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Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 46, Number 3

Word Ways

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

Literally Speaking

Word Ways

A Crossword Puzzle.

Seesaw Alphanumerics, . Anil

Word Ways

In traditional alphanumerics the values (alphabetical order) of the letters are added up to get the value of a word. Longer words tend to have higher values. A different approach which will eliminate that skew is to value words by alternately adding and subtracting their letter values.

Historical Folklore Challenge, Daniel W. Galef

Word Ways

In the small north-German hamlet of Dustig-am-See, now long-since absorbed by the industrial sprawl of Bremerhoben, oral historian Joseph Liedermeyer records the following planting chant and children's rhyme (circa 1530), in celebration of the sowing of row upon row of corn, brought over the Atlantic during the Columbian Exchange, the remarkable fortitude of which allowed it to thrive in almost any ground, even in the tarry bogs that historically surrounded Dustig, thus granting the village a new industry and even modest renown through the end of the Holy Roman Empire.

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Magic Telepathy Via Adonis, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

The Main Effect: A magician and his assistant will utilize a volunteer from the audience for a demonstration of long-range telepathy.

I Wroted Up This Ditty, And Sanged It Nice An' Pretty, Daniel W. Galef

Word Ways

I do not believe that the following class of words (if it even is a class) has yet been described: verbs, the simple past tense of which is also homonymous with, or at least homophonous, with, the simple present tense of a different verb.

A Quiz, Ann Rulon-Miller

Word Ways

A quiz.

From Nowhere (Erewhon) To New Zealand, Jason Lofts

Word Ways

in 1996, having been in self-imposed exile from New Zealand for 11 years, I penned an anagrammatical poem NEW ZEALAND and published it as a postcard (8 lines of silver lettering on glossy black card). Apart from a mention at the time in the New Zealand News UK, a British weekly for Kiwi expatriates, it went unnoticed until 2002, when -despite its imperfections- it provided a quirky supporting act to the serious literary stars Samuel Butler and Janet Frame in "From Erewhon to Nowhere: A Leitmotif of New Zealand Poetry?", a scholarly contribution by Peter H. Marsden on pages 365-376 …

Funny Business, Andy Liu

Word Ways

If two businesses join together, they may be able to do so under a catchy name. For example, a dentist and a manicurist can form a business that they call Tooth and Nail. Find the names of the following businesses. The number of letters in the pair of words is given as a hint.

Word Ways: Making The Alphabet Dance (Part One), A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

When I was a boy, wordplay took two forms: solving puzzles created by other people, and solving puzzles proposed by Nature (for example, searching for all words having a specified property). I was attracted to both of these, but more strongly to the latter; this chapter describes the particular forms these enthusiasms took.

Literally Speaking

Word Ways

A crossword puzzle.

Russian-English Homoglyphs, Homographs, And Homographic Translations, Tristan Miller

Word Ways

A homoglyph is a letter whose visual form is more or less identical to that of a letter in some other alphabet. For example, the Cyrillic uppercase letters A, B, E, K, M, H, O, P, C, T, Y, and X all resemble letters from the Latin alphabet (though they do not necessarily have the same sound values).

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors and back cover.

Compositional Process Of "Through The Looking Glass", Philip Smith

Word Ways

To begin my composition, I started with the chess board that the whole Through the Looking Glass is based on. Since a chess board is eight squares by eight squares, I decided to base my composition off of an octatonic scale, a scale that contains eight notes rather then the traditional seven of a major or minor scale.

Anagrammatical Poem, Jason Lofts

Word Ways

A poem.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 46, Number 2

Word Ways

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

Definitive Anagrams: Q-R, . Anil

Word Ways

Continued from and as in February.

Jane Austen's Most Improbable Acrostic, Walt Quader

Word Ways

No abstract available.

English Words Spelled The Same But Pronounced Differently, James F. Carley

Word Ways

For many years I have collected about 100 such words.

There are at least two types of homographs. Most frequently encountered are Type 1, in which words of closely related meanings perform as different parts of speech when pronounced differently.

More Ovine Resilience, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The February 2008 issue of Word Ways presents "Mary Had a Little Lamb" written under a large number of literary constraints.Here are a further number.

Overlaps Part 2, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In the first of the letter overlap arrangements below, the offspring are obtained from the parent word by reading from L to R. However, unlike the L to R arrangements in Overlaps Part 1, the offspring from the end of the parent word >1 precedes the offspring from the beginning of the parent word >. The pairs of offspring form a phrase-like configuration or are related in some way.

Aptonyms, Alain Zalmanski

Word Ways

No abstract available

Palindrome Aesthetics And Competitions, Mark Saltveit

Word Ways

A summary of the first annual SymmyS Awards for outstanding palindrome achievement.

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Magic-Spellers, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

The solution to a puzzle from the February issue.

Johnson Solids, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

I like lists-in fact, I love lists. I like lists of words, such as the chemical elements, the days of the week, the months of the year, the letters of the Greek alphabet, the countries of the world, US state capitals, Oscar-winning films, the names of the stations on London's Underground railway, the complete discography of Elvis Presley-I could go on. And as many Word Ways readers will be aware, I like transposing items from those lists.

Been There, Pun That! Wordplay In Real-Life Situations, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

One fine day recently, I spotted in the news a reference to an organization a friend works with. I emailed the item to her along with a note: "Aren't these 'your people'?"

She confirmed my hunch and added that she had passed the information along to her colleagues. I then riposted, "Clearly, you practice the ancient biblical maxim: 'Let thy people know'!"

In two previous Word Ways articles (February 2006 and February 2012), I discussed the art of using puns in everyday situations. Both were festooned with examples from my own experience.

Ohs And Ahs, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

A collection of alphabetically-arranged letter quartets are offered below, each of which admits a rearrangement that will yield a pair of five-letter words when an "A" and an "O" are inserted in the same location.

Anagram Quiz 10, . Anil

Word Ways

A quiz.