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2009

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Word Tiling, Chris Cook Jan 2009

Word Tiling, Chris Cook

Word Ways

RAM is a triangular tile of size n=1. It has three "lines" RA, MR, and AM.

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A Crossword Puzzle Square, Joseph Teeters Jan 2009

A Crossword Puzzle Square, Joseph Teeters

Word Ways

This 11x11 "word" square sometimes uses phrases, crossword style, rather than full words only. Perhaps readers can generate other examples. The definitions also work for the down entries of course, and we would welcome large squares, with no blacks, that had different words going down than across.

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Near-Heterogrammatic Double 5-Squares, Rex Gooch Jan 2009

Near-Heterogrammatic Double 5-Squares, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In 2006-176, Ross Eckler stated that a heterogrammatic 5-square is impossible to achieve, referring I believe to double squares, but without giving a reason. In the May 1979 Colloquy (following an earlier effort February 1978), Jeff Grant had presented a double 5-square with 22 different letters, all ten words being in the Oxford English Dictionary.

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Symmetries Of The Alphabet, A. Ross Eckler Jan 2009

Symmetries Of The Alphabet, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The letters of the alphabet exhibit five varieties of symmetry (or non-symmetry):

A M T U V W Y have left-right (vertical) symmetry (.272) v
B C D E K have up-down (horizontal) symmetry (.218) h
N S Z have 180 degree (rotational) symmetry (.137) r
H I O X have all three symmetries (.205) a
F G J L P Q R have no symmetry (.168) n

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Pros And Cons, Anil Jan 2009

Pros And Cons, Anil

Word Ways

"For every pro there's an equal and opposite con," goes an old joke I just made up. Only it's not true, surprisingly. I found only one pro/con pair in the Macquarie Dictionary (4th, 2005) that were common opposites, protract and contract. But not protractor and contractor in their usual meanings. (For vs. against tractors?) Protest and contest can be opposites, to stretch a point, eg at a politically or morally controversial game. But more commonly they are synonyms: to argue with the umpire. Lastly, might we count the old gag opposites, progress and Congress?

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A Perfect Word, Anil Jan 2009

A Perfect Word, Anil

Word Ways

Perfect numbers (PNs) are integers whose factors sum to the number, like 6 (=1+2+3). Euclid gave a formula for finding them: if 2n - 1 is prime then 2n - 1(2n - 1) is a PN. There are only five PNs below ten billion: 6, 28, 496, 8128 and 33,550,336.

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Distinct Dozens, Steve Kahan Jan 2009

Distinct Dozens, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

RECOGNIZABLY is a "distinct dozen" - a twelve-letter word in which no letter appears more than once. Twenty more distinct dozens are presented below, each of which has its vowels (A, E, I, O, and/or U) exposed. Can you fill in the missing consonants?

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Consecutive Palindromic Triads, Steve Kahan Jan 2009

Consecutive Palindromic Triads, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

Each of the twenty five examples below is a familiar word, phrase, or name from which a pair of consecutive palindromic triads have been removed. The remaining letters are then run together.

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Signature Spoonerisms, Anil Jan 2009

Signature Spoonerisms, Anil

Word Ways

Signature Spoonerisms resemble signature puns, introduced in November (06-22, qv). Swap the initial sound(s) of the first and last names (or part names) of a well known person to produce a homophonic pun applicable to the person, however general.

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Satanix, Darryl Francis Jan 2009

Satanix, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Ross Eckler's article Word Networks on Wordlock (November 2006 Word Ways) was about a combination lock that uses five rings of letters, instead of numbers. This reminded me of a similar device which I have, a plastic toy called Satanix, but without the lock capability.

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"When I Hear The Word 'Culture,' I Reach For My Pun!", Don Hauptman Jan 2009

"When I Hear The Word 'Culture,' I Reach For My Pun!", Don Hauptman

Word Ways

Contrary to popular belief, puns are not all bad. Indeed, they can be intelligent, literate and witty. But a high-quality pun must meet several criteria. The best ones are: (1) original, (2) ingenious, (3) natural and meaningful rather than contrived or labored, and, of course, (4) funny.

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Honorable Mentions, Jim Puder Jan 2009

Honorable Mentions, Jim Puder

Word Ways

It would obviously be hard to overstate the impact that Word Ways has had on the development of the field that it named, recreational linguistics, over the last four decades. So much of lasting interest and value has appeared on these pages that would never even have been thought of, much less published, had Word Ways' open forum not existed over that span to stimulate and encourage such thought.

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Return Of The Palimerick, Jim Puder Jan 2009

Return Of The Palimerick, Jim Puder

Word Ways

In the February 2007 Kickshaws, Dave Morice presented what was probably an entirely new logological object, a limerick of his own devising which was also an end-to-end word-unit palindrome. Dave further wondered whether it would be possible to compose a letter-unit version of such a palindromical limerick.

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Subwords: A Subdivision Of Neologistics, Anil Jan 2009

Subwords: A Subdivision Of Neologistics, Anil

Word Ways

Subwords are needed terms branched off or evolved from real words or phrases through mutation or hybridisation, in the spirit of Ross Eckler's "We Need a Word for This!" in the May 2006 issue (p. 75). I tried for two of each letter but fell two short (of space).

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Logological Enlightenment, Anil Jan 2009

Logological Enlightenment, Anil

Word Ways

How many logologists does it take to change a light bulb?

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Using Mathematical Parentheses In English, Solomon W. Golomb Jan 2009

Using Mathematical Parentheses In English, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

Parentheses are used in mathematics to indicate that certain computations should precede other computations, and also to shorten expressions by virtue of the "distributive law" that says A x (B+C) = (A x B) + (A x C). Both of these uses can be applied to English text.

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One Of Six And Another Of Half A Dozen, Colm Mulcahy Jan 2009

One Of Six And Another Of Half A Dozen, Colm Mulcahy

Word Ways

We consider two different arrangements of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, whose applications illustrate a curious numerical/alphabetical duality. These can easily be explored with cards.

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Who You Gonna Call?, Marc Allan Jan 2009

Who You Gonna Call?, Marc Allan

Word Ways

Here are some phone numbers with clues to whom or what you are trying to reach.

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The Vulgar Tongue, Jeff Grant Jan 2009

The Vulgar Tongue, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Slang forms a significant part of the English language. The first slang dictionary appeared over 300 years ago, recording terms that are now mostly obsolete. Some of the old favourites survived though, and a few were thought too vulgar to include in standard dictionaries until quite recently.

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Magic Word Dice, Jeremiah Farrell Jan 2009

Magic Word Dice, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

The illustration below is the graph of an ordinary cube with its six faces labeled with the letters H opposite P, O opposite A and T opposite D, thus forming the HOT-PAD die.

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Shifting Vowels & Consonants Independently, Susan Thorpe Jan 2009

Shifting Vowels & Consonants Independently, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A basic shift sees the letters of a word shifted along the alphabet n steps, looping from Z to A, to make another word. Today, however, the alphabet, as we recognise it, no longer exists. The 5 major vowels have opted out of that all-embracing 26-letter series to set up an alphabet of their own, predictably christened the 'vowel alphabet', AEIOU.

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A Special Type Of Word-Shift Square, Susan Thorpe Jan 2009

A Special Type Of Word-Shift Square, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In Language on Vacation, p140, Dmitri Borgmann shifted the words of the 3 x 3 square HER - EMU - RUT, letter by letter, 10 steps along the alphabet, looping from Z to A, to make a second square ROB - OWE - BED. Tom Pulliam topped this by shifting the 4 x 4 square BARE - ANER - RENA - ERAR, letter by letter, 13 steps along the alphabet to make the square ONER - NARE - ERAN - RENE (WW76104). The current article deals exclusively with 3 x 3 squares. Both the above shift exercises involve 2 …

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New York Times Crossword Goofs (Continued From Vol. 40, February 2007), Will Shortz Jan 2009

New York Times Crossword Goofs (Continued From Vol. 40, February 2007), Will Shortz

Word Ways

A collection of mistakes printed in the New York Times crossword puzzles from 1993 to 2002.

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Kickshaws, D. Morice Jan 2009

Kickshaws, D. Morice

Word Ways

I never met Rex Gooch in person, but I got to know him via email over the past few years. He truly had his own vision of language, and his articles were brilliant, thorough, and detailed. When a Kickshaw item invited readers to find other examples of a specific form of wordplay, Rex often would send a bountiful supply of words.

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Anamonics, Jeff Myers Jan 2009

Anamonics, Jeff Myers

Word Ways

Attention, recreational linguists! Scrabble players of the world have explained their reach well beyond memorizing massive word lists and anagramming racks of letter tiles. They do not just sit across a multicolored board from each other and smack their chess clocks and shake their tile bags.

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Dictionary Limericks 3, Max Gutmann Jan 2009

Dictionary Limericks 3, Max Gutmann

Word Ways

A collection of limericks defining words.

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Some Of My Favorite Squares, Jeff Grant Jan 2009

Some Of My Favorite Squares, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Word squares have been around for centuries. I have constructed a few over the years, and admired the efforts of others too.

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I See Where You Are Coming From, Leonard R. N. Ashley Jan 2009

I See Where You Are Coming From, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Or maybe not, because much as readers of Word Ways know about etymologies they may be unfamiliar with words, sometimes given quite a twist in meaning in English, that come from truly unusual origins. Here are some that are literally way out.

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Where They Are Coming From, Leonard R. N. Ashley Jan 2009

Where They Are Coming From, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Some pretty common words have unexpectedly uncommon origins. Here's a little romp in the usually dry-as-dust field of etymology (from Greek for the origin or literal sense of a word), Quintillian's originatio.

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Canadianisms?, Andy Liu Jan 2009

Canadianisms?, Andy Liu

Word Ways

What is special about this collection of sentences?

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