aeinst +1 Words, Darryl Francis
Aeinst +1 Words, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
HEALTH WARNING: This article could damage your Scrabble vocabulary.
Borrowed English, Dan Tilque
Borrowed English, Dan Tilque
Word Ways
English is known as a great borrowing language. Among words in the dictionary, roughly 25 percent are native English words, the rest derived from other languages. But how many languages has English borrowed from? The way to find out is to compile a list of words derived from as many different languages as possible.
Kickshaws, Dave Morice
120 Supervocalic Permutations, Eric W. Chaikin
120 Supervocalic Permutations, Eric W. Chaikin
Word Ways
Long shrift has been given recently to AEIOU words. In the past, AEIOU words or phrases have included names and places as well. Perusing the neighborhood, one might spy a liquor market, customer parking, a public storage facility, or perhaps an ad for Austin Powers. To generalize the concept I introduce the term supervocalic to
The Alphabet Ruler, Susan Thorpe
The Alphabet Ruler, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
Assigning each letter its positional value in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc.), adding the 26 values (351) and dividing by the number of letters in the alphabet (26) gives the Average Letter Value (ALV) of the alphabet (13.5). Similarly, dividing the total letter value of a word by the number of letters in the word gives the ALV of that word.
Letter Spirals, Michael Keith
Letter Spirals, Michael Keith
Word Ways
This recreation was inspired by the famous mathematical discovery of S. Ulam: if the numbers 1,2,3,4... are arranged in a spiral on a square grid, unexpected diagonal patterns appear when one looks at the prime numbers. What happens, I wondered, if we do a similar thing with the alphabet, or other sequences of letters, and look for words instead of numbers?
Miami Words, Susan Thorpe
Miami Words, Susan Thorpe
Word Ways
In February 1970, Kickshaws editor David Silverman challenged the readers of Word Ways to find words such as ONION in which the letters preceding and succeeding a single core letter (in this case, the letter I) are the same. These were christened Heads 'n' Trails words by John Ferguson of Maryland. Silverman's idea was to find 26 of these words, each one having a different core letter. The exercise was dully completed, largely by Josepha Byrne in the May 1970 issue and Murray Pearce in the August 1971 one, using words of various lengths including ADA, EDGED, HOTSHOT and OUTSPOUTS.
Palindromania: Don't Nod, Roland A. Duerksen
Palindromania: Don't Nod, Roland A. Duerksen
Word Ways
In this article, the reader is invited to complete the following palindromic sentences (with all vowels except Y identified). Each palindrome is clued by a rhymed couplet, and capitalized words are labeled with an asterisk. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.
Kickshaws, Dave Morice
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 33 Issue 1
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 33 Issue 1
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
Aeinrst Transposals On The Internet, Darryl Francis
Aeinrst Transposals On The Internet, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
In the August 1998 issue of Word Ways, I embarked on "The AEINRST Problem", a wide-ranging search for transposals of the letters AEINRST. In that article, I presented transposals for 155 different sequences of these letters (counting RAINEST and RAINE ST as the same sequence). Since then I have discovered additional transposals in dribs and drabs. Four of these were parceled up in the November 1999 Colloquy: ARTESIN, ATIN-RES, ENTAIRS and S'INTREA, bringing the number of transposals to 159.
Ultrapalindromes, John E. Connett
Ultrapalindromes, John E. Connett
Word Ways
Sometimes, the first example one sees of a given type of wordplay becomes the ideal for all that follow. I showed a collection of palindromes to a friend who somehow had never encountered them before. In addition to ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA and RATS LIVE ON NO EVIL STAR, the collection included TEN ANIMALS I SLAM IN A NET and A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL -- PANAMA.