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Vowel-Consonant Patterns In 8-Letter Heterograms, Susan Thorpe Aug 2006

Vowel-Consonant Patterns In 8-Letter Heterograms, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

In Vowel-Consonant Patterns: Part 1 (WW2002249) we found that there are 256 (2^8) 8-letter vowel-consonant patterns - 128 beginning with a consonant (C Patterns) and 128 with a vowel (V patterns). When it comes to heterograms (all letters different), these numbers are reduced. This is because there are only 5 different vowels available (a, e, i, o and u), so that any V-C number of C patterns available in reduced by 8 from 128 to 120; the number of V patterns is reduced by 29 from 128 to 99.


Colloquy Aug 2006

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.


Anacrograms 2: Acronyms; Singles; Phrases Aug 2006

Anacrograms 2: Acronyms; Singles; Phrases

Word Ways

Anacrograms, introduced in May, are anagrams of acrostics of text. Here are numerous examples from common idioms and saying. (Part 3 will be from quotations.) I occasionally cheated by modifying the wording slightly, obviously or unobtrusively. The most interesting anacrograms logologically are spelled without rearrangement. I call these acronyms. They are anacrograms in the sense that charades and half-palindromes are anagrams.


All-Diagonal Six-Squares With Familiar Words, Rex Gooch Aug 2006

All-Diagonal Six-Squares With Familiar Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

I have previously attempted to find word squares with words as diagonals for squares of order 9, 8, and 7. As the order of the square decreases, it becomes possible to use more familiar words. The six rows and three diagonals of six-squares make nine words: in all the examples in this article, the majority of the nine words are in the most-used 87,000 words (British National Corpus): in the square, just two words do not appear in the top 87,000.


Some Narrative Alphametics, James Mayfield Aug 2006

Some Narrative Alphametics, James Mayfield

Word Ways

In an alphametic, letters are substituted for numbers in an arithmetic problem, and the reader is invited to find the solution. If the letters spell out some sort of a message, so much the better; the oldest one known, SEND + MORE = MONEY, was crafted by H.E. Dudeney in 1924. (The term alphametic was coined by J.A.H. Hunter in 1955.)


Spoonertoons 3: The "Eek!" Shall Inherit The Mirth, Don Hauptman Aug 2006

Spoonertoons 3: The "Eek!" Shall Inherit The Mirth, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

As an annual tradition, one we trust is much anticipated, we present a new set of original spoonerisms rendered into visual form. This is the third consecutive August issue of Word Ways in which our collaborative feature has appeared. By the way, although it's a few weeks too late to send him a card, July 22 was Dr. Spooner's 162nd birthday.


The Great Times Ten-Square Hoax, Rex Gooch Aug 2006

The Great Times Ten-Square Hoax, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

When i was at University, I ran my college debating society, and was contacted by the best-known columnist of one of the two serious Sunday newspapers in the UK (in the UK, the major papers are national in circulation). He told me to ring him, reversing the charges, no matter how late, to let him know the result of a particular debate. I did so, to be met with a very curt dismissal, because the vote did not support his view.


Kickshaws, David L. Silverman Aug 2006

Kickshaws, David L. Silverman

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.


Punk Whiz 2 Aug 2006

Punk Whiz 2

Word Ways

Pun Quiz: what common phrases or words do these disdefinitions refer to? The numbers tell how many letters are in the words of the answer. As a clue (7/5/4) means the answer is a 16-letter word made up of elements of 7, 5, and 4 letters. My answers are at the back of this issue.


Did You Write A Shakespearean Sonnet?, A. Ross Eckler Aug 2006

Did You Write A Shakespearean Sonnet?, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

One can divide humanity into two groups - those who can be identified as the real author of a Shakespearean sonnet, and those who cannot. Willard Espy revealed in his book The World's Gotten Out (Clarkson Potter, 1989) the method of establishing authorship: look for the first letter of a name anywhere in the first line of a given sonnet, the second letter of the name anywhere in the second line of the same sonnet, and so on until the full name is spelled out. Sure enough, Willard Espy appears in Sonnet 114.


Answers And Solutions Aug 2006

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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


Palindromic Triads: Not Quite Agamemnon, Steven Kahan Aug 2006

Palindromic Triads: Not Quite Agamemnon, Steven Kahan

Word Ways

Logologists recognize Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War, as the only common dictionary entry that is made up of three consecutive palindromic triads. In the challenge that follows, you are asked to find twenty-seven more words that begin and end with a palindromic triad.


Adeginr Aehlmops Aug 2006

Adeginr Aehlmops

Word Ways

"Reading Alphomes" is the above title in alphomes: the letters of each word are alphabetized. The following paragraph recently made the rounds on the i-net and partly inspired this essay. (The rest of this page is translated in Answers and Solutions at the back of this issue.)


Reversible Seven-Squares, Rex Gooch Aug 2006

Reversible Seven-Squares, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

A reversible word square is one in which every row can be read backwards, and every column upwards - see especially the examples in the second section below. Every word must be either a reversible word such as REVILER (RELIVER in reverse) or a palindrome, which is a special kind of reversible word. In this article, the term reversible word does not include palindromes. In general, counts include valid rotations and reflections.


My Best Canadian Place Name Transadditions, Darryl Francis Aug 2006

My Best Canadian Place Name Transadditions, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In "50 Best Canadian Place-Names" in the February 2004 Word Ways, we offered a list of Canadian place name transpositions. Here we present a list of 69 Canadian place names for which there are 200 transadditions. We chose to limit the list of 200 but we could have found further examples. We also could have increased the number of place names, but the lengths would have begun to fall below the nine-letter level.


Joaquin Through The Pangram Window, Eric Chaikin May 2006

Joaquin Through The Pangram Window, Eric Chaikin

Word Ways

Quick brown foxes and lazy dogs the world over were vext recently by an incident that set the field of "accidental pangrams" agog, threatening to smash its beloved "window".


Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 39 Issue 2 May 2006

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 39 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.


The Best Ten-Squares, Jeff Grant May 2006

The Best Ten-Squares, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

It is nearly 85 years since the first ten-square was published. American National Puzzlers' League member Paul M. Bryan (Tunste) exhibited a tautonymic square in the September 1921 Enigma. The example was not perfect, however, with one word (ALALA) being arbitrarily doubled. Furthermore, as tautonymic ten-squares use only five different words, each in two positions, they are not true solutions to the challenge.


I'M (Alas!) A Salami, Win Emmons May 2006

I'M (Alas!) A Salami, Win Emmons

Word Ways

Many additional palindromes can be found on my website http://www.palindromania.com.


All-Diagonal Eight-Squares, Rex Gooch May 2006

All-Diagonal Eight-Squares, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

When I first subscribed to Word Ways and enquired about word squares with diagonal words, Jeff Grant commented that such items were rare and hard to find. That is true, but here is a rather belated replay!


Kickshaws, Dave Morice May 2006

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.


The Generation Game, Susan Thorpe May 2006

The Generation Game, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The families below are all single parent families with a difference. The parent has never had a partner. All the offspring are produced asexually. The offspring in a particular generation are all the same length (letterwise). The letters are each assigned their alphabetical values (a=1, b=2, etc). Unreferenced words can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Locations, identified by country, are taken from The United States Board on Geographic Names.


Some Really Unusual Words, Leonard R. N. Ashley May 2006

Some Really Unusual Words, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

I have been contributing these little quizzes to Word Ways for decades. Some have been easy, some not. This one is especially challenging, but give it a try. A quarter of them right would b good; half of them right entitles you to think yourself exceptional.


Omitted Letters In Crosswords, Jeremy Morse May 2006

Omitted Letters In Crosswords, Jeremy Morse

Word Ways

Sixty or more years ago I read a humorous story - possibly by A.A. Milne - in which the two main characters were called ETAION and SHRDLU. Later I came to realise that these names were taken from a letter frequency list There are a number of these lists with small differences between them reflecting the context of the letter count. For Language on Vacation Dmitri Borgmann used one starting ETAISONHRDLU, differing from my author's only in the positioning of the S. This article is concerned with letters in crosswords, but it starts from the other end by looking at …


New Partridge Dictionary Of Slang And Unconventional English, Robert Cass Keller May 2006

New Partridge Dictionary Of Slang And Unconventional English, Robert Cass Keller

Word Ways

The following account has been adapted from the Dec 24 2005 Guardian Unlimited review of Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor's two-volume, 2216-page work, available for $210.


Igpay Words May 2006

Igpay Words

Word Ways

I remember loving to converse in Pig Latin (PL) when i was young. (To speak it, start each word with its first vowel, move the preceding consonant/s to the end and add a long A.) Some PL has even entered the language through frequent use (ixnay; amscray!). A couple of PL allusions in the November 2005 Kickshaws inspired me to seek words which in PL become other words phonetically.


Letter And Word Frequencies, Rex Gooch May 2006

Letter And Word Frequencies, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Counts of letters and words have been made from various bodies of text over the years. Perhaps the earliest well-known corpus was the assembled by W.N. Francis and H. Kucera of Brown University (hence known as the Brown corpus). It contains one million words of American English from 1961 in 15 categories of 500 texts. If it has a use today, it is because matching studies were done of British English and Indiana English among others.


"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.


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.


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.