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Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue.

Another Charade Crossword, Ernst Theimer

Word Ways

In the August 1970, August 1971 and August 1983 issues of Word Ways, Ernst Theimer introduced the charade crossword to readers. The first two paragraphs below, explaining the nature of this puzzle, are repeated from the 1971 article.

Complete Tetragram Permutations, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

A tetragram is a set of four consecutive letters embedded in a word, as ETRA in 'tetragram' or AINT in 'paint'. Is it possible to take four different letters of the alphabet, rearrange these in all possible ways to form 24 different tetragrams, and embed each of these in a boldface word taken from the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary? The answer to this is yes; in fact, results for four such completely-permutable sets are presented below.

The Soul Of Logology

Word Ways

What is logology, otherwise known as recreational linguistics? There appear to be two ways to define it: subjectively, as an intellectual quest that stimulates and beguiles its devotees, and objectively, as a body of organized knowledge. The advent of the computer has sharpened this debate. Consider this example: in the old days, a fourteen-letter pair isogram (each letter appears exactly twice in the word) such as TAENIODONTIDAE could be found only by lengthy dictionary-searching, and its publication in Word Ways in August 1971 was a celebration of human persistence. However, since the publication of Levine's computer-generated pattern word lists, one …

A Smashing Victory, Bruce Price

Word Ways

It is time to claim victory. There is, unfortunately, no prize, and no contest was ever announced. I'll rectify that soon enough. Suffice it to say that what follows wins going away.

"All right," you ask dubiously, "just what is this contest that hasn't been announced until now?" Well, as best I can say it, the contest turns on finding the Longest List of Rhyming English Words That Have a Common Semantic Feature.

Consonant-Characterized Words, Alan Frank

Word Ways

At the 1981 convention of the National Puzzlers' League, Harry W. Hazard presented a word contest called "Shrdlu". As a part of this contest, a list of words was given to the participants, each word having exactly five consonants. The objective was to find, for each problem word, another word with the same consonants in a different order; for example, one might replace shrdlu (if it were a word) with shoulder. Inflected forms, for example holders, were not acceptable. A variation on this contest is reproduced in this article.

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections, and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in it.

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.

Opusopuscule, Robert Funt

Word Ways

This article contains excerpts from "Opusopuscule", a logological commonplace book containing a mixture of book, newspaper and magazine quotations, song lyrics, proverbs, odd signs in public places, jokes and anecdotes, and original snippets of wordplay. Examples of the latter are given in this article, with editorial commentary provided in italics.

Dinner, Everyone?, Louis Phillips

Word Ways

No scenery necessary. The actors should be in formal evening dress. A single man stands on stage.

A Pangrammatic Diamond, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In "Word Ways Challenges" in the February 1979 issue, Philip Cohen and the editor asked "Can any form (diamond, pyramid) contain all 26 letters?" This well-nigh-impossible challenge has now fallen, with the double nine-diamond presented below.

Transaddable Letter Groups, Alan Frank

Word Ways

Pick a group of n different letters, and in turn add A, B, ..., Z to these. How many of these enlarged groups can be transposed into words? More interestingly, what is the most fecund such letter group? This is an example of a logological problem best attacked by computer. To illustrate the possibilities, I list below the best letter groups of two through eight letters which can be enlarged to words found in the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary.

As Easy As Pie, Walter Shedlofsky

Word Ways

Case: Pierce, Samson, male, Caucasion, age 69.
Officer in Charge: Police Lieutenant Arthur Jamison
Cause of Death: Bullet fired into right temple.
Report of Death: Sergeant Jackson received call from Dr. Steven Mayhew, Resident Physician, Statler Place, that he had found Pierce dead during his early morning round of patients.

Good-Bye, Dr. Wombat!, Harry B. Partridge

Word Ways

Wombat Manor had always had an air of distinction that set it apart from any other house, but now in the dying afternoon sunshine, even after a surprise Southern California September thunderstorm, its windows blankly reflected the light of the declining daystar and seemed to have lost their whilom sparkle.

Amalgamate, Chemist!, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

When Douglas Hofstadter took over Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American, he changed the name from MATHEMATICAL GAMES to METAMAGICAL THEMAS. The new name is an anagram of the old one, that is, a permutation or reordering of the same set of letters. This naturally suggests the question of how easy it is to find an anagram on these letters which "makes sense."

The Letter Rebus (Part 1), A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The term rebus has, during the past century, been applied to several different types of word puzzles. This multipart article examines the varieties of the letter rebus, a puzzle form which has been extensively featured in the pages of the Enigma, the official publication of the National Puzzlers' League, during the past sixty years. In fact, counting such varieties as the suber (or reversed rebus) and the rebus alternade, a hybrid puzzle combining the basic rebus with a puzzle taking each nth letter from a word, there have been more than 5500 such puzzles published.

Jejuniana, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

When Galen in the second century carried out autopsies, he found that the second portion of the small intestine was usually empty, and called this part of the gut the jejunum, meaning empty, dry. We have a few English words with the same root.

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to this publication.

Russian Palindromes, Haim Kilov

Word Ways

The following article by V. Khromov, entitled Palindromes: Sound Play, or a Regular Case of Sound Distribution, originally appeared in the Nauka i Zhizn of 1970 (No. 9) Various amplifications of the material in the article for the benefit of the American reader appear in brackets.

No-Holds-Barred Scrabble, Alan Frank

Word Ways

Word Ways has published numerous high-scoring single-move Scrabble games during the past decade; readers should enjoy this spoof of the genre.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

There Once Was A Digital Limerick, John Henrick

Word Ways

The concept of digital verse was defined and the possibility demonstrated a year ago in the February 1983 Word Ways. The utilization of digits and arithmetic operators to encrypt a limerick was conceived by Leigh Mercer and displayed most ingeniously in an example published by Maxey Brooke in Word Ways in the February 1980 issue. The example of digital verse consisted of a single stanza which was, in fact, a palindrome, but not, alas, a limerick. And, although Leigh Mercer's limerick was a marvel of conciseness in its adroit use of integers and mathematical symbols, it did not exemplify …

Animal Crackers, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Are you tired of anagram puzzles which give you the clue "colorless poet" for DRAB BARD, or "kingly scowl" for REGAL GLARE? If so, the following skull-crackers should be more to your taste -- no anagrammed pairs have less than seven letters each, and one even reaches the plateau of fifteen. The puzzles are arranged in groups with the shortest phrases first. Answers are given in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue, but in addition Hints are given overleaf; the letters entering into each anagram are arranged in alphabetical order. (But do try to solve them first …

Ibmphasis On Jargon, Leonard R.N. Ashley

Word Ways

Language-watchers have long since been alerted to the new bits (and bytes) of the computer age. In Playboy magazine for July 1983, John Sack tells of children at computer camps sending home a thousand kisses like this.

Czech These Homographs - Please!, Jay Ames

Word Ways

Running a rubious orb over the corpus of strange words in my Czech-French Dictionary compiled by Vladko Buben, I was startled to see a considerable number of "English" words and thought they might be worth sharing with other word-collectors. I have listed only those words which do not seem to be direct borrowings, and have indicated with an asterisk words that are normally capitalized in English. Enjoy 'em!

Kickshaws, Faith Eckler

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

More N-Tile Scrabble Records, Kyle Corbin

Word Ways

Word Ways readers have been investigating in SCRABBLE crossword game the highest possible combined scores for the first few turns. The records for one through six turns were published in the November 1982 Word Ways. Now I have completed work on the seven- through ten-turn records. Afterwards, I give the details of the seven- through ten-turn scores. In the diagrams, I use asterisks to indicate blank tiles. All records follow the current SCRABBLE crossword game rules, summarized in the May 1981 Word Ways.

Poetical Ponders, Thomas J. Palumbo

Word Ways

The fill-in poem is a type of literary amusement popular in the late eighteenth century. Note that the fourth line in each quatrain does not rhyme with the second line, but if you substitute the appropriate word for each parenthesized word or phrase, it will rhyme and scan. Place the answers under each other, and you will have created an acrostic whose first and last letters reading downward generate the name of a famous soccer player.

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections, and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in it.