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Palindrome Pairs, Scott Hattie Aug 1979

Palindrome Pairs, Scott Hattie

Word Ways

In Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., persons whose lives are tangled up for no very logical reasons are said to belong to the same 'karass'. The table on the following two pages consists of pairs of words which also have this property: although not logically (semantically) related, they are inextricably linked to each other by the fact that together they form a palindrome.

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Word Roots And Branches, A. Ross Eckler Aug 1979

Word Roots And Branches, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Take a word, remove a letter, and rearrange the remaining letters to form another word; the shorter word is known as a transdeletion of the longer one. Conversely, the longer word is called a transaddition of the shorter. This process can be continued, and a chain of successive transdeletions or transadditions formed; let us define the roots of a word to be all those words that can be reached by successive transdeletions, and the branches of a word to be all those words that can be reached by successive transadditions. Naturally, the roots and branches depend upon the dictionary specified; …

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Words Formed By Radio Call Letters, Robert A. Palermo Aug 1979

Words Formed By Radio Call Letters, Robert A. Palermo

Word Ways

Call letters are assigned to AM radio stations by the Federal Communications Commission: four letters beginning with W in the eastern US, four letters beginning with K in the western US. (In the early days of radio, three letters were also assigned, and a few radio stations of this kind can still be found.) it is interesting to ask whether or not AM radio station owners have a preference for call letters which form common English words. According to the 1979 Broadcasting Yearbook, an industry source on broadcasting data put out by Broadcasting Publications, Inc. of Washington, D. C., there …

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Put In A Good Word For Me, Charles W. Bostick Aug 1979

Put In A Good Word For Me, Charles W. Bostick

Word Ways

This is the first of a pair of articles which invites the reader to use his deductive abilities on lists of words. 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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Rearrangement: The Hidden Meaning, Walter Shedlofsky Aug 1979

Rearrangement: The Hidden Meaning, Walter Shedlofsky

Word Ways

During the ten years I have subscribed to Word Ways, I have been amazed at the emphasis placed on the mechanics of wordplay: words have been transposed to form other words, words have been formed around letters placed in strategic positions, and similar achievements.

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Colloquy Aug 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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Geographical Link-O-Grams, Boris Randolph Aug 1979

Geographical Link-O-Grams, Boris Randolph

Word Ways

While watching a TV program, I noticed that the word SANG links the two words of the place-name LOS ANGELES. A little research revealed that many other place-names can be joined in this fashion. Fill in the blanks with letters to complete each two-word place-name. Answers are in the Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.

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Anagrams And Transposals: A Glossary, Maxey Brooke Aug 1979

Anagrams And Transposals: A Glossary, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

In my notebooks I have a large section called logological orthography. One heading under that section is labeled "Anagrams" and contains 28 items. Here are those items in a more or less logical order.

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Uneasy Companions, John Mcclellan Aug 1979

Uneasy Companions, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

We may as well say straight out that this article deals with an unfortunate juxtaposition of two phrases in many of our dictionaries: Camp Fire Girl and Camp Follower. We have put considerable thought on the wisdom of writing this piece, for the subject of Camp Followers may be somewhat taboo in certain quarters, if not actually X-rated. But the fact remains: Camp Follower does follow Camp Fire Girl in a number of dictionaries, and in the ones in which it does not, another questionable phrase may be inserted which does little to help the matter.

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Biconsonantal Words, Edward R. Wolpow Aug 1979

Biconsonantal Words, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Extending Darryl Francis's discourse upon monoconsonantal words in the February 1979 Word Ways, I list below a type collection of biconsonantal words. A biconsonantal word is defined as a word which contains two different consonants, each one appearing once or more, and with no restrictions on its vowels (selected from AEIOUY).

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More Curious Contronyms, Richard Lederer Aug 1979

More Curious Contronyms, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

In the February 1978 issue of Word Ways I unveiled twenty contronyms -- single words for which two contradictory meanings survive. As a result of submissions by readers and my own subsequent research, I am pleased to offer an additional collection of contronyms in the form of a brainteaser.

Readers are invited to supply the single word which can replace the two opposite meanings capitalized in each pair below. Answers repose in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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Red, White And Blue, Leonard R. N. Ashley Aug 1979

Red, White And Blue, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Have you noticed how often red, white, and blue turn up in slang and common expressions? Communists are red (so we get red scare, etc.). We have red tape, roll out the red carpet, refer to some people as rednecks. We have the white line, and have old expressions like "that's white of you" and new ones like white-out. We get the blues, appoint blue ribbon panels, even even see blue movies. How many of the following can you define? Answers are in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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Words, Dmitri A. Borgmann Aug 1979

Words, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

A dictionary is a collection of words, each on accompanied by a preferred pronunciation, an etymology and one or more definitions with citations illustrating literary usage. It seems clear that the editors of the dictionary must have spent many hours crafting clear and succinct definitions, ones that will reveal the precise nuances of meaning. Furthermore, it goes without saying that they have lavished especial attention and care on the meaning of a word as important to the dictionary-user as WORD.

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Answers And Solutions Aug 1979

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Word Ways Challenges (Part 3), Philip M. Cohen, A. Ross Eckler Aug 1979

Word Ways Challenges (Part 3), Philip M. Cohen, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

For an introduction to this series of articles classifying and summarizing unsolved logological problems in Word Ways, see the February 1979 Word Ways.

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Back Cover Aug 1979

Back Cover

Word Ways

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

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Word-Rubric Rebi, Philip M. Cohen Aug 1979

Word-Rubric Rebi, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

In the National Puzzlers' League rebus puzzle, a group of letters or other symbols, called a rubric, clues a word or phrase. For example, the rubric XCY clues chiromancy with the reading 'chi, Roman C, Y'. In a phonetic rebus, the sound of the reading is involved: for example, the rubric P clues rhopalic with the reading 'rho, pal, I see'. In an enigmatic rebus, something beyond what is visible in the rubric must be inferred, like the missing ST in the rubric AIN L, which clues stainless steel with the reading 'STAIN less S, tee; L'. In a reversed …

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Aisle, Altar, Hymn, Frederick Landers Aug 1979

Aisle, Altar, Hymn, Frederick Landers

Word Ways

I was sick and tired of going to church. The people there spoke nonsense. "God loves olive you," they said. And "Lettuce spray". I was especially annoyed by the priests who interpreted passages from the Bible and tried to make the congregation "buy bull".

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Kickshaws, Darryl Francis Aug 1979

Kickshaws, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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More Word Cubes, Jeff Grant May 1979

More Word Cubes, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In "Cubism Revisited" in the August 1978 Word Ways I presented a non-symmetrical word cube of the sixth order. This cube, although structurally perfect, contains a small number of non-words. I recently had another go at this problem -- here is the result.

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Five-Letter Word Patterns, Edward R. Wolpow May 1979

Five-Letter Word Patterns, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Excluding patterns with three or more consecutive identical letters, there are 41 different word patterns for five-letter words.

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Kickshaws, Will Shortz May 1979

Kickshaws, Will Shortz

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Convertible English, Richard Lederer May 1979

Convertible English, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Because modern English has shed most of the flexional endings that distinguished grammatical functions and because English word order is more fixed than ever before, many of our words possess the lively ability to rail-jump from one part of speech to another without any basic change in form. This happy facility, variously called function shift or conversion, endows our language with vitality, power, and a prolific source of new words.

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Answers And Solutiions May 1979

Answers And Solutiions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Crypto Crossword, Boris Randolph May 1979

Crypto Crossword, Boris Randolph

Word Ways

The introduction, the across definitions and the down definitions are each in a different simple substitution cipher. Solve the introduction first, and you will have a clue to another feature of this puzzle.

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Word Ways Challenges (Part 2), Philip M. Cohen, A. Ross Eckler May 1979

Word Ways Challenges (Part 2), Philip M. Cohen, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

For an introduction to this series of articles classifying and summarizing unsolved logological problems in Word Ways, see the February 1979 issue.

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Lucky Nines, Faith Eckler May 1979

Lucky Nines, Faith Eckler

Word Ways

Notice: This article is written under unusual linguistic (lipogram-like) constraints (revealed in final paragraph).
Challenge: Find its modus operandi.

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Unaccustomed As I, Unh ..., Maxey Brooke May 1979

Unaccustomed As I, Unh ..., Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

Ancient calendars were based on the lunar month and the solar year. Because the solar year is not an integral multiple of the lunar month, the months tended to drift through the seasons, and before anyone quite realized it February was the first month of the year instead of March. It was embarrassing to have a spring festival in the middle of a snowstorm, so one of the functions of the high priest was to occasionally insert or intercalate an extra month into a year to bring the seasons back into synchronization.

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Nicknames In These United States, Leonard R. N. Ashley May 1979

Nicknames In These United States, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

I have lately been reading about American history, and have been impressed by the large number of colorful nicknames and sobriquets which dot its pages. You know about "The Father of His Country" (Washington), "The Great Emancipator" (Lincoln), maybe even "The Kitchen Cabinet" of Andrew Jackson and "The Brain Trust" of FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt). You may have heard of "The New Deal" or "The Era of Good Feeling". How many of the following can you recognize? Miss half, and you win the Leslie Lynch King, Jr. Prize (the original name of Gerald Rudolph Ford)!

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Word Strings, Tom Pulliam May 1979

Word Strings, Tom Pulliam

Word Ways

The word SARI can be converted into the word ARID by deleting the first letter and adding a letter at the end; the words RIDE, IDEA, and DEAD can be successively formed in the same manner. Historically, such a sequence of words has been known as a word stair, in recognition of its appearance if each word is offset underneath its predecessor, with identical letters in a column. However, a much more compact notation is achieved by a single row of letters, such as SARIDEAD, which can be called a word string.

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