Digital Commons Network^™

The Word Magic Of Lewis Carroll, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

The smashing success of the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp film Alice in Wonderland is vivid evidence of our fascination with Lewis Carroll's work for almost a century and a half.

Numerical Charades Part 3, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Part 1 examined Palindromic, Tautonymic and Miami Numerical Charades, wilst Part 2 examined Progressive and Regressive Numerical Series Charades. Currently, Part 3 is devoted to what might be called combination charades.

Pop-Star, Sir Jeremy Morse

Word Ways

A poem.

Look Back!, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the February 2009 Word Ways, Dave Morice celebrated his one-thousandth Kickshaws page, a self-portrait consisting of that number of signatures. His count should be augmented by Kickshaws through February 2010 plus non-Kickshaws articles, a total of 210 pages. No other author has exceeded this (I have 1030 and Dmitri Borgmann, 727).

A Letter To Martin, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

A letter to the late Martin Gardner.

Just The Right Poem, J. James Mancuso

Word Ways

A poem.

Kickshaws, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

Gardner wrote two kickshaws for Word Ways -- one in February 1981 and one in November 1983. They are reprinted here.

Slowpoke, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

A poem from the book Never Make Fun of a Turtle, My Son.

Spoonertoons 7: Riddling While Foam Burns, Don Hauptman, Jim Siergey

Word Ways

A collection of illustrations and spoonerisms.

Double Duty Adjectives, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

Several common English adjectives have two distinct meanings, revealed by clearly distinguishable opposites. Here are several antonym pairs that illustrate this.

Not Lying About -Ly Words, J. James Mancuso

Word Ways

A poem.

An Anagram Sonnet, Janet D. Hodge

Word Ways

I recently discovered David Shulman's anagramed "sonnet" on "Washington Crossing the Delaware," written in 1936, in Douglas Hofstadter's review of Ross Eckler's Making the Alphabet Dance, as well as Shulman's reply to that review, in which he writes: "after waiting 60 years, I find that nobody so far has equaled or surpassed it."

Pied Poetry, Martin Gardner, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

To lure thy half-wit
(Having all, it moves nor'-nor'-nor' line)
Thy piety tears a writ --
A wash-out --
Writes moving word CANCEL on
The back of it,
And shall
Finger all!

Iowa City Poetry Marathon, David Morice

Word Ways

In November, 2008, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Iowa City as the world's third City of Literature, along with Edinburg, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia. This summer there will be various celebrations of this event. The University of Iowa main Library is having an exhibit from July through October, 2010, featuring books, broadsides, and other works by the UI Writers Workshop and by the Actualist Poets, who flourished here in the 1970s.

Ode To An Etymologist, Rocky Bruni

Word Ways

Questions and thoughts addressed to an etymologist.

Word Play In The L. Frank Baum Fantasies, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

Lyman Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and thirteen other Oz books, also wrote many fantasies for children that did not have Oz as a setting. In all these books he liked to make up names for persons, places, and things. These names often involved word play. Puns were the most common form, but Baum also indulged in anagrams, spoonerisms, reversals, and other forms of linguistic whimsies.

Sherlockiana, Dana Richards

Word Ways

Word Puzzles selected from "Victorian Enigmas and Sherlockian Puzzles" by the author.

Denizens Of The Deep, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

Put on a recording of Handel's Water Music to stimulate your gray matter for this one. Hidden among the words listed below are twenty creatures who spend all or a good part of their lives under water. To bring each to the surface, issue a replacement for one of the letters present and transpose the ensuing collection. As an illustration, UTTERS would turn into TURTLE after "L" displaces "S" and permutation is performed. Best of luck in your SEARCHES (which would eventually become SEAHORSE when "O" transplants "C"!)

People Remembered In The Language, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Some individuals have made a name for themselves and got into the dictionary, their names (usually surnames) having become words. How many of these notables can you recognize?

Back Cover

Word Ways

The back cover of this issue, including instructions to authors wishing to contribute and readers wishing to subscribe.

Charades Crossword

Word Ways

A crossword puzzle.

Tic-Tac-Toe Played As A Word Game, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

In Problem 48 in Your Move (McGraw-Hill, 1971), David Silverman described a linguistic version of tic-tac-toe consisting of a stockpile of the words ARMY, CHAT, FISH, GIRL, HORN, KNIT, SOUP, SWAN and VOTE. Players alternately select words, and the first to collect three words sharing a common letter is the winner.

Author, Author! Part 1, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

There can be no better venue for paying homage to celebrated writers than a journal devoted to wordplay. A score of such literary luminaries awaiting well-deserved recognition is concealed in the listing below. Revealing a name entails permuting the collection that results when a new letter replaces a given one in each word. To illustrate, after scrambling, the creators of Tom Sawyer and Robinson Crusoe will be exposed when "W" supplants "G" in GIANT and "O" does the same to "R" in FREED, respectively. A perfect score authorizes you to call yourself an author authority.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Look Back!, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In a sense Martin Gardner was the founder of Word Ways, for he suggested the idea of such a magazine to Greenwood Periodicals and proposed Dmitri Borgmann as its first editor. After only a year as the editor, Dmitri resigned in November 1968 when Greenwood refused to pay him a salary of $5,000 per year. When Howard Bergerson, recruited by Joe Madachy (the editor of another Greenwood journal), agreed to be editor without salary, Dmitri angrily wrote him to say that he considered Howard's action "extremely hostile and downright treacherous" and that Howard would never hear from him again.

Accident, Sir Jeremy Morse

Word Ways

A poem.

By The Numbers, Jon Racherbaumer

Word Ways

This article originally was part of Racherbaumer's column "On the Slant" in the August 2010 issue of GENII magazine. It is used with permission.

'Cause The Bible Told Me So, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

To The Editor: For years I have been entertained by letters calling attention to what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, masturbation, wine drinking, and kindred topics. Are these letter writers aware, I wonder, that the Old Testament condones smoking?

Consult Genesis 24:64. We are told that "Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel."

Redefining Nairobi's Streets: Study Of Slang, Marginalization, And Identity, Mungai Mutonya

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This study attempts an analysis of a restructured Swahili variety spoken by Nairobi's street community: Kinoki. Adapting tools of sociolinguistic inquiry and focusing on Kinoki's divergence from the dominant urban slang, Sheng, the study discusses attitudes toward divergent terms referencing the street community, street activities, and law enforcement officials. Results indicate that street children, unlike their school-going peers living in the city's low-income neighborhoods, redefine pejoratives that devalue and stigmatize street people and their lifestyle. Instead, Kinoki empowers the marginalized community to construct a positive identity, to ameliorate representations of street lifestyle, and to redefine neologisms that reference in-group ( …

Phonological Development In Hearing Children Of Deaf Parents, Erin N. Toohey

Honors Scholar Theses

Phonological development in hearing children of deaf parents Dr. Diane Lillo-Martin 5/9/2010 The researcher wishes to determine the significance of a unique linguistic environment on the effects of phonological development. The research examines whether 3 hearing children of deaf parents, hereafter referred to as CODAs, have inconsistencies, as compared to children in a typical linguistic environment, in their syllable structure, phonological processes or phonemic inventories. More specifically, the research asks whether their speech is more consistent with children of typical environments or more similar to children with phonological delays or disorders or articulation disorders. After the examination of these three …