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Word Ladders Of Today, Leonard J. Gordon
Word Ladders Of Today, Leonard J. Gordon
Word Ways
In an earlier article, I showed how many of the classic word ladders proposed by Lewis Carroll could be shortened with the aid of the computer. In this article, I use the computer to construct many new word ladders having various characteristics.
Common Acronym Words, Chris Cole
Common Acronym Words, Chris Cole
Word Ways
As computerized word lists become readily available to the loglogists, many of the previously difficult problems that have filled the pages of Word Ways become trivial. It is therefore interesting to begin researching problems that cannot be solved with word lists. A dictionary provides four pieces of information about a word: spelling, pronunciation, etymology and meaning. This suggests three types of problems for systematic logological research, in ascending order of difficulty: pronunciation (homophones, refractory rhymes, syllables, etc.), etymology (this article) and meaning (homographs, autantonyms, contronyms, etc.). Although these topics have appeared in Word Ways, they have not received the kind …
Carnival Speech: Making The Jump, Sarah Hautzinger
Carnival Speech: Making The Jump, Sarah Hautzinger
Word Ways
If one day you decide to forsake conventional life and run away with a carnival, one of the first things you'll notice is that you don't understand a lot of what is being said. Often persons just hired to a carnival crew aren't even called by name until they have made the jump, or traveled to a new location, at least once. In a subculture with such transient population, newcomers are mere first o'May, wing nuts or often simply green help.
Further Struggles With A Ten-Square, G. H. Ropes
Further Struggles With A Ten-Square, G. H. Ropes
Word Ways
In the May 1988 Word Ways I described my struggle to construct a non-tautonymic ten-square -- with less than stellar results. Since that time, I have collaborated with Eric Albert of Auburndale, Massachusetts, who has programmed his PC to search for useful combination of the three or four bottom words. By useful combinations, I mean that these words are chosen to generate plausible ending such as -ENCE, -ING, -TION, etc., for all ten proposed words of the square.
Sumwords: A New Crossword Game, Peter Newby
Sumwords: A New Crossword Game, Peter Newby
Word Ways
The letter B occurs, on average, once in every hundred letters of standard English prose. So, too, do the letters G and V. By contrast, those same hundred letters will include 13 E's, 9 T's, and 4 D's, but J, K, Q, X, and Z will, in all probability, be completely absent. Assigning individual letter values which reflect a realistic view of their frequency of use int he language and including decimal points up to 0.5, we have the following tables:
Fresh Silo Polish, Serf!, Patrick O'Brien
Fresh Silo Polish, Serf!, Patrick O'Brien
Word Ways
I find the art of palindrome creation both fascinating and ridiculous. The difficulty, especially with longer ones, is trying to insure that everything makes sense. It never does, so I content myself with developing a theme of sorts and hope the other 70 or 80 per cent of the words are not too bothersome.
Sumwords: Record Scores And Anagrams, Darryl Francis
Sumwords: Record Scores And Anagrams, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
I first present a list of just over a hundred sumgrams (words with equal numerical value) of the longest words I was able to conquer. Note that one pair of reasonably common words could be construed as opposites: EXTRAORDINARINESS and STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS. Note also that all pairs of words with endings -IST and -ISMS are sumgrams, as the values of M and S sum to the value of T. I have included the longest such specimens in my list.
The Palindromicon, Jeff Grant
The Palindromicon, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
The Palindromicon is a collection of over 2000 palindromic terms accumulated over many years of searching. Most of the words listed can be found in major English reference words; however, many are drawn from more obscure sources, and a good number of the best inferred examples are also entered. Trade-names have been included, as well as a few two-word terms. Given names, surnames and full names of people are listed, but no abbreviations, acronyms, numerals, symbols or names containing initials. A substantial number of foreign-language palindromes are also cited, together with various nonce-words from the likes of "Finnegan's Wake" by …
Letter-Shift Words In The Ospd, Leonard J. Gordon
Letter-Shift Words In The Ospd, Leonard J. Gordon
Word Ways
In the November 1979 Word Ways, the editor explored the subject of letter-shift words (words which can be trasmuted into each other by constant shifts along the alphabet, as CHEER to JOLLY or PECAN to TIGER). Confining himself to the Merriam-Webster Pock Dictionary, he showed that letter-shift words come in 13 varieties, according to the distance shifted along the alphabet. More recently, the topic of letter-shift words was reopened by Dave Morice (who exhibited an analogue device for more quickly finding such pairs) and Anthony Sebastian (who showed how it could be done using a spreadsheet program). About the only …
Joel David Funk, Joel David Funk
Joel David Funk, Joel David Funk
Word Ways
An article with the title identical to the author's name? It's not that I'm an egotist, it's just that one has a lifetime of experience with one's own name and it's logological permutations.
Wild West Words From The Spanish, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Wild West Words From The Spanish, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Word Ways
The history of the American West is full of the adventures of the Spanish explorers. They have left their mark on the American language in both words from the Spanish and words via the Spanish from the Amerindians; for instance, barbecue is from the SPanish version of Taino Indian for "a structure of sticks." In these pages, I often confront readers with rather difficult quizzes about words. This time the quiz may be easy for you, no problema, for these are odinary American words and SPanish is the language of a large and growing minority in this ocuntry, familiar …
Gypsy Hobby Gry, Harry B. Partridge
Gypsy Hobby Gry, Harry B. Partridge
Word Ways
As I dismounted from my mule in the courtyard in front of the low two-storeyed gray-stone farmhouse, the windowless door opened and out stepped a besmocked Dr. Wombat. Greeting me and my mule with equal cordiality, he ushered the latter into a spacious room on the ground floor and me to a cozy parlor on the second where Mlle, de Carabas was roasting chestnuts. Soon we were all seated before the grateful fire, drinking eggnog, and exchanging news. The masia was about twenty miles inside Spain from Port d'Oo.
Literate Cryptarithmetic, Peter Newby
Literate Cryptarithmetic, Peter Newby
Word Ways
The hybridization of words and numbers finds its classic expression in cryptarithmetic . In my view, cryptarithmetic has two distinct forms, the cryptarithms of the codebreakers, and the witty constructions of the wordsmiths. Codebreakers (most notably the members of the internationally-respected American Cryptogram Association) produce algebraic puzzles with meaningless collections of letters which appeal to the mathematically inclined. The teasers produced by the wordsmiths are far more difficult to devise but usually much easier to solve. This article is concerned with the latter, which for want of a better term I call literary cryptarithms.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 22 Number 3
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 22 Number 3
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
In Goodly Gree: With Goodwill, George H. Scheetz
In Goodly Gree: With Goodwill, George H. Scheetz
Word Ways
I know that I was aware of the -gry puzzle by 1976 because, during the spring of that year, I clipped a newspaper advertisement solely because it contained the name Hungry Bungry. The version I remember was simple: "There are three words in English which end in -gry. What are they?"
10-By-10 Squares: Another Update, Frank Rubin
10-By-10 Squares: Another Update, Frank Rubin
Word Ways
It has now been one year since I began my computer search for 10x10 double word square. My efforts have been directed against three main obstacles: the need to obtain a massive number of words, the limited speed of a personal computer, and its limited storage.
"Palindrome" Trans-3-Deletions, Tom Pulliam
"Palindrome" Trans-3-Deletions, Tom Pulliam
Word Ways
Three letters can be deleted from PALINDROME in 120 different ways. In "Palindrome and Palindromes" in the August 1989 Word Ways. Darryl Francis rearranged ten sets of remaining letters to form words. Here, I present one or more words formed out of 62 remainders. Unlabeled words are found in Webster's Third Edition: inferred forms are indicated with parentheses.
Colloquy
Word Ways
Every good anagram is, in some sense, apposite to the subject being anagrammed. This being so, the most important task I set myself in finding an anagram is the creation of an associative word list. That is, I first establish a number of descriptors which fit the subject being anagrammed in some recognizable way, and then look for words that can be formed out of the letter stock which match those descriptors.
Lewis Carroll's Word Ladders, Leonard J. Gordon
Lewis Carroll's Word Ladders, Leonard J. Gordon
Word Ways
My knowledge of the history of word ladders comes from two books "The Magic of Lewis Carroll" by John Fisher (1973), and "The Oxford Guide to Word Games" by Tony Augarde (1984). It is not necessary to describe word ladders to the readers of Word Ways; in any event the concept should be ovbious from the examples. Carroll started writing about what he called Doublets in 1879; he had originally called them Word Links. The idea, of course, is to find the shortest ladder between a pair of words.
"Palindrome" Transadditions, Tom Pulliam
"Palindrome" Transadditions, Tom Pulliam
Word Ways
In his article "Palindrome and Palindromes" in the August 1989 Word Ways, Darryl Francis listed a few transaddtions of the word PALINDROME, Eye-ppunishing searches of Webster's Second and Third have revealed many more; the full list is given below.
Is English Gematria?, Barry Chamish
Is English Gematria?, Barry Chamish
Word Ways
Gematria is an ancient, artimetically-based method of deciphering the Torah. Joshua S. Persky, an American-born Israeli, is convinced that the principles of gematria are invaluable for letting the linguist peek into a subconscious basis for the formation of English words and phrases. Writing under the pseudonym of Peter K. Peterson, he develops his thesis by example in "English is Gematria" (Apocalypse Press, Jerusalem, 1988). If he is right, then a radical new linguistic theory has been proposed.
To Free Up A Wealth Of Shining Promise, Pete Stickland
To Free Up A Wealth Of Shining Promise, Pete Stickland
Word Ways
In "The Meaning or Purpose of Life" in the May 1989 Word Ways, John Henrick generated five anagrams of WHAT IS THE MEANING OR PURPOSE OF LIFE, and invited readers to "extend what one hopes will become a significant collection in its own right." Accepting his challenge, I constructed 206 more anagrams, arranging them in 52 rhymed quatrains beginning with his original phrase and ending with his WINNIE-THE-POOH, SUFFER PIGLET'S AROMA. None of my anagrams surpasses the verve of Henrick's masterpiece. It says it all: if a fictitious bear can bear a fictitious pig, why not men men, men …
An Adventurous Ramble In The Congo, Milos Emhecht
An Adventurous Ramble In The Congo, Milos Emhecht
Word Ways
Article written in a foreign language.
Suffix Quiz, Maxey Brooke
Suffix Quiz, Maxey Brooke
Word Ways
One characteristic of the English language is its extensive use of affixes, and of suffixes in particular. Indeed, a dictionary count shows that some 45 per cent of the words listed are suffixed, including 2 per cent that are double-suffixed (nothingness, particularize, etc.).
Maori Rolls Update, Jeff Grant
Maori Rolls Update, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
In the August 1984 Word Ways, I presented a number of logologically-interesting names from the New Zealand Maori electoral rolls. Checking of other rolls has revealed additional names worthy of mention. Note that a large number of these names are not Maori, but from rother Pacific Island languages such as Samoan, Tongan, and Niuean.