Digital Commons Network^™

Computer Jotto And Crash, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

The August 1996 article "Playing Jotto Against a Computer" discusses the game of Jotto as played by a commercial computer program. Toward the end of the article, the authors suggest a "better" (minimax) value of play. I agree that their method is too difficult to implement, but I also believe that it is based on a weak premise and would be useless even if implemented. There can be no compleat strategy to Jotto. Guessing your opponent's word is a matter of bookkeeping plus a little luck. Since the computer is a better bookkeeper and knows its vocabulary better than a …

Julian Calendar Verse, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

Dateline Rome:

A Collection Of Nine-Squares, Richard Sabey

Word Ways

This article shows some of the results of a computer search for regular nine-squares. My earlier article on eight-squares reported on a search confined to solid all-lowercase eight-letter words. Standards had to be lowered for the nine-square search, and I included capitalised terms, hyphenated words and multiple-word phrases.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

A Bilingual Pun Is Twice The Fun, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

The all-time prize for transmitting the fullest message with the greatest compactness must go to Sir Charles James Napier. In 1843, Napier quelled an uprising in the Indian province of Sind and announced his triumph via telegram to his commanders in London. All he wrote was the one word Peccavi.

Palindromic Habitations, Andrea Cantrell

Word Ways

A street's a street, right? Only when you can ignore street signs and maps! I once had to criss-cross an entire city because I had failed to note if an address was on Canyon Lane or Canyon Terrace. Whether they are written out or abbreviated, it is important to pay careful attention to designations for roads, routes, avenues, places, lanes, squares, terraces, circles, heights, and plain old streets.

Fledge Ledge Edge, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

From the last issue's Ledge Edge we peered mostly at the missing: intentionally omitted words, vowels and syllables. Now we flap away from the "eschewed" and go espying the askew--odd assortments and arrangements of what is there. But as with my mother's elves, you have to start flying before you can see them. You didn't know about my mother's elves? They were a family secret, and my father never admitted to getting the note she wrote about them, but then maybe he didn't get it -- "Ed: odd, I am nuts. I flew. As I did, I saw elf! I …

Number Name Equations, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

123 can be expressed as a number name in one of two basic ways: ONE HUNDRED (AND) TWENTY THREE (the British include and, the Americans exclude and) or ONE TWO THREE. Dmitri Borgmann illustrated both in the November 1985 Colloquy. Assigning A=1, B=2, etc., he constructed TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE = 251, ONE FOUR SIX = 146 and TWO OUGHT OUGHT = 200. (He defended the last one by noting that ought is given as a variant of aught in the Collegiate dictionaries).

Top-Down Seems Best In Full Searches, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In "Designing a List of Word Squares" (August 1996), I showed that a word list intended for finding squares is improved by balancing the beginning and ending letter-frequencies of words. In "Bottom-Up Finds Some Squares Faster" (November 1996) I showed that under certain conditions the old formists' bottom-up strategy is superior to a top-down one.

Wright, Write 'Rite' Right, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The May, August and November 1996, Word Ways described the results of a National Public Radio competition of December 1995 in which listeners were challenged to write grammatical and understandable sentences containing the same word four or more times in a row. Some listeners incorrectly assumed that a stutter of sounds would qualify, and constructed sequences of homonyms instead of identically-spelled words. These logologically-interesting results are presented in the following (and final) article. (A few are questionable, relying perhaps on regional pronunciations.)

Absolute Difference Words, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

LONGEST WORDS

This article is a continuation of "Word Arithmetic" from the November Word Ways. Dmitri Borgmann is Beyond Language gave the four-letter absolute difference word FORM = 6 15 18 13 becomes 9 3 5 ICE. In "Difference Words" in the August 1971 Word Ways, Ross Eckler found in Webster's Collegiate 15 five-letter words such as SAFER and CHILD and three six-letter words from elsewhere: ELDEST, RETAIN, FRITOS. In "Difference Words Ride Again" in the August 1975 issue, Tom Pulliam added 10 more six-letter words from Webster's Unabridged, Second and Third editions.

Word Sums (No Carrying!), Frank Rubin

Word Ways

The simplest form of arithmetic that we all learn in grade school is addition. Each of us has spent countless hours over problems like 123 + 456 = 579.

Confessions Of A Psycho Killer, Mark Saltveit

Word Ways

Two detectives, Ed and Dave, were interrogating the prime suspect in a suburban murder spree. The accused, obviously deranged, answered only in present tense palindromes.

The Abc's Of Anglish, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Anglish is English of the logical neologist. It consists of sportmanteaux (the perfect qwaint is self-explanatory) and triviana (contrived trivia such as the palindrome ATAVADAVATA or the alphabetically progressive ABAVADAE). Pundigroans (contrived pundigroins or puns) are tolerated by only in small number. The acid test of an Anglish word is that it has the potential for assimilation into English just as the language of the Angles became a strand of the vocabulary which continues to develop as English. The following is a mere sample:

A Reedable-Deerable Alphabet, Nyr Indictor

Word Ways

Word pairs such as REJECTED-DEJECTER, RESERVED-DESERVER, and REDUCED-DEDUCER fall into the special class of anagrams which we may call "reed-deer pairs". One member of the pair begins with RE- and ends with ED-, while the other begins with DE- and ends with -ER. If the pair is DEDEERED and DEREEDED, we are left with an identical middle component. A person who isolates these middle components is both a DEDEERER and a DEREEDER. The middle ocmponent can be REREEDED and REDEERED (by a REREEDER and REDEERER) to form the original pair again.

Southern Fried Churches, Mary Christie Craig

Word Ways

My husband says that a Presbyterian, which he grew up as, in a cold, intellectual, well-read Baptist. On the other hand, a Baptist is a warm-hearted, ignorant Presbyterian. I can say this because I am one-- a Baptist, that is.

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Numerical Palindromes: Part 2, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

"Numerical Palindromes: Part 1", by Susan Thorpe in the November 1996 Word Ways, dealt with what I described as numerical palindromes of order 2. It was her work that led to my own effort.

Bringing Home The Cryptographic Bacon, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

For the more than one hundred years various iconoclasts have speculated that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Some have searched for indications in the Shakespearean corpus that Bacon cryptographically hid some statement of his authorship.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

Profiling Esl Children: How Teachers Interpret And Use National And State Assessment Frameworks: Volume 2: The Western Australia Case Studies, Michael P. Breen, Caroline Barratt-Pugh, Beverly Derewianka, Helen House, Catherine Hudson, Tom Lumley, Mary Rohl

Research outputs pre 2011

No abstract provided.

Linguistics And Poetry: Phonological Performance Analysis As Key To Interpretation In Donne's Lyrics., Sara Witsell Anderson

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This study blends linguistic science and literary criticism by using phonological theory and methodology to uncover interpretive clues in the form of structurally-based guidance to the manner of performance of certain lines of selected poems. Its underlying assumption is that with regard to interpretation, the oral dimension of metrical lyric poetry is at least as important as the written dimension, since such commonly accepted features as meter, rhyme, and alliteration depend on oral performance of the poetry involved, at least in the form of the reader's sounding it imaginarily to the mind's ear. It follows that intonationally precise renditions of …

Profiling Esl Children: How Teachers Interpret And Use National And State Assessment Frameworks: Volume 3: The Eastern States Case Studies, Michael P. Breen, Caroline Barratt-Pugh, Beverly Derewianka, Helen House, Catherine Hudson, Tom Lumley, Mary Rohl

Research outputs pre 2011

No abstract provided.

Profiling Esl Children: How Teachers Interpret And Use National And State Assessment Frameworks: Volume 1: Key Issues & Findings, Michael P. Breen, Caroline Barratt-Pugh, Beverly Derewianka, Helen House, Catherine Hudson, Tom Lumley, Mary Rohl

Research outputs pre 2011

The three volumes which make up this study describe in detail how a number of teachers in different school situations in different parts of Australia undertook the assessment of young children's development of English as a second language. Most of the teachers worked in pre-primary to Year 3 classrooms where the majority of the children were aged between five and eight years. The majority worked in a mainstream context in which the number of children speaking English as a second language (ESL) varied from more than half the class to two or three students. About a third of the teachers …

Code-Switching Amongst Simalungun-Indonesian Bilinguals, Sylvia Saragih

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study investigates code-switching within a bilingual speech community. The languages used in this community are Indonesian, the national language 9f Indonesia, and Simalungun, one of the regional languages spoken in North Sumatra. Conversations amongst young bilinguals with balanced competence in both languages were recorded and passages containing examples of code-switching were transcribed for analysis. It was found that the base language of interaction was Simalungun, but that code-switching into Indonesian occurred in all conversations recorded. Analysis of the language data collected led to the conclusion that code-switching was used by the speakers in different ways. Indonesian loans were used …

The 'Schizoid' Nature Of Modern Hebrew Linguistics: A Contact Language In Search Of A Genetic Past, Devon L. Strolovitch

Honors Papers

This conflict in views is the main issue of this paper. It involves an enduring tension between synchrony and diachrony which has characterized almost all analysis of the Modern Hebrew revival. This tension has made Modern Hebrew, especially the spoken variety of native Israeli Jews, one of the most fascinating objects of study for both linguists and non-linguists, who have explored Modern Hebrew to express both highly conventional and highly unorthodox opinions regarding its character. Some consider it the direct descendent of an ongoing linguistic legacy, transcending certain principles of linguistic behavior (e.g. Tur-Sinai 1960). Others vehemently assert its autonomy …

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 29 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Phallicdromes, Howard Richler

Word Ways

My friend and colleague Richard Lederer just published a delightful book called "Nothing Risque, Nothing Gained" (reviewed in November 1995 Word Ways) that features virtually every form of ribald wordplay. Missing from this collection, however, are bawdy palindromes. Here in alphabetical order are some naughty palindromes I've dubbed Phallicdromes.