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Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors and back cover.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles and quizzes in this issue.

Four Is The Cosmic Number, Erik Waingarten

Word Ways

Thirteen, eight, five, four, four is the cosmic number.

"Pay No Attention To The Can Behind The Merton" A Gallimaufry Of New Spoonerisms, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

It isn't often that spoonerisms are in the news. But this past May, one made headlines nationally. A New Brunswick, New Jersey, bar owner won a prolonged legal battle over the right to call his establishment Buck Foston. The city, objecting to the name (which refers to the rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox) denied him a liquor license. A jury decided that his First Amendment rights had been violated and awarded him $1.5 million.

All this trouble for a nonsensical spoonerism! We can do better.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 47, Number 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue, including the table of contents.

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of Linguistic kickshaws.

Three Times Two Is Six, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

The thirty two-letter words displayed below need to be assembled into ten six-letter words in order to justify the arithmetically-correct title of this piece.

Borgmann's "Palindromes" Articles: A Joke Gone Awry?, Jim Puder

Word Ways

Little remembered now are three notable articles on the early history and cultural significance of palindromes which were submitted by Dmitri Borgmann and published under his by-line in the November 1979, February 1980 and May 1980 issues of Word Ways.

Sound Beginnings And Endings, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

This is all to do with the pronunciation of the beginnings and endings of words.

Cubic Logic, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

At the fourth Gathering for Gardner in Atlanta I presented an electronic depiction of a four-dimensional cube on which a magic trick could be performed.

Higher-Order Contronyms, Tristan Miller

Word Ways

A contronym or autontonym is a polysemous word where one of the meanings is the antonym of another-that is, a word which is its own opposite.

Three Doublets, Daniel W. Galef

Word Ways

One of the best in the tradition of Gardner and Lehrer, those who mixed mathematics with language and had endless fun with both, Lewis Carroll invented a now-common type of puzzle known as the word-ladder, but which he dubbed "doublets." Altering one letter at a time, change one word into another.

Always Be A Generous Donor, Or, That's A Wrap!, Daniel W. Galef

Word Ways

A poem.

O'Beirne's Mousetrap Game, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

A puzzle game.

Swinburne's "Nephelidia", Jim Puder

Word Ways

Conventional literary wisdom has it that Swinburne's "Nephelidia" ("Cloudlets") must have been intended as a parody of its author's own poetic style. Perhaps so - it does, certainly, share a characteristic style of construction with much of his other verse.

Poetic Quiz, Anne Rulon-Miller

Word Ways

A poem.

Shifty Numbers, Dave Morice, . Anil

Word Ways

While probing endless logologico-mathematical esoterica for an article on Extreme Number Names we explored shiftgrams of number names cardinal, ordinal and Roman on Dave's lettershift calculator.

Wordplay / Slipperiness Of Language / N-Tendres, Lew Goldklang

Word Ways

An article on wordplay.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Dipping Into Quipping: Puns Deployed In Everyday Life, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

A compilation of puns in real life situations.

Numerical Russian Dolls, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Numerical Russian Dolls can be viewed as the numerical equivalent of Words in Words. The latter include ME inside COT in coMEt, RACE inside TRY in tRACEry and PEAK inside SING in sPEAKing. One word is surrounded by another, the latter being formed by bringing together letters from the beginning and end of the parent word.

The Orcadian Dialect, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

The Orkney Islands are located off the northeast coast of Scotland. There are about 70 islands of which 20 are inhabited. The first people on Orkney would have spoken a Pictish language which disappeared when the Norse settlers arrived in the 900s.

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Anagram Quiz 12, . Anil

Word Ways

A quiz.

218 Color Names Used In Palindromes, Jim Puder

Word Ways

People who persist for very long in the composition of palindromes sooner or later acquire a good familiarity with the most easily accessible vocabulary available to such writing, and are sometimes moved to remark upon its seeming paucity.

Extreme Number Names, Dave Morice, . Anil

Word Ways

The logological investigation of number name patterns and limits, surprisingly, is not a milked cow. We present thirty-two clusters of mostly new twists on number names that are most extreme in various contexts - order, length, magnitude, etc.

Unigraphic Lipogrammatic Windows: A Survey, Tristan Miller

Word Ways

A lipogram is a span of text in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided. Composition of very long lipograms is a popular pastime among logologists - indeed, some particularly dedicated constraint writers have produced entire novels which do not use the letter E.

Ups And Downs, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

"Upstairs, Downstairs", Masterpiece Theater's classic television series, provides the impetus for the puzzle that appears below, in which two columns of definitions have been listed. Each answer sought in Column A has a correspondent in Column B that can be generated by placing either UP or Down before it.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

The World's Shortest Personal Names, Tristan Miller

Word Ways

In this article, I briefly review previous surveys of short personal names, and expand on these with further legitimate examples drawn from journalistic and scholarly sources. I also debunk some urban legends and misconceptions about particular single-letter names.