Digital Commons Network^™

The Ugliest Words In English, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

More than twenty years ago, Wilfred Funk proposed chimes, dawn, golden , hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring and tranquil as the ten most beautiful words of the English language. More recently, Willard Espy generated gonorrhea, gossamer, lullaby, meandering, mellifluous, murmuring, onomatopoeia, Shenandoah, summer after and wisteria for the "Book of Lists #2" (1980).

One Sup Honor Thyme, Peter Newby

Word Ways

No abstract available.

I Love To Be Squoze, Mary Christie Craig

Word Ways

In early April 1992, out local newspaper carried a syndicated piece titled "Best of the Worst Country Song Titles" by Mike Harden.

The Poet's Corner

Word Ways

From time to time, Word Ways receives a variety of short poems related to recreational linguistics, some original, other previously published. As poetic output cannot be easily predicted, these will be presented on an irregular basis.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 25 Number 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Reflexicons, Lee Sallows

Word Ways

A lexicon is a dictionary or a list of words. Hence my use of "reflexive lexicon" or, more crisply, reflexicon, for a self-descriptive word list that describes its own own letter frequencies:

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

On Pruning Trees For Pangrams, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In the February and May issues of Word Ways, Lee Sallows describes how he constructed a pangram machine (a special-purpose digital computer) to discover self-referential sentences of the form "This sentence contains five a's, two b's, ... and one z", after he realized that the program he had written for a general-purpose digital computer would trake 31.7 million years to run. There's no doubt that building the pangram machine was a personally satisfying accomplishment -- although I am afraid that it became his Galatea.

Ann Owed, Hugh Denham

Word Ways

I have been asked to right a ballad about a Laud of the Manna, Col. P. Riley of Great Holkham. As my spelling is sometimes a bit shaky, I ran my composition through the spelling check on the word processor; fortunately the programme did know discover any mistakes:

Another Palindromic Insertion, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the November 1982 issue of Word Ways, I exhibited a palindromic alphabetic insertion based on AA, a type of rought, scoriaceous lava. A complete list of 26 words was found, starting with AAA, ABA, ACA ... through the AZA.

A Third Olympic Quiz, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In August 1976, Word Ways presented a quiz of mine called "An Olympic Quiz". Readers were given 60 common words, ranging in length from one to seven letters, and asked to combine each of these in turn with the letters of OLYMPIC to make a new word. For example, GALA plus OLYMPIC gives POLYGAMICAL, and REACH plus OLYMPIC gives both MICROCEPHALY and PYROCHEMICAL.

Prehistory In Action, Chris Cole

Word Ways

Molecular geneticists propose that all living human beings are descendants of a single woman who lived about 350,000 years ago. Evolutionary linguists propose that the cladogram of all human languages follows closely the cladogram of the molecular geneticists. Does it then folow that all of modern English derives from the language spoken by our prehistoric mother? And, if so, how is it that synonyms arise?

Love Letters, Gary Roma

Word Ways

Words are but lucky letters. How do letters get lucky? They go to bars. Let's have a look.

Junctures: An Abecedum, Alfred Lubran

Word Ways

Editor's Note: Alfred Lubran's article was inspired by the note on page 164 of David Crystal's "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" (reviewed in the November 1991 Word Ways); his examples of A, I, N, and T are reproduced below. All words can be found in Chambers English Dictionary.

Pigpen-Cipher-Invertible Squares, John Bulten

Word Ways

In "Maggie Had a Little Pigpen" in the May 1991 Word Ways, Peter Newby pointed out that if a 3-by-3 word square was encoded using the pigpen cipher and inverted, it might be possible to read off another 3-by-3 square upon decoding.

Oh, Cello Full Of Echoes, Herbert Pfeiffer

Word Ways

Editor's Note: Readers may recall Herbert Pfeiffer's palindromic poem, "Plaudere, du Alp!" reputedly the longest palindrome in German, printed with a partial translation in May 1985 Word Ways.

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

For Some Reason Cheese, Stephen J. Chism

Word Ways

I don't propose to explain it. Cheese is as unlikely as it is likely: a seemingly ordinary food product. Why, then, do we find it treated more thoroughly in palindromes than any other substance? This enigma functions as a perfect metaphor for the whole subject of palindromes, full of eerie truths (Tessa's in Italy: Latin is asset) and bizarre images (Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas).

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue including instructions to authors.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 25 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

In Quest Of A Pangram (Part 2), Lee Sallow

Word Ways

Looking back on it, I suppose the failure of the Pangram Machine Mark I was piece of good fortune. I mean, otherwise the faster Mark II model might never have come into existence. Another advantage of the latter was that different initial text constraints of rewiring. This meant I could experiment at will, confined only by the initially chosen set of number-word ranges, an important limitation, but still granting much scope.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

How Many Words Support A Square?, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Select words of n letters at random from a dictionary, one at a time. How many different words must one select before one can form a word square out of n of them?

Common 4x4 Wordsquares, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In a companion article, the editor estimates the number of m-letter words to be drawn at random from the dictionary in order to have a reasonable expectation of forming an mxm word square. This is a task admirably suited to the computer, which can take a list of words and check all possible combinations for potential squares.

Screenplay On Words, Gary Roma

Word Ways

Editor's Note: This is the script for a standup routine the author performs in comedy clubs around Boston.

A Word Square Of The Future, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Star Date: 32-11-23

Captain's Log: Circumvolitating Rigil 3-D. Not much doing. Teleporter on the fritz again. Used logocomputer to build a double 9-square (flawed). All solidform, several strained/obsolete terms.

The Monosyllabic Raven, David Morice

Word Ways

Poe's poem "The Raven has been rewritten for Word Ways under various kinds of literary constraint. The editor's homoliteral raven (each word shares at least one letter with its successor) and heteroliteral raven (each word has no letter in common with its successor) were published in the May and November 1976 issues.

Palindrome In A Palindrome, Howard Richler

Word Ways

Solve these thirty palindromic phrases (vowels AEIOU given) and then read down the third letters of each palindrome to discover another palindromic phrase describing Dan Quayle's lament on the White House lawn.

Qhats, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Of the many obsolete spelling of WHAT, QHAT holds the greatest appeal for me. It possesses an impact which expresses instant disbelief that such a word has appeared in print. And that is the quality of a qhat. It says WHAT!!!