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2004

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Some Sentential Palindromic Five-Squares, Jim Puder Feb 2004

Some Sentential Palindromic Five-Squares, Jim Puder

Word Ways

The oldest word square on record, the famed SATOR-AREPO-TENET-OPERA-ROTAS square known form at least three widely separated Roman Empire sites, is also a palindromic square; that is, its five words, when read in order in any direction, form a letter-unit palindrome.

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Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 37 Issue 1 Feb 2004

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 37 Issue 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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Compass Roses, Rex Gooch Feb 2004

Compass Roses, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Compass roses were invented by Christopher McManus in W2003-231. I found them pleasing to look at and challenging to do. He had a little difficulty with some of the words in the 9-compass: there are myriads of these in a large dictionary, through finding common 3-letter words to fit is a little difficult. The first 9-roses uses purely OED solid headwords, but has a repeat. The second consists of OED solid headwords, though Wiskinkie and Sasak for proper nouns.

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A Magical Pair Of 6x6 Chemical Squares, Mike Keith Feb 2004

A Magical Pair Of 6x6 Chemical Squares, Mike Keith

Word Ways

The two 6x6 squares below contain 72 distinct entries from the periodic table of the elements, chosen from among the 110 which have been assigned official names by the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry). Each small square displays the standard abbreviation and atomic number of its element.

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The Fine Art Of Misspelling, Dave Morice Feb 2004

The Fine Art Of Misspelling, Dave Morice

Word Ways

I have never misspelled a word in my life. I've tried to do it many times, but who can consciously misspell a word? Once I tried misspelling DOG. I typed DAHG, careful not to hit the O key instead of the A and the H. But since I intended to spell it that way, I didn't spell it. I merely succeeded in spelling an unconventional variant of it. If I had accidentally typed DOG, then i would've spelled DAHG. So I tried to purposely misspell DAHG instead of DOG, and it worked! I typed DOG. But no, it didn't work. …

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Transdeleted And Transadded Presidents, Darryl Francis Feb 2004

Transdeleted And Transadded Presidents, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Take the surnames of the US presidents. For each one, what is the longest transdeletion and what is the shortest transaddition? Jim Puder posed and answered these problems in the August 1998 Word Ways. The November 1998 Colloquy contained a healthy response to Puder's article, improving on several of the words offered.

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The World Of Agamemnons, Susan Thorpe Feb 2004

The World Of Agamemnons, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Agamemnon words are so-called because, like AGAMEMNON, they are made of three different 3-letter palindromic groups. To date, 10 such words have appeared in Word Ways: AJANENSIS, MIMULUSES, COCACEAE, ILICACEAE, SUSUHUNAN, MIMICISMS, NANNONAIA, ANALALAVA, MOMBEBACA and AGAMEMNON itself. Their details can be found on page 218 of the August 2001 issue of Word Ways. Here I offer a further 60 agamemnon words.

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Coincidental Self-Synonymy Feb 2004

Coincidental Self-Synonymy

Word Ways

The February 2003 Kickshaws (03-54) defined self-synonymy as two synonyms - if any exist that are spelled the same but are unrelated etymologically. David Silverman in an earlier Kickshaws (74-108) stated that if two words are homographic (and homophonic) synonyms they must be the same word. This seemingly obvious dictum would be refuted by a self-synonym pair. They're the same but not same. David Morice compared this idea to a linguistic Mobius strip. Schizograms is another apt name for such split personalities, but that coinage I reserve for coincidental contronyms (part III), where it applies doubly.

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Vowel Sequences, Rex Gooch Feb 2004

Vowel Sequences, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

This article examines "runs" of the vowels a, e, i, o, u, in words and phrases. An example is proeuious (modern previous), which is counted as a run in six vowels. To save space, the level of detail given diminishes as the number of examples increases. Where the words themselves are not given, the results are unverified, and it may be assumed that a few instances will be of poor transliterations, or be otherwise unacceptable. This will greatly affect the conclusions.

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Name Droppings Feb 2004

Name Droppings

Word Ways

In the November 1994 Kickshaws Peter Newby introduced a style of punning on well-known names of the form "Was Franchot Ton deaf? Was Vincent Price conscious?", calling them logomotives. Here's my three cents worth (would Lotte Lenya threepenny)?

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Aeiou In Order - Again!, Darryl Francis Feb 2004

Aeiou In Order - Again!, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Popular word puzzle lore has it that there are only two relatively common words having the five vowels AEIOU appearing once each and in order: ABSTEMIOUS and FACETIOUS. Over a dozen other such words and terms were logged in Language on Vacation and pre-1998 issue of Word Ways. The number of such AEIOU words jumped dramatically in February 1998, though, with the publication of SUsan Thorpe's article, "AEIOU in Order". Susan's article brought together the previously published AEIOU words, many new finds in Webster's Second Edition and the Oxford English Dictionary, plus many culled from the pages of biological references. …

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Unspeakably Absurd (A Is For, Well, Apple...), Ross West Feb 2004

Unspeakably Absurd (A Is For, Well, Apple...), Ross West

Word Ways

The use of "the_-word" in place of the unspeakable or unprintable crashed through a threshold during the 1988 presidential race. Candidate Bush - not W, but G.H.W. - famously leveled and fired both barrels at opponent Mike Dukakis, accusing him of a willingness to raise the T-word (taxes), as well as labeling him with the graded L-word (liberal). The press corps gushed oceans of ink documenting the usage, decoding the former CIA chief's meanings and speculating on how these jibed with his political V-word, vision.

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Kickshaws, David Morice Feb 2004

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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50 Best Canadian Placename Transpositions, Darryl Francis Feb 2004

50 Best Canadian Placename Transpositions, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In previous issues of Word Ways, we've had extensive lists of transpositions of place names: US state names, US place names, British place names, and so on. But what about the other country in North America, Canada? Just to show it's not forgotten, here are our fifty longest (and therefore best) Canadian placename transpositions (province abbreviations in parenthesis).

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Aeiou(Y) Equations, Susan Thorpe Feb 2004

Aeiou(Y) Equations, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A survey of word Ways, from its inception in 1968 to the present day, would perhaps give the impression that its contributors have virtually exhausted the exercises centered on the vowels A,E, I, O, U (and Y). Somehow I doubted that. What I can't recall seeing (have I missed it?) is something so obvious that it could well have been overlooked. To me it is quite surprising, and so simple. If we assign A=1, B=2 through Z=26.

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Few Say So Feb 2004

Few Say So

Word Ways

Polite, agreeable remarks are often insincere, hiding an opposite meaning. Here are some homophonic antonyms illuminating these poles, a polite pole light or a sincere sin seer. The latter two homophones are from a Willard R. Espy article on "sound charades" in the May 1973 Word Ways. The last nine items below are modified from the same article.

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Back Cover Feb 2004

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

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Answers And Solutions Feb 2004

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.

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Super Heavyweights (Part 2), Rex Gooch Feb 2004

Super Heavyweights (Part 2), Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In "Super Heavyweights (Part 1)" in the November 2004 issue of Word Ways, I presented words and phrases with letter sums of 355 through 501 (setting A=1, B=2, etc.). In this article, the continuous run is extended to 547, but samples are given for many numbers above this (including 666!), with the expectation that readers will fill some gaps. Perhaps many could be filled (with varying degrees of satisfaction) by using the plurals of existing items; also, previous writers have often taken a noun (e.g., ending -tomy), then tacked on various verb endings.

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More Chemical Element Letter Banks, Rex Gooch Feb 2004

More Chemical Element Letter Banks, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

These examples (out of 221 found) are in response to Darryl Francis' invitation to "fill the gaps" in his list of elements (W03-315). To recap, Darryl asked for words that contain the same letters as the elements, but disregarded the numbers of each letter. Anagrams, a special case, are asterisked. All place names are from the NIMA database. The subject, and related ones, has been treated at length by Dmitri Borgmann (W78-138ff) and Darryl Francis (W77-229).

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Iouea: A Creative Coup, Stuart Kidd Feb 2004

Iouea: A Creative Coup, Stuart Kidd

Word Ways

In "IOUEA: A Cretaceous Coup" in the November 1003 Word Ways, Susan Thorpe reported her discovery of IOUEA, the name of a fossil sponge genus in The Encyclopedia of Paleontology (1979), written by Rhodes Fairbridge and David Jablonski. (This five-letter-all-vowel word also appears in Nomenclator Zoologicus.) I wrote recently to Dr. Michelle Kelly Shanks, a world authority on sponges, in Auckland, New Zealand after I read in a paper of hers of a living species of the genus IOUEA. I was also interested in how de Laubenfels came to name the genus back in 1955.

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On Location With Pair Isograms, Susan Thorpe Feb 2004

On Location With Pair Isograms, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A pair isogram is a word in which each different letter occurs exactly twice. As a genre, pair isograms can be divided into two types. We can call these split pair isograms (SPIs for short) in which the letters in the first half of the word are repeated, in a different order, in the second half (HORSESHOER); and non-split pair isograms (NSPIs) in which this is not the case (APPEASES).

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Azby-Shiftwords: Edify, Story, Richard Sabey Feb 2004

Azby-Shiftwords: Edify, Story, Richard Sabey

Word Ways

The atbash cipher (or athbash, under which name Web3 defines it) is a Hebrew substitution cipher which replaces the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph, X) but the last (tav, n) which is replaced by the first (aleph, x). Jan Anderson described it in "Fledge Ledge Edge" (WW 8. 1997-229). Naturally, the idea can be applied to our alphabet; following the precedent set by "atbash", I name it the azby cipher.

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The Sorcery Of Context, Michael Constantine Mcconnell Feb 2004

The Sorcery Of Context, Michael Constantine Mcconnell

Word Ways

There are countless one-word palindromes in the English language, many of them common, such as Mom, Dad, poop, boob, sees, racecar, level, and rotor, as well as the names Bob, Otto, Ava, and Hannah. At their most base level, one-word palindromes signify a concept, and the words themselves are palindromic more by coincidence than anything else; they sound perfectly natural when spoken. Slightly longer phrase palindromes, like a red-eyed era and to prefer pot are evasive as naturally uttered speech and in fact probably have been spoken by many yet recognized by few to no listeners or speakers.

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Germ 302.01: Oral And Written Expression Ii, Hiltrudis M. Arens Feb 2004

Germ 302.01: Oral And Written Expression Ii, Hiltrudis M. Arens

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

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Famous Japanese Individuals To Visit Chicago In The Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries: From Unknown Students To Distinguished Prime Ministers, Eizaburo Okuizumi Feb 2004

Famous Japanese Individuals To Visit Chicago In The Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries: From Unknown Students To Distinguished Prime Ministers, Eizaburo Okuizumi

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

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From Enfant Terrible To Prodigal Son: Terenci Moix’S Embrace Of A Literary Tradition, H. Rosi Song Feb 2004

From Enfant Terrible To Prodigal Son: Terenci Moix’S Embrace Of A Literary Tradition, H. Rosi Song

Spanish Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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Superb History, Dubious Constitutional And Political Theory: Comments On Uviller And Merkel, The Militia And The Right To Arms, Sanford Levinson Feb 2004

Superb History, Dubious Constitutional And Political Theory: Comments On Uviller And Merkel, The Militia And The Right To Arms, Sanford Levinson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

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Public Theology In Central Europe, Charles C. West Feb 2004

Public Theology In Central Europe, Charles C. West

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

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D1s80 Single-Locus Discrimination Among African Populations, Rene J. Herrera, Leslie R. Adrien, Luis M. Ruiz, Nahir Y. Sanabria, George Duncan Feb 2004

D1s80 Single-Locus Discrimination Among African Populations, Rene J. Herrera, Leslie R. Adrien, Luis M. Ruiz, Nahir Y. Sanabria, George Duncan

Biology Faculty Articles

The highly polymorphic D1S80 locus has no known genetic function. However, this variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) locus has been highly valuable in forensic identification. In this study we report the allele and genotype frequencies of five African populations (Benin, Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, and Rwanda), which can be used as databases to help characterize populations and identify individuals. The allele frequencies were used to infer genetic associations through phylogenetic, principal component, and G test statistical analyses. Compliance with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium expectations was determined as were FST estimates, theta p values, and power of discrimination assessment for each population. …

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