Digital Commons Network^™

The Pangram Film Festival, Douglas Fink

Word Ways

Although it will be my first year there, the Pangram Film Festival is in its seventh year. It is not a place where films are tested on unsuspecting audiences or premieres are launched in attempts to get distributors and garner critical praise. But the films, which range from recent releases to early black and whites, and run the gamut from classic to cruddy camp, have a theme you won't find at any other film festival. The titles, combined, form a holoalphabetic pangram.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Identifying Authors By Lexicostatistics: 1, Enoch Haga

Word Ways

In an effort to test a theory that a specific author's identity can be determined from a writing sample of sufficient length, I have begun by gathering statistics from a chapter taken from one of my own books. These statistics include number of total words, number of different words, number of words of different length from 1 to 16, letter frequency, bigram frequency, trigram frequency, and some comparisons from published sources.

Further Cracks In The Pi-Code, Michael Keith

Word Ways

In "Cracking the Pi-Code" in the November 1999 issue of Word Ways, David Morice discussed the recreation of looking for words in the decimal digits of pi (3.14159265358979...) with the 10 digits replaced by some set of 10 different letters, as in a substitution cipher.

The Unkindest Cut, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

It seems anatomically true that if we cut off the end of a male, a female might result. This is supported by folklore, in which boys are made from sticks and snails and puppy dog's tails, which we can cut off (with a carving knife?). Everyone knows of Norma(n), Fran(k), Olive(r) and Julia(n): here are many names that could belong to boys, which, upon losing a single letter, produce a name that could belong to a girl!

Isms Taler, William Webster

Word Ways

Nailer Later saw cheating na retax fro het Shingle stunted, ta Alined Bestrew Cholos. Eth slipup antler eth bets palsy fro HET Sword Mega.

Word Kayles And Dawsonword, Richard Sabey

Word Ways

In "Wordnim and Grundyword" in the Aug 1993 Word Ways, and "Edith Plays Word Treblecross" in the Aug 1999 issue, Jeremiah Farrell, David Wright and Christopher Mihelich show how various nim-like games can be cast in the form of word games. This article casts two more such games in a similar mould.

Bananagrams 8, 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. The following anagrams are all taken from Rex Gooch's article "Swapping Terminal Letters" in the November 1999 Word Ways. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.

The Alphabet Race, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Visualize the 26 letters of the alphabet lined up like horses at the starting gate of an immensely-long racetrack. One minute after the start, letters O, N, and E each advance one mile but the remaining 23 have not budged. During the second minute, T, W and O each advance one mile, placing O in the lead at two miles and W, E and T tied for second at one mile each. During the third minute, E advances two miles, while H, T and R advance one mile, placing E in the lead of three miles.

Elemental, My Deat Watson, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

There are 103 chemical elements which can be identified by one-letter or two-letter abbreviations, listed below.

Long Palindromes From A To Z, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Since The Palindromicon was produced back in 1991, Dan Tilque and I have been searching for new 'dromes in an effort to increase the collection from its original 2332 specimens up to 4004. This target has now almost been reached, and we hope to have Palindromicon 2 published in the appropriate year 2002.

Upper Typewriter Row, Nick Montfort

Word Ways

I tutor you, reporter: to write, wipe out type. Out, out, type! Retire your repertoire, Totter type--teeter your type tower. Put up your weir! Tie your tripwire! Rewire your typewriter!

Typewriter Words: All Fingers Used, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In "Typewriter Words" in the November Word Ways, Mike Keith define isofinger words as those in which each finger is used at most once (fo eight-letter words, each finger used exactly once). I find the ter isofinger unfortunate, since iso- means "equal" when the opposite I intended. As possible alternatives, I propose hertofinger (somewhat un gainly), heterodigital (hybrid components), or pandigital (in my opinion the biggest).

New Categories Of Typewriter Words, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In the November 1999 Word Ways, Michael Keith introduced Misplaced-Hand words, in which one hand is in the wrong place on the keyboard. When both hands are offset, I call these Typewriter Shifts, defined by the direction (right or left) and the number of keys offset. For example, in a Left Shift PIMP - 5 = TEXT, and in a Right Shift REDS + 6 = POLK (OED).

The Star Wars Anagrams, Mike Morton

Word Ways

With the return to theaters of "Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace", I got to thinking about the meaning of the film. Critics like to talk about how George Lucas draws on the work of Joseph Campbell, whether the Force is God, and so on. But it turns out the meanings run much deeper. Here are various topical collections of anagrams constructed from these 32 letters.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Seventeen Synonyms Of Semordnilap, James Puder

Word Ways

One finds in the published literature on palindromes and their ilk an odd disparity: whereas there is presently only one name of any significance in the language for a palindrome, there exists a bewildering plethora of names for the palindrome's sibling, the word (or words) which forms a different word (or words) when read in reverse, an item which forms a different word (or words) when read in reverse, an item hereinafter referred to generically as a half-palindrome, to select a neutral term. Even among the current majority of those who favor some form of the word REVERSAL, there is …

Pc Madness, O. V. Michaelsen

Word Ways

The past decade has given rise to the amusement of creating politically-correct definitions. Merriam-Webster researchers have found the term "politically correct" in H.V. Morton's book In The Steps of Saint Paul, (1936). It was reported that the term was used in a 1793 US Supreme Court decision.

The Pi Code, Michael Keith

Word Ways

Martin Gardner's fictional Doctor Matrix used to say that, property interpreted, the number pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, whose decimal expansion begins 3.14159265897932384626...) contains the entire history of mankind. In this article I give some results of looking at pi in a relatively new way: as an infinite string of letters derived from its expansion in base 26 or base 27.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 32 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Literary Lipogrammatic Windows, Michael Keith

Word Ways

In this article I describe some results of looking for long sections of text in literary works that happen to be lipograms of various sorts. The investigation was carried out by a computer search of the 15000 books (mostly well-known works such as the Bible, the novels of Austen, Dickens, Twain, and so on) that have been put into electronic form by Project Gutenberg.

Headlines I Have Loved, Mary Christie Craig

Word Ways

The headline writers for our local newspaper, the Town Talk, have to be closet punsters. There's no other explanation for the play-on-words banners which so frequently appear in boldface. Here are my favorites, most of which are self-explanatory.

Swapping Terminal Letters, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Richard Lederer in the Nov 1997 Word Ways mentioned words which become other words when their terminal letters are interchanged (the first and the last letter are swapped), as SWINDLES to SWINDLED. He gave seven examples of four-letter pairs, five examples of the "rarer" five-letter pairs, and three examples of six-letter "prize" pairs, given them the title "simultaneous loopers" since the two letters are looped to the other end of the word at the same time.

Geometeric Letters, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

STRAIGHT LINE LETTERS ONLY (AEFHIKLMNTVWXYZ)

Longest word made from straight line letters: possibly METHYLHEXANEAMINE (Dorland's Medical Dictionary). (ZENZIZENZIZENZIc and sym-METHYLETHYLETHYLENE have straight line strings of 15, 19 letters.)

Longest straight line letter heterogram: several, including WILKHAVEN and WYKHAMITE, have 9 letters

Sex And The Taxman, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

This is an extension of the classic palindrome SEX AT NOON TAXES. Originally the piece was titled POLL OR TAX A TROLLOP, but I discarded it, because Vi, Eve, Kate, and Noelle are not loose women. Here, then, are the afternoon and evening trails and temptations of a dedicated, but accommodating (and energetic) revenue collector. Or perhaps it's all just the product of an overactive imagination!

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

All That She Had On Was The Radio, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In De Logologische Ruimte (Meulenhoff, 1984), Rudy Kousbroek honored the French Oulipan Gorges Perec with many wordplay variants of Marilyn Monroe's famous remark about the calendar picture of her in the nude: "All I had on was the radio." The following is a translation of his article (with interpretation for non-Dutch readers).

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

The Adeinrst Alphome, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the May 1999 Word Ways, Rex Gooch introduced the term alphome to readers. This is used to refer to the letters of a word arranged in alphabetical order. For example, AEGINRST is the alphome of the words ASTRINGE, GRANITES, and so on. Elsewhere in the same issue. Ross Eckler noticed the relative paucity of ADEINRST transposals in published sources: DETRAINS, STRADINE, STRAINED, TARNSIDE. According to the statistics presented in his article, ADEINRST should be marginally more fecund than AEGINRST in producing transposals.

Word Trees In Running Text, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In "Mysterious Precognitions" in the August 1998 Word Ways, Martin Gardner showed how to generate the sequence of words in running text. Start with any word, and use the following (iterative) rule: if the ith word in the sequence has n(i) letters, then the (i+1)st word is located n(i) words further in the running text. For example, take the first sentence of this paragraph: pick IN as the first word, count two words to PRECOGNITIONS, count thirteen more words to A, count one more word to SEQUENCE, and so on.