Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Linguistic

Discipline
Institution
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type

Articles 871 - 900 of 921

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Varieties Of Palindromic Pangrams, James Puder Feb 1999

Varieties Of Palindromic Pangrams, James Puder

Word Ways

Depending upon which aspect of its dual nature one considers primary, a palindromic pangram may be defined as either a palindromes which is pangrammatic (i.e., which contains every letter of the alphabet) or as a pangram which is palindromic. The first one ever published was written by Howard Bergerson and appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's 1965 book, Language on Vacation. Subsequently James Rambo, in the November 1976 Word ways, and Jeff Grant, in the May 1978 Word ways, contributed additional examples to the canon. Several more of these interestingly constrained writings serve to illustrate the present article, in which various kinds …

Go to article

Aeinrst Extended, Darryl Francis Feb 1999

Aeinrst Extended, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the Aug 1998 Word Ways, we presented a multiplicity of transposals of the seven letters AEINRST. After we had finished work on that article, we began to wonder how it could be extended further.

Go to article

"Not New York" Roy Went On, John E. Connett Feb 1999

"Not New York" Roy Went On, John E. Connett

Word Ways

Is this the first palindrome incorporating a state name? (it was published in Notes & Queries under Leigh Mercer's name in 1958.) The most recent Word Ways state name collection is Dave Morice's set of 24 in the November 1996 Kickshaws.

Go to article

A B C D E, Susan Thorpe Feb 1999

A B C D E, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The letters ABVDE can be arranged in 120 different ways. Nine of these permutations occur as sequences uninterrupted by intervening letters, in BEAD Curtain, barBED CAT, poliCE BADge, flounCED ABout, bage. But all these sequences straddles the two words of the phrase. The current exercise searches for single words which include one of the permutations as an uninterrupted sequences.

Go to article

Fast To The Foc's'Le, Facile Fossil! Feb 1999

Fast To The Foc's'Le, Facile Fossil!

Word Ways

Eckler, you still don't concede that the whole damned pasture full of Mary's lambs in mine? Instead you challenge the proper format for anagram poems? Eckler, I precede you by four centuries! My skill, art, craft and talent identify all great literature as mine, and I believe I know the rules, as I invent them.

Go to article

Heterograms With No Adjacent Letters, Rex Gooch Feb 1999

Heterograms With No Adjacent Letters, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In the November Colloquy, Sir Jeremy Morse postulated that TAPERINGLY is the longest heterogram having no alphabetically-adjacent letters. By this he meant no two letters in the word are adjacent in the alphabet--for example, if the word has an O in it, it cannot have an N or P. However, I at first interpreted it to mean no bigrams of the form AB,BC, ... YZ, as much weaker restriction. So here are two puzzles for the price of one!

Go to article

Stew Inside Curies, William Webster Feb 1999

Stew Inside Curies, William Webster

Word Ways

Each word can be anagrammed to an Official Scrabble Players Dictionary word (except proper names). Apostrophes are omitted (sit = it's).

Go to article

Bananagrams 4, Edmund Conti Feb 1999

Bananagrams 4, Edmund Conti

Word Ways

Bananagrams--anagrams to drive you bananas--consist of rhymed couplets, each one containing a pair of anagrams to be solved. One of the rhyming words will always be an anagram, and the couplet itself will offer clues to help solve the anagrams. Answers will be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.

Go to article

Kickshaws, Dave Morice Feb 1999

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

Readers are encouraged to send their favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Kickshaws Editor (e-mail [email protected]).

Go to article

Stuffing The Isogrid, Eric Chaikin Feb 1999

Stuffing The Isogrid, Eric Chaikin

Word Ways

With the gunpowdery blacksmith at our side, we have hunted the biggest bisograms. In our next adventure, they will be stuffed and put on display. The "Nots and Crosses" contest in the July 1991 issue of Games Magazine put forth the following challenge: place a different word in each cell of a 3-by-3 tic-tac-toe grid ("noughts and crosses" for Anglophiles) so that no row, column, or corner-to-corner diagonal repeats a letter, with the object being to maximize the total number of letters in the grid.

Go to article

Answers And Solutions Feb 1999

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

Go to article

And Sound As Sweet By Any Other Name?, Andrea Cantrell, Stephen J. Chism Feb 1999

And Sound As Sweet By Any Other Name?, Andrea Cantrell, Stephen J. Chism

Word Ways

Are some of us subconsciously drawn to jobs for which our names describe a primary product, action or tool with which we work? When parents name a child do they "bestow nomen atque omen," or a name and an omen [Plautus, Persa, act iv, scene 4]? Whether omens, directions, or merely humorous coincidence, the personal names in general use and career combinations listed below are offered for your amusement. Match the names in the second column with the occupations in the first.

Go to article

Back Cover Feb 1999

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Go to article

Colloquy Nov 1998

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Go to article

Debra And Theresa Shop, William Webster Nov 1998

Debra And Theresa Shop, William Webster

Word Ways

Each word can be anagrammed to an Official Scrabble Players Dictionary word (except for proper names). All apostrophes are omitted (sit it's). The translation can be found in Answers and Solutions.

Go to article

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 31 Issue 4 Nov 1998

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 31 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Go to article

All Numbers Less Than 100 Are Interesting?, Dave Morice Nov 1998

All Numbers Less Than 100 Are Interesting?, Dave Morice

Word Ways

In the Feb 1977 Word Ways, Dmitri Borgmann wrote "All English words and names--all, without a single exception--are logologically interesting." He didn't define interestingness, and his examples didn't clarify matters. In the May 1980 Word ways, Philip Cohen attempted to codify the term, applying it to a finite set of words (the 50 states) with some success. I decided to apply the concept to a different set: the number names ONE, TWO, ...,NINETY-NINE. Mathematics plays an important part in wordplay. Because both logological and numerical properties can be considered, interestingness takes many strange twists and turns.

Go to article

Neal, Norma And Ronald, Jeff Grant, Pat Grant Nov 1998

Neal, Norma And Ronald, Jeff Grant, Pat Grant

Word Ways

Following on from the search for additional transposable names of the GARY GRAY and EDNA DEAD type (see "A Checklist of Transposable People" in the Aug 1998 Word Ways, we decided to further investigate the most fruitful combinations at the four-, five- and six-letter levels. In the process, several new transposable names came to light (these are asterisked below). Note that examples where the first and last names are identical and also included.

Go to article

The I18n Phenomenon, Nyr Indictor Nov 1998

The I18n Phenomenon, Nyr Indictor

Word Ways

In computerese these days, the word internationalization comes up an awful lot. It usually refers to the conversion of software into a form that is accessible to users in different countries, speaking different languages. A related term, localization, describes the customization of software for users at a particular location, with a specific language need. Because these terms are quite long, they have curious abbreviations; il8n (referring to the fact there are 10 letters between the initial I and the final N) and 110n.

Go to article

A Screwball Baseball All-Star Team, William Young Nov 1998

A Screwball Baseball All-Star Team, William Young

Word Ways

As we near the end of the twentieth century, baseball enthusiasts are compiling lists of the greatest players of the past hundred years. To complement the lists of players known for their accomplishments on the field, I would like to propose a Screwball All-Star Team made up of the anagrams of baseball players of the present and past. All of the names have been taken from the 10th edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Definitive Record of Major League Baseball.

Go to article

Reversible Heterograms, Rex Gooch Nov 1998

Reversible Heterograms, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In my article "Statistics of Word Neighbours" in the Nov 2997 Word Ways, I showed that theoretical expectations matched actuality quite well for heterograms, words of a given length which had all letters different (Graph 2 in that article). In "Snakes and Ladders" I attempted to make ladders between heterograms which were also words when reversed. This article gives Fuller results of my investigation into reversible heterograms. The lists can act as a crib for people constructing palindromic phrases!

Go to article

Reversed Placenames, Dan Tilque Nov 1998

Reversed Placenames, Dan Tilque

Word Ways

Many years ago, I worked for a company which had been founded by a man named Joe Grebe. Mr. Grebe had passed away a few years before and some of the employees wanted to name something after him. They finally persuaded one of the railroads to rename a train stop at one of the company plants Eberg, the reverse of Grebe. With this reversal they joined in what is probably the most common form of wordplay used in forming placenames.

Go to article

Trisograms, Quadrisograms, Quintisograms, Eric Chaikin Nov 1998

Trisograms, Quadrisograms, Quintisograms, Eric Chaikin

Word Ways

A previous article introduced a term bisogram to refer to a pair of words which does not repeat a letter, and described the search to equal the longest-known example, the 20 letter GUNPOWDERY BLACKSMITH. In this article, I described the search to equal the longest-known three-four- and five-word sets: triosgrams, quadrisograms, and quitisograms.

Go to article

Scrabble-Friendly Eight Squares, Darryl Francis Nov 1998

Scrabble-Friendly Eight Squares, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

There have been many articles on word squares in Word Ways over the last ten years or so. Many eight-squares have appeared, a few nine-squares, and even fewer (flawed) ten-squares.

Go to article

Victus, Jan Anderson Nov 1998

Victus, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

For Christmas I thought it would be fun to surprise George Henley and give him heaven. Heaven knows, he suffered enough for it. Call it the theology of reversal, or just the word-opposite reversal of his original "Invictus".

Go to article

Single Letter Prefixing, Rex Gooch, Susan Thorpe Nov 1998

Single Letter Prefixing, Rex Gooch, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Allow us to start with some simple definitions: this article concerns prefixing a single letter to a root word (root for short) to make another word, e.g., M prefixes the root AN to make MAN. In the January 1997 Wordsworth, Ted Clarke asked whether there was a longer set of four-letter words than a list of 16 based on IND as the last three letters.

Go to article

Kickshaws, Dave Morice Nov 1998

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Go to article

I'M Now Challenging Abysmal Pen, A. Ross Eckler Nov 1998

I'M Now Challenging Abysmal Pen, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Scarfin' Fatback's latest weapon of choice in the Word Ways word duel is the anagram, a treacherous tool for the wannabe logologist. Does he not realize that a sensible narrative is almost impossible to achieve when anagramming groups of 30 or fewer letters? I've read his Frostian parody of Mary's lamb three times and I'm still don't know what it says!

Go to article

Banangrams 3, Edmund Conti Nov 1998

Banangrams 3, Edmund Conti

Word Ways

Bananagrams--anagrams to drive you bananas--consist of rhymed couplets, each one containing a pair of anagrams to be solved. One of the rhyming words will always be an anagram, and the couplet itself will offer clues to help solve the anagrams. Answers will be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.

Go to article

Lamb Chops, My Weanling Eanling? Nov 1998

Lamb Chops, My Weanling Eanling?

Word Ways

Well, if you weren't good you couldn't have stolen my works or claimed them easily. All right, you're good. But I have honed my cryptographic skills through centuries, and you are merely a Morristown mortal.

Go to article

First Prev Next Last