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Colloquy
Word Ways
Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, correction, and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.
Soap Dealers And Beer Barons, Eugene J. Ulrich
Soap Dealers And Beer Barons, Eugene J. Ulrich
Word Ways
I've been suffering from an inferiority complex ever since reading about that 15-letter Finnish palindrome for a soap-dealer, SAIPPUAKAUPPIAS. Surely the English language can come up with something longer than the 7-letter ROTATOR, REPAPER or DEIFIED. (Yes, I know of the 9-letter MALAYALAM and the 11-letter KINNIKINNIK variant, but these are both borrowed words from non-European languages.)
The Poet's Corner
Word Ways
From time to time, Word Ways receives a variety of short poems related to recreational linguistics, some original, others previously published. As poetic output cannot be easily predicted, these will be presented on an irregular basis.
676 Bigrams, A. Ross Eckler
676 Bigrams, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
One Sunday in 1953, Cornell students Doub McIlroy and Bob Vanderhoek, weary of solving crossword puzzles, decided to try a different word game -- that of finding examples of words containing each of the 676 bigrams from AA (bazaar) to ZZ (puzzle). More than a decade later, Doug posted the incomplete list on a Bell Telephone Laboratories bulletin board in the mathematics department, asking for help in filling the gaps. Ed Gilbert, another Bell Labs employee, had recently acquired a computer-generated list of all tetragrams appearing in words in Webster's Second Edition; using clues provided by this he was eventually …
A Ten-Letter Tautonym List, Darryl Francis
A Ten-Letter Tautonym List, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
The article "Unsolved Problems" in the February 1973 Word Ways posed the problem of constructing a tautonymic 10-by-10 word square consisting entirely of words, names and terms taken from books published since 1950. Dmitri Borgmann and I joined together for three months during the spring of 1973 to search for a sufficient number of tautonyms to make the construction of such a word square possible. Originally, we thought that at least 1000 tautonyms would be needed, but we were able to compose two 10-by-10 squares from a list of only 350 tautonyms.
Kickshaws, Edward R. Wolpow
Shall-Will, Maxey Brooke
Shall-Will, Maxey Brooke
Word Ways
Ancient Teutonic, a highly inflected language, probably had a future tense for its verbs. But the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes seem to have lost it by the time they invaded the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries. The closest they came to speaking of the future was such statements as "I go tomorrow".
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.
Proverb Shrinkage, Helen Gunn
Proverb Shrinkage, Helen Gunn
Word Ways
In "Compression of English Text" in the May 1982 Word Ways, the editor showed how one can sometimes reconstruct text from which half the letters have been removed. If one knows that the text is a proverb, far less clueing is necessary. How little? In the following quiz, I have given the initial letters of the first three words, followed by the number of words in the phrse, such as TEB (6) = the early bird catches the worm, or OOS (6) = out of sight, out of mind. Notice that once cannot omit the third initial letter, for then …
The Tetrahedron Game, A. Ross Eckler
The Tetrahedron Game, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
In the November 1978 Word Ways, Mary J. Hazard introduced a word game by Dave Silverman in which two players alternately assign letters to the vertices of a cube with the objective of forming four-letter words on the vertices of each face. Specifically, a player loses the game if he is unable to form words on all faces on which his letter fills in the last open vertex. If this never occurs, then the player who fills in the last open vertex on the cube wins the game.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 15 Number 3
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 15 Number 3
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information about this issue, including a table of contents.
He's Like A Lamp, I Swear!, Merlin X. Houdini Iv
He's Like A Lamp, I Swear!, Merlin X. Houdini Iv
Word Ways
A brilliant light shining down through the long Corridor of Time is, indeed, an apt figure of speech for WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, the dramatist whose name has been anagrammed to create a title for 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 that issue.
The Monosyllable Machine (Part 2), Harry B. Partridge
The Monosyllable Machine (Part 2), Harry B. Partridge
Word Ways
Now, thrill as I may to the charisma of Zuw bin-Miytbol, the virtuosity of the Salami Staters, ant he splendorous sonorities of Wagner, the surfeit of ecstasy represented by a combination of all three seemed to me at the time hardly describable as soothing. I therefore, not without some trepidation, conveyed this sentiment to the philological four-footer and was delighted to hear him suggest then that we listen, rather, to The Moldau, The Barcarole, or the Scheherazade Suite.
We Few?, Chaim Fleischman
We Few?, Chaim Fleischman
Word Ways
In this quiz the answer to each clue is a palindrome; to aid in the solution, word-divisions and all vowels are given. The first letters of all sixteen palindromes will spell out another palindrome when read from top to bottom. Answers are given in Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.
An Amazingly Appealing Addiction, Richard Lederer
An Amazingly Appealing Addiction, Richard Lederer
Word Ways
I am an alliteration addict, a slave to the seductions of sequential stressed syllables starting with the same sounds.
Blunt Instrument Caper, Walter Shedlofsky
Blunt Instrument Caper, Walter Shedlofsky
Word Ways
Police Lieutenant Arthur Jamison scanned the typewritten verse, verified that each letter was correctly positioned, then glanced up at Sergeant Robert Johnson who stood in front of his desk.
Yes, Indeed, Maxey Brooke
Yes, Indeed, Maxey Brooke
Word Ways
Where the Germanic tribes left their heartland to begin their conquest of Europe about the turn of the millennium, their word for YES was ja. Most Germanic languages have retained that form. However, the Anglo-Saxons changed the Old Teutonic ja to gia which became YEA when Anglo-Saxon became English. Anglo-Saxon, a highly inflected language had another affirmative word, gise, a combination of gia + si (the third person singular present subjective of beon, "to be"), meaning "Yes, it is so." Gia + si or YEA + si was originally used as an answer to that class of …
Transposition Rings, A. Ross Eckler
Transposition Rings, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Take the word TEA and transfer the last letter to the start, obtaining ATE. Repeat this operation on ATE to get its present tense, EAT. A final transfer returns us to the original word, TEA, completing the cycle. It is not difficult to find other examples using rarer three-letter words; in the July 1975 Games & Puzzles, Darryl Francis exhibited five more based on the letters AIT, ASP, EON, ETH and ICH (all fifteen words can be found in Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary).
Words That Didn't Make It, Frank A. Magary
Words That Didn't Make It, Frank A. Magary
Word Ways
The following words are not in the dictionary, at least in the sense expected. The clues are how such words would be defined if they had made it to Webster's.
A Maximum Mono- And Di-Syllabary, Edward R. Wolpow
A Maximum Mono- And Di-Syllabary, Edward R. Wolpow
Word Ways
This is an attempt to list the longest English-language words of one or two syllables, beginning with each letter of the alphabet, according to listings and pronunciations in Webster's Second or Third editions. The -ED ending is permitted for verbs, and the -S ending for nouns, even when permission to pluralize is not explicitly given in Webster. However, hyphenated words have been excluded.
High-Scoring Boggle, Alan Frank
High-Scoring Boggle, Alan Frank
Word Ways
The game of Boggle consists of sixteen cubes with letters on each face, which form a random 4-by-4 array when thrown like dice into the holes of a plastic grid. The object of the game is to form as many words as possible in three minutes, using the King's Move in chess, but without using any cube more than once in spelling out a word. Three and four letter words are scored one point, five letter words two points, six letter words three points, seven letter words four points, and eight letter words or longer eleven points.
Calendar Transadditions, Tom Pulliam
Calendar Transadditions, Tom Pulliam
Word Ways
In the May 1982 Kickshaws, Darryl Francis challenged Word Ways Readers to find Websterian transadditions of the Jewish, Muhammadan, Hindu and French Revolutionary calendar names (all listed in Webster's). I have accepted this challenge, with the results given below. Most of the words can be found in both Webster's Second and Third Editions, but those followed by 2 are only in Webster's Second. An asterisk denotes a pure transposition; no added letters were needed.
Kickshaws, Louis Phillips
An Improved One-Move Scrabble Game, Kyle Corbin
An Improved One-Move Scrabble Game, Kyle Corbin
Word Ways
In the November 1981 Word Ways, I presented a SCRABBLE Brand Crossword Game using Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1980) in which a single-move scored 1665 points. By substantially modifying the diagram, I have increased this to 1677 points.
Nicknames Of The United States, Leonard R.N. Ashley
Nicknames Of The United States, Leonard R.N. Ashley
Word Ways
All of these United States have nicknames, some affectionate and some at least originally derogatory. The Old Dominion is the oldest, and The Lone Star State perhaps the best-known. See if you can match the state name to each of these nicknames and, while you are at it, see if you can invent better nicknames for some of them, as well as for the inhabitants of some of the states. Be warned that some states appear more than once in the following quiz. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.
Czech Words With Diacritical Marks, Stanislav Tvrdik
Czech Words With Diacritical Marks, Stanislav Tvrdik
Word Ways
This article lists words in Czech having a diacritical mark over every letter -- that is, the little line, the little hook, or the little circle. There are fifteen different letters that can be used.
Pair And Trio Isograms, Jeff Grant
Pair And Trio Isograms, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
In Language on Vacation, Dmitri Borgmann states that non-pattern words (words with no letter repeated), such as DERMATOGLYPHICS, are just a special case of the isogram, in which each letter is used an equal number of times -- once, twice, three times, etc. Before looking at words where each letter is used more than once, let us exclude the three classes of words not considered legitimate isograms by Mr. Borgmann.
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.