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Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Is That Letter-String Really A Word?, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most people would agree that SORNIE looks like a word, but DKYODZ does not. Can subjective judgements like these be codified? Can they be translated into explicit rules that rate the word plausibility of a letter-string? This article suggests a few rules, and speculates how they might be combined to forms a super-rule for discriminating between plausible words and impossible combinations. For strings of any length, such rules are likely to be computationally burdensome, requiring a computer to implement them. I propose several rules for letter-strings of length three, and show how well they perform. I then take the best …

The Grinning Cow And His Successors, Mike Morton

Word Ways

As an anagrammist I found the game of musical chairs for the House speakership in late 1998 too good to ignore. Newton Gingrich (the grinning cow) resigned shortly after the November elections, to be replaced by candidate Bob Livingston (glib bison on TV). He in turn removed himself from consideration after certain infidelities came to light, and was supplanted by Dennis Hastert (I hasten trends), another guy we've never heard of.

Eva, Eh? In A Can I Heave!, John E. Connett

Word Ways

In I Love Me, Vol. I, Mike Bonner recognizes a handful of palindromes involving Eva and a cave, including "Eva, can I pose as Aesop in a cave" and "Eva, can I stab bats in a cave?," both attributed to Leigh Mercer, and "Eva can, I see, bone no bees in a cave," by J.A. Lindon. However, there's lots more that can be said about our troglodytic Eva.

A Statename Chain Revisited, Dan Tilque

Word Ways

"Where are you from?"

"Indiana, Pennsylvania."

"Huh? Make up your mind. Are you from Indiana or Pennsylvania?"

"Both. I'm from the town of Indiana in the state of Pennsylvania."

Top Row Typing, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

A deservedly favourite question is: what is the longest English word that can be typed using only the top row of the typewriter? The very apt answer is TYPEWRITER, at 10 letters. Staying with the QWERTY (not, newspaper column that QUIETWRITER at 11 letters was longer, and also appropriate, as the IBM Quietwriter (a high quality quiet electronic typewriter or printer) also had the QWERTY layout.

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.

Het Clabbers Downplay, William Webster

Word Ways

Eth wot slag ewer ta het mage moor leary; agree, deray. Ungird mage eon, earn eth den, ti saw Savin runt; Barde soling baldy. Myna shook ewer garnets. Fro ancients, ate no REHEAT; ta het felt. Wot sword lustering--MOTHERS drawdown. Eth eon cores earn het einstein.

Alphabetic Trigrams And Tetragrams, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Many words contain a trigram comprising three consecutive letters of the alphabet. The most commonly occurring are DEF (DEFine, DEFeat, DEFt, etc.) and STU (STUck, STUb, paSTUre, etc.).

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 32 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Every Word-Pair In This Set Has One Crash, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

More than twenty years ago, in the February 1978 Word Ways, I challenged readers to find a set of eight seven-letter words in which every one of the 28 possible pairs had exactly one crash (one letter-match in the same position, as foRce and maRy, or caSinos and miSrule).

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 32 Issue 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Scrubwoman Edith Meets W.R. Hamilton, Zhi Hong Chen, Jeremiah Farrell, Thomas Rodgers

Word Ways

At an Omnium Gatherum in honor of Martin Gardner held in Atlanta in January 1998, one of us presented the following word puzzle for the amusement of the attendees.

Recreated, William Young

Word Ways

The following poem consists of two stanzas of fifteen lines each. Each of the lines can be typed with the keys on only one side of the typewriter.

Abstemious, Price, Fibonacci, Square Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Firstly, I should like to apologize in advance should anyone be able to point out that braver efforts than mine have appeared in Word Ways before. Still it is not without interest to compare the state of knowledge in (mainly) 1972 with that of today. The common theme among these types of words is that only certain letters are permitted, though not every permitted letter must be used, and more than one copy of each letter is permitted. These words are relatively scarce--roughly one is every thousand words or fewer. Some readers may wish to glance first at the table …

Twenty-Twenty Vision, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Playing with 2x2 and 3x3 squares constructed from word chains made me curious as to how far the exercise could be taken; the table on the next two pages is the result. Each horizontally-adjacent pair of words makes another word (many of these are hyphenated) or a two-word phrase, reading either from left to right or from right to left (follow the arrows). Each vertically-adjacent pair of words is similarly linked when read from left to right, and another word/phrase when read from right to left (similarly upwards and downwards); these two-way pairs are indicated by double-headed arrows.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

The Most Versatile Palindrome, Jeff Grant, Pat Grant

Word Ways

What palindromic word has the most different meanings? The answer to this intriguing question requires some research. There are many common palindromes with four or more letters -- DEED,NOON, PEEP, SEES, TOOT, CIVIC, LEVEL, MADDAM, etc. -- but their scope is somewhat limited. The solution must surely lie at the three-letter level where 'dromes abound.

The Piku, Michael Keith

Word Ways

The word-length pi mnemonic has been around for some time; a classic example, said to have been composed by physicist Sir James Jeans, is:

Varieties Of Palindromic Pangrams, James Puder

Word Ways

Depending upon which aspect of its dual nature one considers primary, a palindromic pangram may be defined as either a palindromes which is pangrammatic (i.e., which contains every letter of the alphabet) or as a pangram which is palindromic. The first one ever published was written by Howard Bergerson and appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's 1965 book, Language on Vacation. Subsequently James Rambo, in the November 1976 Word ways, and Jeff Grant, in the May 1978 Word ways, contributed additional examples to the canon. Several more of these interestingly constrained writings serve to illustrate the present article, in which various kinds …

Aeinrst Extended, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the Aug 1998 Word Ways, we presented a multiplicity of transposals of the seven letters AEINRST. After we had finished work on that article, we began to wonder how it could be extended further.

"Not New York" Roy Went On, John E. Connett

Word Ways

Is this the first palindrome incorporating a state name? (it was published in Notes & Queries under Leigh Mercer's name in 1958.) The most recent Word Ways state name collection is Dave Morice's set of 24 in the November 1996 Kickshaws.

A B C D E, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The letters ABVDE can be arranged in 120 different ways. Nine of these permutations occur as sequences uninterrupted by intervening letters, in BEAD Curtain, barBED CAT, poliCE BADge, flounCED ABout, bage. But all these sequences straddles the two words of the phrase. The current exercise searches for single words which include one of the permutations as an uninterrupted sequences.

Fast To The Foc's'Le, Facile Fossil!

Word Ways

Eckler, you still don't concede that the whole damned pasture full of Mary's lambs in mine? Instead you challenge the proper format for anagram poems? Eckler, I precede you by four centuries! My skill, art, craft and talent identify all great literature as mine, and I believe I know the rules, as I invent them.

Heterograms With No Adjacent Letters, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In the November Colloquy, Sir Jeremy Morse postulated that TAPERINGLY is the longest heterogram having no alphabetically-adjacent letters. By this he meant no two letters in the word are adjacent in the alphabet--for example, if the word has an O in it, it cannot have an N or P. However, I at first interpreted it to mean no bigrams of the form AB,BC, ... YZ, as much weaker restriction. So here are two puzzles for the price of one!

Stew Inside Curies, William Webster

Word Ways

Each word can be anagrammed to an Official Scrabble Players Dictionary word (except proper names). Apostrophes are omitted (sit = it's).

Bananagrams 4, 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. Answers will be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

Readers are encouraged to send their favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Kickshaws Editor (e-mail [email protected]).

Stuffing The Isogrid, Eric Chaikin

Word Ways

With the gunpowdery blacksmith at our side, we have hunted the biggest bisograms. In our next adventure, they will be stuffed and put on display. The "Nots and Crosses" contest in the July 1991 issue of Games Magazine put forth the following challenge: place a different word in each cell of a 3-by-3 tic-tac-toe grid ("noughts and crosses" for Anglophiles) so that no row, column, or corner-to-corner diagonal repeats a letter, with the object being to maximize the total number of letters in the grid.