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Homophonemes, . Anil Nov 2013

Homophonemes, . Anil

Word Ways

How many different spellings can one phoneme or sound have?


Cyrillic That Looks Roman, Solomon W. Golomb Nov 2013

Cyrillic That Looks Roman, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

The Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian has several letters that look like Roman letters The ones that correspond closely to the Roman letters in sound as well as appearance are: A,E,K,M,O,T.


Colloquy Nov 2013

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.


Parents And Offspring Reunited, Susan Thorpe Nov 2013

Parents And Offspring Reunited, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A Parent word is split into two equal, or unequal, parts each of which is a word in its own right. The words are arranged to make a 3-word designation. There are 6 different ways in which 3 words can be arranged.


Magic Poker Hands, Jeremiah Farrell Nov 2013

Magic Poker Hands, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

A magic trick.


Opening The Floodgates To A Pandora's Box Of Worms, Don Hauptman Nov 2013

Opening The Floodgates To A Pandora's Box Of Worms, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

in past Word Ways articles, I've differentiated between true mixed metaphors, which combine incongruous, absurd, or unreal images ("it's the whole kettle of fish in a nutshell") and what I call mashed metaphors -where clashing tropes and cliches aren't contradictory or impossible, but nevertheless create an awkward and ludicrous effect because of their proximity ("Investors smelling trouble can vote with their feet").


Making The Alphabet Dance - Part Two, A. Ross Eckler Nov 2013

Making The Alphabet Dance - Part Two, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The second part in an autobiographical series by A. Ross Eckler detailing his interest in, and the history of Word Ways.


Sound Bites -2, Steve Kahan Nov 2013

Sound Bites -2, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

The tumultuous world we live in has given new meaning (and well-deserved esteem) to the title of 'first responder". Now is your opportunity to join this elite group and assume the mantle in a figurative sense by completing the word rebus that awaits you.


Aeiou Time Three Delicacies, Darryl Francis Nov 2013

Aeiou Time Three Delicacies, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

While browsing through some back issues of Word Ways, I noticed in the November 2000 Kickshaws that Dave Morice and Eric Chaikin presented a number of "double pair supervocalics", words and terms which use exactly two each of the vowels AEIOU. At the end of the Kickshaws item, they wondered "dare we dream of a decadent feast of AEIOU-times-three-delicacies?", and offered a pair of number name examples: FOUR MILLION SIX HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND AND TEN and QUATTUORDECILLION FIVE THOUSAND AND TEN. However, both of these are inconsistent in their use of the word AND.


Simile For The Camera!, Daniel Galef Nov 2013

Simile For The Camera!, Daniel Galef

Word Ways

Similes have a tendency to become entrenched in the language. Though they may originally be an expression of originality, a creative link between two ideas never before formed, they soon are overused and undervalued figures of speech not given a second thought by users, addicted to similes in the way that other users are addicted to methamphetamine. Because a simile has a set meaning belied by its expression, it refers only to one meaning or sense of its base word, like any unambiguous phrase.


Dvorak Typewriter Words, Tristan Miller Nov 2013

Dvorak Typewriter Words, Tristan Miller

Word Ways

In the November 1999 Word Ways Mike eith explored the subject of wordplay based on the typewriter keyboard - that is, words which can be typed with certain well-defined restrictions, such as using only one keyboard row, or alternating hands for each successive letter. Keith's findings were based on QWERTY, the most common keyboard layout in the English-speaking world. In this article we improve upon some of Keith's QWERTY records and repeat most of his original challenges with another popular English Keyboard layout, the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.


Internal Palindromes And Regular Inflection, T.A. Hall Nov 2013

Internal Palindromes And Regular Inflection, T.A. Hall

Word Ways

An internal palindrome can be observed in a word like DAWNWARD, in which the five letter palindromic sequence AWNWA is embedded within an occurring word.


Compound Interest, Arthur Schulman Nov 2013

Compound Interest, Arthur Schulman

Word Ways

More than 90% of the elements of the periodic table consist of consonants which, rearranged with the appropriate vowels, may produce new (and occasionally apposite) words. Here are some that I found.


Kickshaws Nov 2013

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.


Generic Alternades, Susan Thorpe Nov 2013

Generic Alternades, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

in Language on Vacation, Dmitri Borgmann defined an alternade as a word in which every other letter, beginning with the first letter, make another word; every other letter, beginning with the second letter, also make a word.


Long Words In German And Other Languages, Solomon Golomb Nov 2013

Long Words In German And Other Languages, Solomon Golomb

Word Ways

The German language routinely forms very long words by incorporating (sometimes) long adjectival phrases and the nouns they modify into a single word. And such words find their way into everyday use.


Us State Nicknames, Slogans & License Plate Legends, Darryl Francis Nov 2013

Us State Nicknames, Slogans & License Plate Legends, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Over the years, Word Ways has offered transposals of the names of the US state names and state capitols, well as transdeletions and transadditions. But in this article, I look at transposals of state nicknames (both current and no longer in use), state slogans (used for promoting tourism, past and present), as well some of the legends that appear on vehicle license plates from different states.


Overlapping Names, A. Ross Eckler Nov 2013

Overlapping Names, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Recently Ray Love pointed out an unusual feature of his full name: it can be written out as one continuous word, as RaymonDaneiLove. He writes "No one I know has a name that does this...perhaps one name in a thousand or ten thousand has this rare characteristic...is this something that can be quantified?"


Answers And Solutions Nov 2013

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.


Some Excerpts From The Scibulations Of Jerry Andrus, Jerry Andrus Nov 2013

Some Excerpts From The Scibulations Of Jerry Andrus, Jerry Andrus

Word Ways

Excerpts from the writings of Jerry Andrus.


Back Cover Nov 2013

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover, including instructions to authors.


Coincidental Synonym Chains, . Anil Nov 2013

Coincidental Synonym Chains, . Anil

Word Ways

Coincidental self(ish) synonymy was defined in 04-45 (& 129) as words spelled the same (& nearly the same) that mean approximately the same but, surprisingly, are unrelated etymologically.


The Rotas Square - A Numerical Challenge, Susan Thorpe Aug 2013

The Rotas Square - A Numerical Challenge, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The history of the discovery, and significance, of the Rotas square has been documented in detail in Word Ways, particularly by Dmitri A. Borgmann (WW November 1979 page 195.). I do not intend to delve into that aspect of the square here.


The Pun Is In Fashion...And The Fun Is In Passion, Don Hauptman Aug 2013

The Pun Is In Fashion...And The Fun Is In Passion, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

A news story on October 21, 2011 reported that Spain's separatist ETA group had pledged to end its four decades of violent protests. Thus, one of the all-time classic spoonerisms had become reality: All the Basques were put in one exit! This provoked a profound question: Could spoonerisms explain all important events?


High Single-Turn Scrabble Scores, Jeff Grant Aug 2013

High Single-Turn Scrabble Scores, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

According to Guinness World Records (2008), the highest single-turn Scrabble score in a real game is 392 points achieved by Karl Khoshnaw (UK) on 11 April 1982 when he played the nine-timer CAZIQUES spanning two triple word squares.


Johnson Solids & Their Acronyms, Darryl Francis Aug 2013

Johnson Solids & Their Acronyms, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In a previous article, I examined the names of the Johnson solids. A quick reminder; the 92 Johnson solids are a set of three-dimensional solids who faces are a mixture of triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, octagons, and decagons. Three constraints apply to the solids: (1) all their edges must be the same length, (2) the faces must be regular, and (3) there came be no dimples in their surfaces.


Colloquy Aug 2013

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.


Breakups, Steve Kahan Aug 2013

Breakups, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

When Neil Sedaka recorded "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" many years ago, he surely did not envision that the lyrics would be an apt prophecy for a logological exercise. Each of the "equations" presented below results from the dissection of a single word into two different sets of shorter ones. For example, CARDAMOM, an Indian spice, can be fractured into both CAR + DAM + OM and CARD + A + MOM.


Class Of 13, Jeremiah Farrell Aug 2013

Class Of 13, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

The grid contains exactly 13 nodes and 13 lines. Each node is on three lines and each line lies on three nodes. In addition there are exactly 13 letters and each letter is used exactly three times to trace out the 13 lines. We propose several puzzles and games that use this grid.


Puzzle: Down But Not Out! Aug 2013

Puzzle: Down But Not Out!

Word Ways

A crossword puzzle.