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2006

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"Sending A Clear Mixed Signal" Still More Amusing Bloopers And Anomalies, Don Hauptman May 2006

"Sending A Clear Mixed Signal" Still More Amusing Bloopers And Anomalies, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

Announcement: Having written a bunch of articles in this vein for Word Ways, I'm now working on a book with the same theme. If you encounter any amusing published errors or other content that lends itself to this treatment, I would appreciate receiving them. To document authenticity, I need originals or copies, sourced with the publication's name and date.

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Internal Isomorphs, Susan Thorpe May 2006

Internal Isomorphs, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Internal Isomorphs are what I call words which can be cut into 2 or more sections, each with an equal number of letters, and with identical letter patterns with reference to the number and position of repeated letters. Vowels and consonants are not differentiated. Thus the surname of the British Prime MInister (1945-51), CLement ATT.LEE is an internal isomorph.

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Ambidextrous And Antidextrous Words, Rex Gooch May 2006

Ambidextrous And Antidextrous Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In the November 2001 Kickshaws, an ambidextrous word is defined as one whose first half contains only letters from the first half of the alphabet, and whose second half contains letters from the second half of the alphabet. An antidextrous word is defined the other way round. In the following, words of even length only are considered, to avoid the problem of the central letter in words with an odd number of letters.

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Wordplay In Astronomy, Mark Isaak May 2006

Wordplay In Astronomy, Mark Isaak

Word Ways

No area of study creates more new names than astronomy. The USNO B1.0 database includes about a billion stars, and the Guide Star Catalog II will contain about two billion stars and galaxies when it is done. Unfortunately for logologists, though, the vast quantity of names requires that virtually all of them be formed by conventional rules with no room from creativity.

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Embedding Many Words In Pi, A. Ross Eckler May 2006

Embedding Many Words In Pi, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The digits of the irrational number pi (3.14159265358597932384626...) not only go on forever but behave statistically like a sequence of random numbers uniformly distributed on 0,1,...,9; no matter how long it may be, any finite subsequence of digits will appear an infinite number of times.

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Shakespeare's Pangrammatic Sonnet, A. Ross Eckler May 2006

Shakespeare's Pangrammatic Sonnet, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Among Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, is there one that contains every letter of the alphabet? The letter Z occurs in 14 sonnets, the letter Q in 44, the letter X in 43, the letter J in 50, and the letter K in 151. Assuming that the letters occur independently and at random - not unreasonable for rare letters - the probability that all five letters occur in a single sonnet is (.09)(.29)(.32)(.98) which equals 0.0023. The probability that all 154 sonnets fail to produce is equal to (1-.0023) raised to the 154th power, or 0.67, so the probability of at least …

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Pun Quiz For The Punk Whiz May 2006

Pun Quiz For The Punk Whiz

Word Ways

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to provide the common phrases or words that the following punished misdefinitions refer to. For the shorter answers these are like cryptic crossword clues. Example: body building might be defined as the morgue. The numbers tell how many letters are in each word of the answer. Where it provides a clue, single word answers are broken down into part-words: means the answer is a 10-letter word made up of elements of 6 and 4 letters. My answers are at the back of this issue, but other answers may be possible.

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The Ascent Of Man, Rex Gooch May 2006

The Ascent Of Man, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Because Tony Augarde was quoted as saying some very strange about ten-squares in a British national newspaper. I decided to see how he tackled the subject in the Oxford Guide to Word Games (2nd edition, 2003), a review of which appears in W03-194. The newspaper had quoted an expert as estimating that 900 9-squares had been compiled: the book makes it clear that this was Dmitri Borgmann, so the estimate has long been overtaken by events.

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More Elementary Improvements, Susan Thorpe May 2006

More Elementary Improvements, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In Elementary Transadditions (February 2006), Darryl Francis lists the shortest transadditions he could find of 122 element names. These are a mixture of his own, recent, words and words documented as elementary transadditions in previous articles, including Ed Wolpow's Chemical Improvements (May 1995).

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Towards A More Logical Keyboard May 2006

Towards A More Logical Keyboard

Word Ways

As I age I notice more and more how much of touch typing involves my slowly failing left hand. For example, the left hand covers four more letters than the right, and the three most frequent letters (EAT) and seven of the top twelve (+RSDC) are on the left. As well, only one of the top seven (A) and five of the top thirteen (+SDHL) are on the central 'default' row, three of which (ASL) use the unathletic third or fourth fingers. None of the top eight letters and two of the least five (J and K) occupy the best …

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Answers And Solutions May 2006

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

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A Survey Of Teaming And Assessment Practices Of Practitioners Trained In Transdisciplinary Play-Based Assessment, Breanna Bartley May 2006

A Survey Of Teaming And Assessment Practices Of Practitioners Trained In Transdisciplinary Play-Based Assessment, Breanna Bartley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This research project is an electronic survey of Western Kentucky University graduates of an OSEP funded personnel preparation project (Project TEAM) from the years 1993-2000. The program trained graduate students in transdisciplinary play based assessment from the disciplines of psychology, speech/language pathology, and Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education (IECE) through a series of coursework, seminars and an internship. Transdisciplinary play based assessment (TPBA) is recommended by experts and learned societies in the early childhood field and is considered to be child friendly, provides a holistic view of the child and promotes communication and collaboration between the professionals and family (Linder, 1990; …

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A Comparison Of Two Measures Of Oral Reading Fluency, Kara Bletzinger May 2006

A Comparison Of Two Measures Of Oral Reading Fluency, Kara Bletzinger

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Reading fluency is an important part of the process of learning to read. It is commonly assessed by the use of Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) techniques; however, a new assessment method emerged in the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement- Third Edition (WJ-III). Only one previous study had examined the validity of the Reading Fluency test from the WJ-III by comparing it to established CBM measures of reading fluency for a sample of third-grade students. The resulting correlation between the two measures supported the validity of the WJIII Reading Fluency test, but it was unclear as to the two tests' relationship across grade …

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A Curriculum Unit For 8th Grade Students Of Spanish: ¿CóMo Eras Tú De NiñO? (What Were You Like As A Child?), Cheyenne A. Jones May 2006

A Curriculum Unit For 8th Grade Students Of Spanish: ¿CóMo Eras Tú De NiñO? (What Were You Like As A Child?), Cheyenne A. Jones

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The following Independent Study, written in partial fulfillment for a Master of Science degree in Middle-Level Education from Bank Street College, is a nine-lesson curriculum unit on the study of imperfect tense verbs in Spanish. The unit, titled ¿Cómo eras tú de niño? (What Were You Like As a Child?) was designed for 8th grade English-speaking students of Spanish.

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Peirates, Leistai, Boukoloi, And Hostes Gentium Of The Classical World : The Portrayal Of Pirates In Literature And The Reality Of Contemporary Piratical Actions., Aaron L. Beek May 2006

Peirates, Leistai, Boukoloi, And Hostes Gentium Of The Classical World : The Portrayal Of Pirates In Literature And The Reality Of Contemporary Piratical Actions., Aaron L. Beek

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

My honors thesis addresses three things. I address first the history of Classical piracy, specifically, piratical and pseudo-piratical actions lurking beneath the description of events; second, the usage of language, the connotations of words used for pirates and other linguistic portrayals of pirates and piracy; and finally, through literary analysis, how literary pirates compared to real pirates, what the authors thought about pirates, how pirates could be used to portray others, and what role pirates played in society. Through these three points, I intend to prove that the pirate’s role in the Classical Mediterranean was much greater than usually supposed.

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Acoustic Structures In The Alarm Calls Of Gunnison’S Prairie Dogs, C. N. Slobodchikoff, J. Placer May 2006

Acoustic Structures In The Alarm Calls Of Gunnison’S Prairie Dogs, C. N. Slobodchikoff, J. Placer

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

Acoustic structures of sound in Gunnison’s prairie dog alarm calls are described, showing how these acoustic structures may encode information about three different predator species (red-tailed hawk—Buteo jamaicensis; domestic dog—Canis familaris; and coyote—Canis latrans). By dividing each alarm call into 25 equal-sized partitions and using resonant frequencies within each partition, commonly occurring acoustic structures were identified as components of alarm calls for the three predators. Although most of the acoustic structures appeared in alarm calls elicited by all three predator species, the frequency of occurrence of these acoustic structures varied among the alarm calls for the different predators, suggesting that …

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The Effects Of Romano-Persian Interaction On The Cultures Of The Cities On The Syrian Limes Of The Roman Empire, Matthew Selmer May 2006

The Effects Of Romano-Persian Interaction On The Cultures Of The Cities On The Syrian Limes Of The Roman Empire, Matthew Selmer

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

Despite the almost continuous state of war that existed between the Roman and Persian Empires from the first century BCE until the destruction of the Sassanid Persian Empire, cultural exchange between East and West occurred frequently in the cities on the borders of these two empires. Despite their more apparent influences of Rome and Persia, local culture often had far reaching effects, not only in their respective cities and territories, but throughout Antiquity. This paper seeks to explore and explain the nature of this phenomenon and to give a new face to the relationships between the cultures and peoples that …

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Rethinking Ovid: A Collection Of Latin Poetry And Commentary On Composition, Anna C. Everett, Anna Everett Beek May 2006

Rethinking Ovid: A Collection Of Latin Poetry And Commentary On Composition, Anna C. Everett, Anna Everett Beek

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

The ultimate result, and the central focus, of this paper is two poems written in Latin according to classical conventions of meter, language and style. The paper also describes the processes and difficulties of composing poetry in Latin and according to these standards. In re-setting two stories from Ovid, the author examines both the historical background and the literary interpretations of the stories. Strong emphasis is placed on feminine viewpoint, that is, how male poets of Greece and Rome imagined female characters and how the author, a female, differs in perspective from the male authors of a male-dominated world.

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Difficulties In Learning English As A Second Or Foreign Language, James B. Wold May 2006

Difficulties In Learning English As A Second Or Foreign Language, James B. Wold

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

In this research project, the author explored the experience of one adult female immigrant to the United States and her difficulties in learning English as a second language (ESL) and identified several compounding reasons for her lack of expected progress. The research was accomplished by way of personal observation and interviews, which allowed the learner the opportunity to tell her own story in the phenomenological case study. There are many challenges that face foreign language (FL) learners and the learner struggled with notable difficulties. The findings showed that the learner, whose first and second languages were nonalphabetical, had never been …

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Anacrograms: Prolegomenon To Acrostic Anagrams May 2006

Anacrograms: Prolegomenon To Acrostic Anagrams

Word Ways

Take the initial letter of each word in a common phrase, saying or longer quote, rearrange them and form a word or phrase that summarises or relates to it. Such anagrams of acrostics I call ANACROGRAMS. Sounds passe? Maybe. Impossible? Usually: those I'll present later are a tiny fraction of all the candidates considered. But since the latter in turn form a very tiny fraction of possible sources, this new game opens virtually unlimited vistas for meaningful word play, perhaps as much as straight anagramming.

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We Need A Word For This!, A. Ross Eckler May 2006

We Need A Word For This!, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

According to Dmitri Borgmann in Beyond Language (Scribner's, 1967), the English language contains two or three million words. However, this is not enough to take care of all situations one meets in daily life.

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Double Word Squares From Scrabble Tiles, Mike Keith May 2006

Double Word Squares From Scrabble Tiles, Mike Keith

Word Ways

Here's a pretty problem, which I heard of recently from Scrabble player Eric Harshbarger (who heard it from another player, Jeff Myers, who says the problem has been kicking around for a few years): arrange the set of 100 Scrabble titles to make four 5x5 double word squares with all 40 words taken from one of the standard Scrabble word lists such as the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary.

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Colloquy May 2006

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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Chemical Symbols Of Elements 110 And Beyond, Darryl Francis May 2006

Chemical Symbols Of Elements 110 And Beyond, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the February 2002 issue of Word Ways my article "The Symbols of the Chemical Elements" examined the symbols for the chemical elements with atomic numbers 1 to 109. Viewing the symbols as a sequence of 2010 letters, I presented words that occurred "naturally" in the sequence (CLARK and CONIC were five-letter examples), words that could be made by transposition of the letters in the adjacent symbols, and words that can be made by transposition of symbols and part-symbols.

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Did Xanadu Derive From Xamdu Or Xaindu?, Robert F. Fleissner May 2006

Did Xanadu Derive From Xamdu Or Xaindu?, Robert F. Fleissner

Word Ways

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's nonce-spelling XANNADU appears in the Crewe manuscript for "Kubla Khan, or a Fragment in a Dream" (T.C. Skeat, British Museum Quarterly 26 (1963), pp 77-83. Corrected or respelled XANADU in the printed version in 1816, this deserves a bit more etymological, linguistic consideration. The initial question is this: did it derive from Purchase His Pilgrimage alone, Coleridge having admitted the influence of this 1613-14 travel book, or from Purchase in combination with Milton's Paradise Lost, as J.B. Beer has claimed in Coleridge the Visionary (London 1959) I, 216? If the latter, was the word in Purchase XAMDU …

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Back Cover May 2006

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

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Selling Social Conservatism, Philip G. Chen May 2006

Selling Social Conservatism, Philip G. Chen

Political Science Honors Projects

This research project tests conventional wisdom about the importance of social conservatism in televised political advertisements. Through regression analysis performed on congressional campaign commercials from 2000 and 2002, I isolated significant variables influencing the outcome of Midwestern congressional campaign. I tested the influence of factors such as amount of money spent, party of candidate, gender and incumbency. I found that incumbency and the very presence of the candidate in television advertisements played the most significant role in determining electoral success, while socially conservative issues in the advertisements did not significantly influence electoral success.

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Hatchery Of Tongues, Michael Wallace Bassett May 2006

Hatchery Of Tongues, Michael Wallace Bassett

Dissertations

Hatchery of Tongues is a collection of poems accompanied by a critical introduction.

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2006 Vol. 54 No. 6, Cleveland-Marshall College Of Law May 2006

2006 Vol. 54 No. 6, Cleveland-Marshall College Of Law

2000s

No abstract provided.

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Culture, Rhetoric, And Reconciliation: The Place Of Language In The Northern Irish Conflict And Peace Process (1998-2002), Jennifer Dougherty May 2006

Culture, Rhetoric, And Reconciliation: The Place Of Language In The Northern Irish Conflict And Peace Process (1998-2002), Jennifer Dougherty

Peace and Conflict Studies

Alterations in public discourse towards multiculturalism, reconciliation and liberal democracy at the national level in Northern Ireland are evident from 1998 - 2002, but to what end? To what extent did language play a positive role in the Northern Ireland peace process? Recognizing that language does not tell the whole story of the Northern Irish experience of the Troubles or current peace process, the author highlights how language, as a transmitter and constitutor of culture, has played a role as a signifier of potential conflict, peace and progress (or lack thereof). In particular, the author considers several texts including excerpts …

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