Digital Commons Network^™

Fledge Ledge Edge, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

As a new contributor I have to admit I got here by turnip truck (three decades of serious writing). But then I saw Word Ways, and the tail gate opened. Also the floor gate. With such endless wordplay possibilities, can even the veterans remember all the moves? And new comers certainly need an introduction.

Graphing The Proverbs, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

As my recent contributions to Word Ways show, I enjoy graphing. But, one day I got bored with long words which I would never use in writing or speech. Somehow, I thought of graphing proverbs. Here is a sample.

Pop Culture In Ny Times Crosswords, Faith Eckler

Word Ways

The following material, extracted from a National Puzzlers' League round-robin letter, should be of interest to Word Ways readers.

Tautonyms In Biology (Part 2), Samuel S. Long

Word Ways

Mabuya mabuya (common mabuya lizard) Gk: animal's name

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Transplants, Peter Newby

Word Ways

It was contemplating the logological consequences of the term 'heart transplant' that gave me the ideas for a whole new form of wordplay. I have already produced three distinctly different objectives all based upon the same technique and, doubtless, others can be devised.

Noun-Sense, Stephen Sniderman

Word Ways

Normally, to change an adjective into a noun, we add NESS (cute, cuteness) or ITY (popular, popularity). But there are many exceptions, some of which seem to follow a pattern and some of which seem to be unique.

The Chainsaw Critic, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

AUDEN densest establishment entrant, antiquated tedium

Letter-Perfect Word Games, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

They're ba-a-a-a-ck... the readers or listeners who write or e-mail or call or stop me on the street to ask "There are three words in the English Language that end in g-r-y. Two of them are angry and hungry. What is the third?

What's That You Say?, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

You will very likely recognize most of the words asked for in this quiz--once you get them. But the clues are rather difficult and involve etymologies and other connections that are very tangled. Readers said "Harder words, please!" Try these.

T-T-T-That's All, Folks!, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The May 1996 Word Ways described the results of a National Public Radio competition of December 1995 in which listeners were challenged to write grammatical and understandable sentences containing the same word four or more times in succession. Some of the most interesting entries were based on repeated thats; this article summarizes them. Four thats is relatively easy, as achieved by the following strategy:

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.

Voila Fone, Olive Noaf

Word Ways

Having settled the gantlet-gauntlet debate, Word Ways threw down the one to send naive fools running the other (November 1995, "Alphabet Poems: A Brief History"). Rhyming alphabetic telestics: none known. Attempts tended to split rhymes by as much as eight lines. Don't carp at "limneD" in the following; if you read out loud, the "d" isn't sounded until the next line. Admit, Nyr Indictor, the glove fits, and is fashionably cosmopolitan.

Palindromic Names, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

There are lots of palindromic given names, for example, ADA, ANNA, BOB, ELLE, EVE, HANNAH, and OTTO. More unusual ones include ABBA, AOITOA, ESSESE, Lerrel, Neven, ODDO and VYV.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 29 Issue 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Fantasia For The Left Hand, William Zinsser

Word Ways

crazed zebras craved egress

at a garage

scared bats vacated

Writer Poor - Typewriter Poorer, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

i type pretty well

yet i require row 1 - row 2 - lower tier - top two too

little-to-upper letter tripper - typo error o'er-writer -

roller puller retro roto-pirouetter -

priority to write properly - elite

i'll put up 5 owe 20 - or title you to equity - ie poetry -

top qu'lity

reply to e poe

Playing Jotto Against A Computer, A. Ross Eckler, Faith W. Eckler

Word Ways

The November 1989 Word Ways reviewed Recreational Mathemagical Software (Clarks Summit PA) designed for playing the game of Jotto with a computer. In the two-person game of Jotto, each person selects a five-letter target word; the object is to guess your opponent's word before he guesses yours. To identify his target word, you propose a sequence of five-letter words, and your opponent tells you how many letters of the guess word are in his target word. For example, if the target word is PIVOT, THOSE scores 2 (T,O match) and MUNCH, 0. You and your opponent agree beforehand on a …

Tautonyms In Biology (Part 1), Samuel S. Long

Word Ways

One of my hobbies is collecting tautonyms--a harmless and inexpensive activity. Unlike rock-collecting, tautonym-collecting is clean, requires very little exertion, and only a small amount of storage space. Unlike coin or stamp-collecting, tautonym-collecting does not deal in objects of value; I don't have a safe to keep my tautonyms secure, nor do i Have to pay anyone when i come across a tautonym.

Dr. Ford's Palindromia, David Woodside

Word Ways

Dr. Nemo W. Ford is not exactly at the forefront of human sexuality research in this country. Rather, his work is somewhat on the fringe of accepted practices and clinical techniques. With a 'Dr. of Women' degree from the University of Californication, he has investigated the intricacies of modern American sexual behavior for several years.

Designing A List For Word Squares, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In "Bottom Up!" in the February 1993 Word Ways, Eric Albert asserts that searching for word squares with or without a computer is faster if the search is made bottom-up. In "Which Way to the Square?" in the May Word Ways, Richard Sabey contradicts this assertion; he finds that for 8x8 squares from the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) top-down is considerably faster.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Honorificabilitudinitatibus: A Sonata, William Gillespie

Word Ways

The following poem is a feminist treatise about the exclusion and characterization of women in literature. It is written under a literary constraint the reader is invited to discover.

When There's A Will..., A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The May 1996 Word Ways described the results of a National Public Radio competition of December 1995 in which listeners were challenged to write grammatical and understandable sentences containing the same word four or more times in succession. The largest number of entries involved the use of the word will: puzzlemeister Will Shortz was featured in many, either writing a will or exhibiting will and determination.

Heavyweight Terms, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the May 1995 Word Ways, I offered a list of words having weights 1 to 250. The weight of a word is calculated by setting A=1, B=2, and so on, and summing the various letter values. For example k the weight of the word DOG is 26, the sum of 4, 15, and 7

Vine Of Life, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

Revisiting The Beasiary, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In the May 1996 Word Way I exhibited a bestiary of symmetric graphs showing how the different letters of a word interconnect. Subsequently I realized that I could introduce instructions into my computer program so that it could do more than select words whose letters had a desired set of connective numbers (for example, ACETOVERATRONE 22234445: V,C,N form bigrams with two other letters apiece, A forms bigrams with three other letters, etc.).

Ascending Magnitudes For K-Graphs, Dan Tilque

Word Ways

In the May 1994 Word Ways, Lee Sallows published a K-graph containing the number words ONE through NINE. He then set several challenges, one of which was to find the K-graph which had the most numbers total, regardless of consecutivity.

Vowel Mates, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

What do Samuel Plimsoll, Titus Oates, Bela Lugosi, Chou En-Lai, Count Basie, Don Quarrie (a sprinter), Arthur Mitten Brown (an aviator) and John Barry Humphries have in common? The answer is that their names include one of each of the five vowels a,e,i,o and u--they are aeiou people. So are Rosalind Russell and (gorgeous) Gussie Moran (a tennis player).