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The Oz Contradictionary: Part 6

Word Ways

This collection of anagram poetry is excerpted from a privately published book, "up/dn, a dictionary and contradictionary of anagrams..." (see February 2001 Word Ways for details). The book, revised, will be available as a Word Ways monograph in the near future.

Maoris: A Word Puzzle, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

A new kind of magic square has recently been discovered and our puzzle MAORIS is a realization in words of the 4x4 case. In addition, MAORIS can be played effectively as a two-person board game that has a rather subtle forced win for one of the combatants.

Mallarme, Word-Painter Of Comets, Paul Maxim

Word Ways

Question: What is more fascinating than a giant comet?

Answer: the image of such a comet, when extracted from a matrix puzzle wherein it was not known to exist.

Half-Half Transposals, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Most readers will be familiar with split-word transposals such as HORSEHOER in which the letters of the first half of the words are repeated in the second half in a different order. The current exercise is similar, but different in that it concerns pairs of words rather than a single word. I set out to find pairs of words (such as ISOL.ATED and SOLIDATE) in which the letters of the first half of the first word, rearranged, form the letters of the first half of the second word; and the letters of the second half of the first word, rearranged, …

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Crossing The Seasons

Word Ways

This word ladder mandala takes advantage of two neat coincidences: that all four seasons have six-letter names, as noted by Lewis Carroll, and that each has exactly two letters in common with "season" -- and with each other, except Sp-W with three.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Azorean: New Spelling For The 21st Century, Joli Quentin Kansil

Word Ways

The world has rockets, computer, radios, skyscrapers, and miracle medicines, but it is still plagued with the same archaic spelling from centuries ago. Isn't it time that the spelling of words in English caught up with the advances of modern times? There is no rational reason for spelling 'though' with six letter when two can do the job admirably. The main thrust behind reform spelling systems has been to have one symbol for one sound so that there are no inconsistencies and no silent letters. With reformed spelling all words are spelled exactly as they are sounded, students learn to …

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Rich Dutch Words, Hugo Brandt Corstius

Word Ways

For each letter the number of times that letter may occur in one Dutch word is given, plus the shortest word with that number of repetitions.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 35 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Nine Square With Palindromic Diagonal, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

A few years ago, I produced a few thousand nine squares, but they have lain fallow since, as Chris Cole presented "Modern Nine-Squares" in November 2001 and Richard Sabey presented "A Collection of Nine-Squares" in February 1997. I did, however, look for a square with a word on the diagonal as well. Failing to find one among my few thousand or in Word Ways, I now take pleasure in presenting it, plus a small variation.

Word Wide Web, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Word Ways is a treasure trove of logologically-talented words, words such as HORSESHOER in which the letters of the first half of the word are repeated in the second half in a different order; the 5-letter IOUEA (WW May 1993), the only word made exclusively of one each of the five main vowels; and HAMAMELIDACEAE, seemingly the longest word made from first half of the alphabet letters.

Palindromic Relationship, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The year is 2002 and palindromic NAN is entertaining the idea of taking in a lodger again, despite the fact that her first lodger had been a disaster. His name was Rae and he'd been recommended by a friend. All credit to the friend, she did warn Nan that Rae was prone to hypochondria and somewhat of a doctor's nightmare. But, being Nan, she took pity on Rae. This very quickly proved to be a mistake and Rae didn't stay long! However, his short stay did enable us to demonstrate two types of palindromic poetry.

Visiting The State Capitals Yet Again, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the February 2002 Word Ways I explored trandeletions and transadditions of the names of the state capitals. How close could I get to finding 50 one-letter transdeletions? Where one-letter transdeletions could not be located, what were the fewest number of letters that needed to be deleted to effect a transdeletion? How close could I get to finding 50 one-letter transadditions? Where one-letter transadditions could not be located, what were the fewest number of letters that needed to be added to effect a transaddition? My previous article offered transdeletions for all 50 state capital names, involving deletion of a total …

Unseen Consonants, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

In the list of fifty words that follows, all of the vowels (A, E, I, O, and U) have been supplied. The blanks represent consonants (including Y) which appear in alphabetical order. For instance, he word - E -- O -- could stand for DEFROST, BEDPOST, or LEPROSY. Plurals are not permitted, so that - A -- E -- could not stand for BADGERS. Furthermore, no consonant can be repeated, so that I - E -- I -- could not stand for IDENTITY. Each of the first forty-four words have five missing consonants, while each of the remaining half-dozen has …

Words In Windows, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In Language on Vacation, Dmitri Borgmann highlighted the 13-letter GIBBLEGABBLED and HIGGLEHAGGLED as the longest words with all their letters drawn from the first half of the alphabet, A-M. He also referred to the 11-letter NONSUPPORTS as the longest word with all of its letters drawn from the second half of the alphabet, N-Z.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Same Name Game, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

Have you ever observed that certain celebrities, historical figures, and other famous individuals happen ot share identical -- or very similar -- first and last names? For example, PAUL SIMON is the pop singer-composer, while another PAUL SIMON is the bow-tied former Illinois Senator. (Appearing with the Senator on CNN in 1995, comic Richard Belzer joked: "I have all his albums.")

The Oz Contradictionary: Part 5

Word Ways

This is an excerpt from a 98-page book, up/dn, a dictionary and contradictionary of wordplay including anagrams, palindromes and charades, privately published in 1999 by a retired Australian (Oz) biologist (see February 2001 Word Ways for details).

Palindrome Park, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Palindrome Park is a very special place. It was established by billionaire nature-lover and palindrome fanatic Otto Markram at his retreat near Tassessat in the remote Air Mountains of Morocco. This unique botanical and zoological park has only 26 enclosures, each housing a different palindromic specimen. Some may surprise you - there are plants, animals, birds, fish, insects, and even a mythical creature!

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

Onomastic Anomaly: New South Wales, Thomas I. Bernard

Word Ways

I have always been intrigued with the toponymic anomaly of the name of the Australian state of New South Wales. Obviously there are countless examples of toponyms that are preceded by the adjective New; these are, or were, usually in honor or remembrance of countries (New England, New Spain, New France, New Mexico, New Guinea, etc.) or cities (New York, New Orleans, New Rochelle, New London, New Paltz, etc.) . Clearly such names arose in response to newly settled or newly discovered places, but there are other reasons when New might have been used.

Noah's Consonants, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The title refers to he of the Ark as distinct from he of the dictionary. Noah's Ark is a honeymoon haven for words because Noah only admits those words in which each consonant has a partner. In practice he's even more picky, refusing entry to any such words with less than 3 different consonants (6 consonants in total). He also turns away hyphenated examples, phrases, coinages, palindromes, tautonyms and pair isograms. Here, we attempt to discover some of those words which have made it past Noah into the Ark.

Living Ten-Squares, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

"A New Approach to the Ten Square" in the February 2002 Word Ways unsuccessfully sought to construct a ten-square out of names such as Elmer Davis or James Smith, all belonging to living United States residents or deceased Social Security beneficiaries. Steve Root suggested that present-day computer power permits a more ambitious program: instead of processing independent 5X5 chunks of first and last names, why not construct full ten-squares consisting of names of all lengths.

Jesuit-Ignatius Palindromes, Jim Puder

Word Ways

Inigo de Onez y Loyola, St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), is famed as the founder of the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic clergy. The logologically noteworthy coincidence that the last four letters of "Ignatius" are the reversal of the last four letters of "Jesuit" or long challenged palindromists to devise some reasonably artistic palindromic passage that unites the two names. To date, a fully satisfactory formulation has proven to be frustratingly elusive. In I love Me, Vol. I, for example, Michael Donner offers "An Ignatius ejaculation's... [no ital! u.c.!] ... A JESUIT AGNINA!" and variations, and "Set, a Luca Jesuit …

Matched Terminal Deletions, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In Kickshaws of Feb 2002, Dave Morice asked for words beginning and ending in the same letter, which revealed other words (say, core words) when the terminal letters were discarded. He asked for the longest source words beginning with each letter of the alphabet, in each of four categories: the revealed word reads forwards; reads backwards; reads a different word forwards from backwards (called "both" below, his example was STARS - TAR + RAT); and reads the same backwards and forwards (palindrome).

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Inconsonant Bigrams

Word Ways

Inconsonant Bigrams is what i call another wordplay form I've dabbled in, probably not original, that makes sentences out of bigrams in which the vowel and its position are constant and only the consonants are inconstant. This is sort of the inverse of Vowel Movements in the February 1998 Kickshaws, as well as "Vowel Cascades, Vowel Movements and Di-Odes" in the February 2002 Word Ways. (Perhaps a better name for Inconsonant Bigrams would be Consonant Movements.) Is there an official name for this?

How To Pack Months, Presidents And States, David S. Robinson

Word Ways

In the May 2001 issue of Word Ways, Ross Eckler showed how one could exhibit the names of the nine planets, each one in order, in only 26 letters: MNVESARCPJLUPITHURYOANUSER. In the August issue, Darryl Francis followed this up with letter chains of 19 and 23, respectively, containing the days of the week and the colors of the rainbow.