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Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Rorrim's Mirror, David Morice

Word Ways

No abstract. Article written backwards.

A Ragman Lure, Pram Nag And Lido, Douglas C. Greenwood

Word Ways

While writing this article about computers vs. the English language, I searched my brain for some eye-catching title like King Kong Meets Godzills. However, the confrontation is a somewhat more intellectual concept than such a title would connote. During the last ten years or so, there have appeared several articles about current attempts to manipulate English words by means of a digital computer.

Ominous Worldly Maxims, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

Each word in the above title has a repeated letter. Remove those repeated letters and new words emerge: MINUS, WORDY, AXIS. Such words, which drop a repeated letter to form a new word, number in the thousands. When technical and proper nouns are ignored, they still number around a thousand. Such words amuse us by their transformations, and give rise to several non-trivial studies.

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

An Abecedum Of The Word For God, Alfred Lubran

Word Ways

No abstract available.

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 24 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

The Best 9x9 Square Yet, Eric Albert

Word Ways

On December 28, 1897 the first 9X9 word square in history was published. It was constructed by Arthur F. Holt, the master formist of his time, and appeared in the Chicago Inter-Ocean, back when newspapers were enlightened enough to carry that sort of thing. Given the incredible difficulty of building such a form, it is not surprising that the square contained words taken from a variety of sources.

Solution Of The Gematric Equations, Lee Sallows

Word Ways

Some things are so obvious that it takes centuries before they are noticed. So it is with the gematric equations, only recently brought to light. Gematria comes down to us from the ancient Greeks, the letters of whose newly-acquired Phoenician alphabet they used to represent numbers.

Naming The Schwarzkopf Baby, Robert Cass Keller

Word Ways

"Norman," asked his wife, "what will we name our heir-to-be? Norman, Junior?"

Leigh Mercer, Palindromist, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

These seven words have earned Leigh Mercer a place among the logological immortals. Ask the man on the street for an example of a palindrome, and (if he knows what you are talking about) you will likely have this quoted back at you. (Or, perhaps, "Madam, I'm Adam.") But it is ironic that Mercer did not want to be remembered in this way; he chided me once in a letter (October 1971) "...I am writing again to make sure that you don't think of me purely as a 'drome man. I have had a number of hobbies, am only interested …

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 24 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Palindromic Construction, Howard Richler

Word Ways

LIVE NOT ON EVIL

ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA

DEGAS, ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD, WE FREER FEW, DRAWN

ONWARD TO NEW ERAS AGED?

Alphamagic Squares, Lee Sallows

Word Ways

In the November 1990 Kickshaws, Dave Morice presented some remarkable word sets due to Michael Sussna. As Ross Eckler was kind enough to point out, the latter are closely related to alphamagic squares, a topic I introduced in a two-part article that appeared in 1986 in Abacus, a computer quarterly published by Springer-Verlag(1). Alas, Abacus was discontinued in 1988 after a brief five-year run.

Naughty Words In British Placenames, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The source material of this article has been collected fairly casually over a number of years, with a few gaps filled recently by searching gazetters of British placenames. At first blush, the material might seem more suitable for Dr. Reinhold Aman's Maledita, the International Journal of Verbal Aggression. However, his journal is more concerned with the employment of words for maldictive purposes, whereas Word Ways emphasizes the wordplay aspect of language - in this instance, the nesting of potentially-embarrassing words in the normal-appearing placenames.

You Will Oscar, You Will, Bert N. Weepy

Word Ways

The November 1990 Word Ways carried an article entitled "The Shaming of the True" by one Peter Newby - whoever he may be. His premise, supported by a series of non-anagrams, was to the effect that the film "Kiss Me Kate" was written by the actor whom he misspelt as James 'Stuart'. This is nonsense.

Onomatopoeia: Things That Go Bump, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

According to the Ninth Collegiate, onomatopoeia is the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it. There are more than one hundred onomatopoeic words in the Collegiate that exhibit this characteristic, identifiable by the use of the word NOISE or SOUND in the definition.

Yawn On Way?, Bennett Saferstein

Word Ways

Nail a tiny lever on a fumed, well-let sewer. An Amtrak car is evil, one-post angel. A snail likes a can. Is Atlas not Roman? Is Don Regan a mega-star? A stage manager nods. In a Morton Salt, as in a case Kilian's Ale, gnats open olives. I rack art, man. Are we still (lewd emu fan or Evelyn) Italian?

Unfed Rocks And Scaly Things, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

Many types of word puzzles depend on manipulating the letters of a particular word or phrase. Anagrams and charades preserve the letter-set of the initial word set; beheadments and word ladders change a letter at a time. Beheadments, charades and word ladders preserve the order of letters in the given word; anagrams alter it.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Drat Saddam, A Mad Dastard

Word Ways

Saddam Hussein, much in the news recently, is the subject of the following palindromes of Ben Saferstein and Jeff Grant (note the latter uses all the letters of the alphabet).

A Word String Network, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Logologists have been aware of word strings -- overlapping lists of words such as sat, ate, tea, ear, are -- since at least the time of the great English puzzle-constructor Henry Ernest Dudeney. However, no one seems to have realized that word strings can be diagrammed in a network, much as has been done for word ladders (see, for example, the May and August 1973 issue of Word Ways, or Chapter 4 of my book "Word Recreations," published by Dover in 1979).

Four-Letter Word Network Update, Leonard J. Gordon

Word Ways

A word network is a set of words of a given length in which any two words differing by only one letter in a single position (such as aunt and runt, or hire and hare) are connected by a line. Using three lines, one can trace out a path leading from any word in a network to any other word in the same network. THe terminal words, together with the intermediate words in the path, form a word ladder, well-known since the days of Lewis Caroll. This article updates a number of recent articles in Word Ways describing the …

Reflective Word Networks, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In the February 1991 Kickshaws, Dave Morice introduced the concept of the palindrome ladder, one which starts with a word and travels to its reversal changing one letter at a time passing through a palindrome at its central rung.

Consistent Sesquipedalianism Update, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

The quality of a long word having t he same first and last letter is described by Dmitri Borgmann as 'consistent sesquipedalianism'. In "Language on Vacation" Dmitri displays a list of 26 words, each beginning and ending with the same letter, giving an example for every letter of the alphabet. I have substituted three of the words on this list with shorter ones suggested by Dmitri himself, because the original terms do not comply with my standards of acceptability which will be outlined shortly.

More Letter Conundrums, Vernon D. Maclauren

Word Ways

It's time to resurrect the letter conundrum from the nineteenth century with some up-to-date examples.

Maggie Had A Little Pigpen, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Pigpen is a cipher system of geometric shapes. Of ancient origin, its current usage is essentially confined to members of various secret societies to the extent that it is often called the Freemason's Code. A non-masonic organization which employed the pigpen cipher was The Knights of the Golden Circle, a white supremacist society which arose in America's postbellum South.