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Alphabetizing The Integers, Edward R. Wolpow Feb 1980

Alphabetizing The Integers, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Only an infinitesimal part of all integers have English-language names. NI3 allows us to name, gaplessly, all the integers up to 1063 (one vigintillion), and, by using standard terminology, up to 1066 - 1 (nine hundred ninety-nine vigintillion, nine hundred ... thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine). There follows a huge unnamed gap up to 10303 (one centillion). If all the integers up to 1066 - 1 were written out, they could, in theory, be alphabetized. Let us decide to eliminate the 'and's from alphabetization, and further stipulate that the higher powers of ten must be preceded by …

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Answers And Solutions Feb 1980

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Back Cover Feb 1980

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover including instructions for authors wishing to submit articles.

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Palindromes: The Rotas Prehistory, Dmitri A. Borgmann Feb 1980

Palindromes: The Rotas Prehistory, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

It was the third discovery of the rotas square that finally cast disrepute upon the third century A.D. dating of its origin. Systematic excavations of the ruins of Pompeii sponsored by the Italian government had revealed, in an open area southeast of the entangled remains of that city, a spacious palaestra or campus that had sustained some damage by tremors of Vesuvius prior to the violent eruption of 79 A.D.

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Front Cover And Publication Information Feb 1980

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue, including the table of contents.

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The Name Is The Game, Richard E. Douglass Feb 1980

The Name Is The Game, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

We've all known people whose names or nicknames indicated that their parents had a sense of humor, if not compassion or good taste. One of the most highly noted examples of frivolous appellation was Ima Hogg, the highly-regarded philanthropist. The actor Rip Torn's real name is Rip Torn, and in popular fiction, Perry Mason's courtroom adversary was Hamilton "Ham" Burger.

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Colloquy Feb 1980

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.

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Shakespearean Crosswords, Brian Head Nov 1979

Shakespearean Crosswords, Brian Head

Word Ways

It is fairly well known that, according to the generally accepted history of the puzzles, crosswords were first created in the USA in 1913 and crossed the Atlantic to Great Britain some eleven years later. In fact, a study of much of literature shows this to be false, and reveals innumerable earlier references to crosswords. The works of William Shakespeare provide a particularly rich source of such allusions.

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Answers And Solutions Nov 1979

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Quotable Quotes, Darryl Francis Nov 1979

Quotable Quotes, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In my library I have several volumes of collected quotations, both familiar and unfamiliar. I recently decided to dig up some quotations that might be of interest to readers of Word Ways -- quotations about words, language, speech, dictionaries and so on. Forty of the quotations are given in this article. Savor them, think about them; do you agree with each quotation? or disagree? Some of the quotations seem to be contradicted by others -- for example, look at the first two in the list below. However, such contradictions should only serve to make the quotations more enjoyable.

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Put In Some More Good Words, Charles W. Bostick Nov 1979

Put In Some More Good Words, Charles W. Bostick

Word Ways

This is the second of a pair of articles which invites the reader to use his deductive abilities on lists of words; the first article appeared in the August 1979 Word Ways. His task is first to find a common property that the 24 words in a list share, and second to insert the word at the head of this list (given in capital letters) into its proper place within the list.

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Giant Synonym Squares, Edward R. Wolpow Nov 1979

Giant Synonym Squares, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

In "Synonym Squares" in the August 1979 Word Ways, Tom Pulliam gave examples using Websterian words of four to eight letters in length. If one goes beyond Webster, it is possible to build squares that are considerably larger. The first synonym square exhibits twelve words or phrases pertaining to NEUROANATOMY; nine are in Webster's, and the other three are in standard medical references. The second synonym square exhibits fourteen generic names for drugs in current use; all are major headings in the Generic and Chemical Name Index of the Physician's Desk Reference. The word Pharmaceutical can be found reading downward …

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Drink To Me Only With These Words..., James I. Rambo Nov 1979

Drink To Me Only With These Words..., James I. Rambo

Word Ways

The following verse continues the tradition of my "Anagramantics" in the February 1976 Word Ways and "Two Cautionary Tales" in the August 1978 issue; each line rearranges the letters of the title in a different way.

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A College-Level Course In Logology, Paul Zaslow Nov 1979

A College-Level Course In Logology, Paul Zaslow

Word Ways

The February 1978 issue of Word Ways asked readers for information on recreational linguistics courses taught in college, secondary school, night school or the like. In the spring term of 1978, when I was a junior at the University of Massachusetts, I taught a one-credit colloquium entitled "Recreational Logology". In the fall term of 1978, I taught a three-credit course entitled "An Introduction to Recreational Logology" to 15 freshmen and sophomores, 13 of whom completed it. This met for three hours on Thursday evenings for 13 weeks from September to December, and covered the following topics.

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Reed Bell / Rebelled, Tom Pulliam Nov 1979

Reed Bell / Rebelled, Tom Pulliam

Word Ways

The zealous logophiles who follow the Word Ways banner are known to be very susceptible to following a different drummer. While pursuing an elusive word through the dictionary, our interest is often detoured into areas completely foreign to the original search. Let's face it -- none of us is completely immune to this!

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Onomasticon Iii, George H. Scheetz Nov 1979

Onomasticon Iii, George H. Scheetz

Word Ways

In his November 1978 article, "Logopoeia," Philip M. Cohen defines his title word as "a coined word meaning 'word-coinging.'" This definition does not do an established word justice. Logopoeia was defined by Ezar Pound -- who may have coined it -- in ABC of Reading (1934); and while "logopoeia" is literally "making of words," Pound gives the word a much richer definition. The accepted meaning of this and most (all?) other -poeia words (from the Greek poiein, to make) are in the following onomasticon. Perhaps this should have been subtitled Much Ado About 'Making'!

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Back Cover Nov 1979

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of the issue, including instructions to authors wishing to contribute.

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Wordy Word Pickers, Helen Gunn Nov 1979

Wordy Word Pickers, Helen Gunn

Word Ways

Rebuses come in several varieties, the two most popular being positional ones (as in SYMPH = unfinished symphony) or pictorial ones (in which an eye represents 'I', or a bee and 4 the word 'before'). The following rebus quiz, employing both kinds, is based on a word game my children and I play via mail. The editor has added a number of rebuses sent in by other readers: George Grieshaber (from the Chronicle of Higher Education) and Maxey Brooke (from the Houston Post).

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Palindromes: The Rotas Square, Dmitri A. Borgmann Nov 1979

Palindromes: The Rotas Square, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

In 1868 a painted fragment of wall plaster was taken from the dirt of a Roman villa under excavation near Victoria Road, county Gloucester, of south-central England. Its removal was attended by a Captain Abbott, then curator of the Cirencester Museum nearby. Scratched into the ochre surface of the unearthed plaster was the following palindrome, arranged in the form of a magic square.

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Everlasting Rearranements, Harry B. Partridge Nov 1979

Everlasting Rearranements, Harry B. Partridge

Word Ways

Except for occasional pieces in "The Poet's Corner", Walter Shedlofsky has been absent from the pages of Word Ways for nearly six years; I welcome his return with "Rearrangement: The Hidden Meaning" in the August 1979 Word Ways. This article is a response to his closing challenge there: "What rearrangements can you derive from EVERLASTING or IN VINO VERITAS, and what vehicles can you create to illustrate the correlations you find?"

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Higher-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant Nov 1979

Higher-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

The highest single-move Scrabble scores have utilized the word BENZOXYCAMPHORS, and it seems unlikely much improvement will be made without a new base-word. In the February 1974 Word Ways there appears a 2037-point solution devised by Josefa Heifetz, which uses the term SESQUIOXIDIZING. Unfortunately this word does not appear in any dictionary, and no one has been able to find a substantive citation in another reference. However, the Oxford English Dictionary lists 'sesquioxidized' as a past participle, which surely implies the existence of a verb 'sesquioxidize'.

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Front Cover And Publication Information Nov 1979

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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Dutch Palindromes, George J. Levenbach Nov 1979

Dutch Palindromes, George J. Levenbach

Word Ways

This is a translation of an article by G. van Buren entitled "Nepapen" (fake monkeys) published in the June 30, 1979 NRC Handelsblad. H. B. Corstius of Amsterdam sent it to Martin Gardner, who passed it on to Word Ways. In the translation, palindromes (and reversals as well) are given in Dutch and emphasized with capital letters; the parenthetical remarks following have been added to aid the understanding of the non-Dutch reader. Many of the palindromes are made-up words, much in the spirit of Dmitri Borgmann's "The Evolution of a Palindrome" in the February 1970 Word Ways.

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Kickshaws, Philip M. Cohen Nov 1979

Kickshaws, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Colloquy Nov 1979

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.

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Ahoy, Maxey Brooke Nov 1979

Ahoy, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

I was browsing through the dictionary display at the local bookstore. They were featuring the Random House Unabridged. I judge a dictionary by the way it handles etymology. Don't ask me why I decided to check the derivation of HELLO. Perhaps the book was open at that page.

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Alphabetic Letter-Shifts, A. Ross Eckler Nov 1979

Alphabetic Letter-Shifts, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

It has been known for at least fifteen years that certain words can be translated into other words by shifting each letter the same number of steps along the alphabet -- thus, the letters of CHEER shifted forward seven steps to yield JOLLY, and the letters IRK shifted thirteen steps, VEX. Strangely, a little logological research has been done in this area; this article attempts to show what can be done by hand, and how much more might be accomplished by digital computer.

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Front Cover And Publication Information Aug 1979

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information of this issue.

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Synonym Squares, Tom Pulliam Aug 1979

Synonym Squares, Tom Pulliam

Word Ways

Synonym Squares is a solitaire variation of the well-known word game of Guggenheim or Categories. From the Second or Third Edition of the Merriam-Webster New International Dictionary, select a word fully spelled out in boldface type (nothing inferred) which shall be known as the base-word. Collect from the same dictionary all possible synonyms of the base-word that specify it in the definition, or specific examples of the same class as the base-word. From these accumulated synonyms, extract those having the same letter-length as the base-word. Arrange examples of your selection one above another, vertically, in such a manner that a …

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High-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant Aug 1979

High-Scoring Scrabble, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the November 1974 issue of Word Ways, Ralph Beaman presented a theoretical Scrabble game in which the players cooperate to amass a remarkable 4142 points. By extensive modifications to this solution, I have been able to achieve a total of 4207 points, using only 99 tiles, as in a legal game. Letters with an asterisk represent blank tiles.

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