Digital Commons Network^™

Mysterious Precognitions, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

Select any of the ten words in the first verse of Genesis. Count the number of letters in the word you choose. For example, suppose you select BEGINNING which has nine letters. Count ahead nine words, starting with the next word in the text, which brings you to THE, the second word of verse 2. This word has three letters, so you count ahead three more words to end on WITHOUT.

Heterograms And Their Alphomes, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

For the benefit of new readers, allow me to explain the terms heterogram and alphome. Heterogram is my preferred term for isogram, a word such as AMBIDEXTROUS in which no letter is repeated. In "Alphomes" in the November 1995 Word Ways, I defined an alphome as follows: a set of alphabetically-ordered letters of which at least one arrangement is a word. Thus the alphome ABINR makes the word BRAIN.

Doubly True Alphametics In Base 27, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In "Base 27: the key to a New Gematria" in the May 1993 Word Ways, Lee Sallows offered "immortal fame" in finding doubly true equations (those valid in both base 10 and base 27 notion). I do not know where he obtained authority to grant such fame, but I accept his challenge.

A Four Seasons Word Network, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the June 1938 issue of The Enigma, the official organ of the National Puzzlers' League, Ab Struse (David Shulman) wrote:

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Whitman Retransposed, James Puder

Word Ways

"Vocabularyclept poetry" is the term Howard Bergerson coined to describe a poem created by a rearrangement of the words of another poem. In the May 1971 Word Ways, and subsequently in his landmark 1973 book Palindromes and Anagrams, Bergerson illustrated the concept with his word-unit transposal of a 100-word Walt Whitman poem, "Poets to Come."

Alphametish Cabell, Mike Keith

Word Ways

The Virginia writer James Branch Cabell, author of the novel Jurgen (1919), was the target of an obscenity trial by John Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The story is told in the following poem, written in Alphametish: in each line, the letters can be replaced by digits to form a valid sum, as illustrated by SEND MORE MONEY to 9567 + 1085 = 10652.

Elf Eyrie, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

From the irrelevant heights of his little cliffside nest, Scarfin; Fatback (my elf) and I thought that the puckishness of editorial replies to authors might be an interesting theme to eyriely explore. Would you believe that just a single trip to the local library's archives unearthed the following correspondence?

Queen's-Move Text, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most words are queen-graphable; each different letter can be placed on a chessboard in such a way that a chess queen can spell out the word in legal moves (no jumping over one letter to reach another though). As Leonard Gordon demonstrated in the August 1996 Word Ways, one can use the same queen graph to spell out different words.

A Checklist Of Transposable People, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Name such as Gary Gray and Edna Dean have been a frequent topic in Word Ways. Here is a checklist summarizing who is known to exist (asterisks denoting new discoveries). Most can be found in the various editions of national telephone directories on CD-ROM, such as PhoneDisc: (numbered) sources for others are noted. In all cases actual names are reported, with reasonable inferences given in parentheses.

Zounds! The Boundless Scoundrel!

Word Ways

Superficially impressive, Mr. Echler, but, following your continued con-claim to Mary's lipolambs ("Heckle the Feckless Eckler" and "Fat-back's Setback" in May), I re-examined your previous tours de farce and found one that is actually yours. Yet even there, in tossing out half the alphabet, you kept everything of real value. Should we applaud your omission of Z? X? J? V? Q? K? My challenge now, Sir: a less wooden response to Frostly sylvania, this time with a less self-selected half of the alphabet, as here using only every other letter (A,C,E,... W,Y).

Logozoology, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Many children's magazines feature picture puzzles in which the young readers are asked to identify a number of hidden animals. In a cloud may lurk a cow, in the leaves of a tree may be concealed a fish, and on the side of the house may be soaring an eagle. The same is true with language. Inside words prowl all manner of beast, and inside animal words are hidden all kinds of logological variations.

Word Densities, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Following Charles Bostick in the May 1974 Word Ways, we define the weight of a letter as its position in the alphabet (A=1, etc.), and the weight of a word as the sum of the weights of its letters. The density of a word is defined as its weight divided by the number of letters in it, so that the density of a word is none other than the average weight of letters it contains.

The Dentist (Eth Stinted), William Webster

Word Ways

Each word can be anagrammed to an OSPD word (except for proper names) ; all apostrophes are omitted (SIT = IT'S).

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Bananagrams 2, Edmund Conti

Word Ways

Find the anagrams that go in the following ten couplets. In view of two tragedies this past winter, the advice in the sixth couplet is especially timely. And should Cinton head the seventh? The tenth is dedicated to Glett Burgess. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

Hot Sun, Or Life In A Car, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Josefa Heiftz Byrne's famous anagram of Southern California, given in the May 1970 Word Ways, is an apt description of my recent three-week holiday in the American southwest. Actually, I spent very little time there; about 75 per cent of the visit was spent in the neighbouring state of Arizona, with forays into Mexico, Utah and Nevada.

Horsing Around With Swift, Robert F. Fleissner

Word Ways

Humor in satire can be a ticklish business and indeed in more ways than one. In the case of Jonathan Swift, why did he have to make the horses in Part IV of Gulliver's Travels superior to the yahoos (or human beings)? The reader is expected to take the contrast somewhat lightly, even as the very name of horse country. Houyhnhnm-land, obviously echoes the whinny of the beast of burden. Yet here are certain other connotative meanings now worth considering:

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

The Aeinrst Problem, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Over the last three decades, Word Ways has presented various exhaustive lists of transposals of particular sets of letters. The most fecund group of transposals is formed from the eight letters AEGINRST. The main article listing the various transposals was authored by Dmitri Borgmann, and appeared in the November 1976 Word Ways. There has been various follow-on correspondence published at other dates, the most substantial of which was by Jeff Grant, and the February and May 1994 Word Ways. A complete gathering of the 157 AEGINRST transposals appears in Ross Eckler's excellent Making the Alphabet Dance.

The Gunpowdery Blacksmith, Eric Chaikin

Word Ways

As described in Making the Alphabet Dance (and earlier in the February 1977 Word Ways), two English words can use a maximum of 20 different letters without repeating at least one. This is accomplished by the GUNPOWDERY BLACKSMITH who is by now assured a place in logological history.

Homos And Heteros: The Truth Revealed, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In Kickshaws in the February 1998 Word Ways, Richard Lederer does well to raise the problem of describing the relationship between a pair of words in respect of meaning, appearance (spelling) and pronunciation. The last is always likely to cause problems: for example, wen and when are pronounced the same by most people, but not by those who most of my dictionaries). Shades of meaning may also cause disagreements. Derivation may also be of interest, though not always known.

Lycanthropus Palindromis, James Puder

Word Ways

Flow, Eridanus! Liven a red, nude dune-devil! I'll animus' nider, ill I will! A pall I will! It's ill? It's all I will!...

Elf Eyrie, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

In the February 1998 Word Ways Elf Eyrie's elf, Scarfin' Fatback, and I stuck mostly with sonnet-form parodies of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, and there are more ways to do those too. For instance, a fun one to try is combining two well-known sonnets:

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 31 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Looney's My Name, But I'M Not Insane, Mary Christine Craig

Word Ways

Interesting names are everywhere. Take, for example, the editor of Better Homes and Gardens, who signs her John Henry as Jean Lem Mon. Don't tell me she didn't doctor up her name so she wouldn't be associated with a sour yellow fruit!

Even More Long Words From The Oed, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Do you recall asking about long words in the Oxford English Dictionary that used letters, digits, hyphens, Greek letters and a variety of other characters?

Pun Palindromes, Winfred S. Emmons

Word Ways

YASSER ESSAY Arafrat to his English professor, agreeing to do a paper

EGAD, NO DONDAGE! What 007 said when he realized his dominatrix would not tie him up.

Lear's In Israel?, Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Word Ways

There, she took a "bunch" of roses, and a rat devoured a worm. No pure disaster or suffering was caused. On the street, a Gypsy named Methuselah pushed in mortal danger a doctor dressed in white clothes.