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Tenno's Sonnet, Jeff Grant Aug 1995

Tenno's Sonnet, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Albert Tenno was born in Notton, Yorkshire on 8th August 1888. Some locals claim his father was an Italian immigrant named Alberto Tennoni who come from the town of Onano, northwest of Rome. Others believe that Tenno is an old English name related to Tenny or Tennock. There is no evidence to confirm either story.

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A Pair Of Pears Posers, Peter Newby Aug 1995

A Pair Of Pears Posers, Peter Newby

Word Ways

In the May 1995 issue of Word Ways, I drew your attention to one of the problem words of the English language, SERICON, and proposed a tongue-in-cheek solution. Now, wearing a more serious hat, I -ish to mention two other literary grey areas and appeal to you for help in clarifying the situation. In addition to the mystery of SERICON, Pears Advanced Word-Puzzler's Dictionary (Pelham Books, 1987) also confessed ignorance in two of its other entries; I quote directly from pages 574 and 749, respectively.

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Kickshaws Aug 1995

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Double Or Nothing, Barry Duncan Aug 1995

Double Or Nothing, Barry Duncan

Word Ways

On the left is a word that has had its doubled letters removed; on the right is a clue to help you put the word back together (for example, the answer to "HAY working on the farm brings him joy" is HAPPY. Be warned that some words have more than one pair of doubled letters.

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The Palindromic Slide Rule, David Morice Aug 1995

The Palindromic Slide Rule, David Morice

Word Ways

The Palindromic Slide Rule makes palindromes--ten thousand of them. To set it up, photocopy the four boards labeled A, B, C and D on the outside back cover. After cutting them out, place the A board on the table, and lay the B board on the A board, positioning it between the two columns of words.

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Ethnic Onomastics, Thomas L. Bernard Aug 1995

Ethnic Onomastics, Thomas L. Bernard

Word Ways

Generally speaking, even those with only a mild interest in onomastics feel that they can usually pinpoint the national or ethnic origin of individuals imply by hearing their names. This becomes doubly so when the first and last names fall into the same presumed stereotypical category. For example, who would fail to recognize that Werner Schmidt was of German background or that Erin O'Flaherty was Irish?

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Answers And Solutions Aug 1995

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

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Back Cover Aug 1995

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

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A Remarkable Revelation?, A. Ross Eckler, Darryl Francis Aug 1995

A Remarkable Revelation?, A. Ross Eckler, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

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You're Likely To Be Clipped, Howard Richler Aug 1995

You're Likely To Be Clipped, Howard Richler

Word Ways

In Hamlet, Polonius tells King Claudius that "brevity is the soul of wit". If we can believe that the results of a biblical study, it is also the soul of English. The number of syllables different languages require to translate the Gospel according to Mark were compared. Here are the results: English, 29,000; Teutonic languages (average), 32,650; French, 36,500; Slavic languages (average); 36,500; Romance languages (average), 40,200; Indo-Iranian languages (average), 43,100.

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Global Coherence And The Teaching Of Composition., Frank A. Davis 1953- Aug 1995

Global Coherence And The Teaching Of Composition., Frank A. Davis 1953-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within the discipline of rhetoric and composition, the notion of coherence possesses the status of sine qua non, yet this notion has been treated unevenly or been taken for granted, much as the process of composing itself was taken for granted for the better part of this century. This practice has occurred for the following reasons: coherence is the "unmarked" condition of speech, and by transfer, also the "unmarked" condition of writing; the surface language of a composition has traditionally been the focus for solving any problems of coherence; and, collateral disciplines have not been sufficiently drawn upon in understanding …

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Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 28 Issue 2 May 1995

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 28 Issue 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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Packing The Cardinals, Leonard Gordon May 1995

Packing The Cardinals, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

Take the integers ONE through TEN, and pack them as compactly as possible in three formats: crossword, word-search, and king's move. The best answers appear to be

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Yet More Mixed Reviews, A. Ross Eckler May 1995

Yet More Mixed Reviews, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

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The States We're In, Richard Lederer May 1995

The States We're In, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Celebrated June 14, Flag Day commemorates the adoption by the Continental Congress of the Stars and Stripes in 1777 as the official flag of America. The thirteen stripes on the flag represent the original colonies and the fifty stars the united states of the United States.

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Chemical Improvements, Edward R. Wolpow May 1995

Chemical Improvements, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

I recently purchased a Franklin Crosswords Puzzle Solver (Model CW-40). It is startling to look at this object, the size of a playing card, and watch it carry out tedious searches from an enormous Merriam-Webster vocabulary, with a button-press.

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Real Word Squares, Leonard Gordon May 1995

Real Word Squares, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

Here are word squares made up of 3-frag words, Taking 165,000 words from length 9 through 13, I found that 5,780 can be broken into 3 common-word fragments. They use 2,578 of the 7,1000 2,3,4 and 5-letter allowed frags to produce 21 squares.

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A Word-Watcher's Abecedary, Christopher Mcmanus May 1995

A Word-Watcher's Abecedary, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

We folk etymologists have a cardinal rule: never look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary! One can invariably guess their meaning by context and syllabic division alone. Besides, only by this method could anyone intuit the nature of eponymous creatures such as the following.

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Colloquy May 1995

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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Compound Fractions, Peter Newby May 1995

Compound Fractions, Peter Newby

Word Ways

The Oxford English Dictionary defines logology as "the science of word" and Dmitri Borgmann playfully adopted the term to describe certain aspects of his wordsmithery. Since then, it appears to have been misapplied to all and every form of recreational linguistics. I feel that, in the Borgmann tradition, it should be restricted to the pseudo-academic wordplay that the founding editor of Word Ways pioneered so brilliantly, but "not" at the expense of the conventional word-based arguments he also graced with his genius, nor any other inventive wordplay which came from his impish pen.

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A Challenge Answered, Darryl Francis May 1995

A Challenge Answered, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Dave Morice's November 1994 Kickshaws referred to a challenge suggested by the late Tom Pulliam. Based on the sum of all its letter-values (assigning A=1, B=2, and so on), each word has a certain value (DEBUT=52, DUCHY=61). Tom Pulliam had enquired of Dave Morice how long a list of consecutive numbers may be formed in this way. Dave pointed out that such a list would have to start with the word A(=1_ and be followed by AA(=2), BA (=3) and ABA (=4).

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The People In Slanguage, Leonard R. N. Ashley May 1995

The People In Slanguage, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Long before Elijah McCoy invented the lubricating device which gave us the expression the real McCoy, long before Kilroy was here, names crept into common speech and formed an interesting aspect of slang. How many of the following catch phrases, all containing names, can you explain? What do people mean when they say these?

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Egdopegdoh, John Ferguson May 1995

Egdopegdoh, John Ferguson

Word Ways

The list of words below is made up of five categories, each category with twenty entries and having its own rule. Place 99 words in front of the 99 entries, and then, after placing the proper 100th word in front of OPERA, show where it belongs on the list. Try first the ten (easier) words given in boldface.

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An Early Work On Palindromes, Herbert Pfeiffer May 1995

An Early Work On Palindromes, Herbert Pfeiffer

Word Ways

Books dedicated expensively to the subject of palindromes are very rare. One in great demand is the book "Palindromes" by G. R. Clarke (Glasgow, David Bryce & Son, 1887). Some years ago, Dmitri Borgmann told me in a letter that his firm. Research Unlimited, had not been able to find a copy of the book, and he doubted that it ever really existed.

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We Authors Present By Pen, Susan Thorpe May 1995

We Authors Present By Pen, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The title is an amalgam, an anagram of the names of the joint authors who propose the term as a reasonable neologism for all such constructions of this type. Whilst it is not intended to restrict the term to anagrams of pairs of folk, nevertheless we considered that such a subject had much potential: we argued long into the telephonic night as to which pairings we might submit for your delight or critical comment!

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Ants Are All Over, Robert C. Layton May 1995

Ants Are All Over, Robert C. Layton

Word Ways

This is a story of an enchanting young man, Anthony Santiago, an immigrant from Antwerp, who became a very important contributor to our society as a result of his penchant for inventions. He was responsible for the development. He created a safety lantern for use in anthracite mines, a sextant that received world-wide acclaim, and he helped perfect a disinfectant for commercial use.

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Proper Names, Improper Uses, Oren N. Dalton May 1995

Proper Names, Improper Uses, Oren N. Dalton

Word Ways

Leonard R. N. Ashley presented a quiz titled "The Proper Name in the Proper Use" in the February 1995 issue of Word Ways. I worked it. I did my best, and although my answers differ somewhat from Ashley's anyone who has (or has had) a teenage daughter and/or son will surely agree that my answers come as close to the mark (whoever she is) as Ashley's.

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One More, Elvis, A. Ross Eckler May 1995

One More, Elvis, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the February 1993 Word Ways, Darryl Francis embedded 45 rearrangements of the letters EILSV in various dictionary words and proper names. If one doesn't insist that the letters be adjacent in a word, all 120 rearrangements can be spelled out in words. In the list below, I have restricted myself to boldface words (including inferred forms such as plurals) found in Webster's Second or Third, giving preference whenever possible to solid entries such as pELVIS or convuLSIVE.

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Back Cover May 1995

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

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Answers And Solutions May 1995

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

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