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Kickshaws, David L. Silverman Nov 1974

Kickshaws, David L. Silverman

Word Ways

Readers are encouraged to send their own favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Associate Editor. All answers appear in the Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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Alphabetical Circumambulations, Willard R. Espy Nov 1974

Alphabetical Circumambulations, Willard R. Espy

Word Ways

I recently ran across the following generation-gap misunderstanding in a column written by Earl Wilson.

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Two-Letter Words, Darryl Francis Nov 1974

Two-Letter Words, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the November 1972 Word Ways, we presented an article entitled "One-Letter Words" which demonstrated that every letter of the alphabet could be used as a word or name. Unfortunately, no similar study has ever been made for two-letter words, the simplest group of words after the single-letter ones. Such a study would prove invaluable to Scrabble-players, crossword-puzzlers and other word enthusiasts, who often find it necessary to use words of this type.

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A New High-Scoring Scrabble Game, Ralph G. Beaman Nov 1974

A New High-Scoring Scrabble Game, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

In the August 1974 Word Ways, Ron Jerome presented a Scrabble game in which two players cooperate with each other to produce the astonishing score of 4,047 points. However, his solution contained a minor flaw -- no true Scrabble game could have used all 100 tiles, for the game ends when one player uses all his tiles and has no more to draw. Further examination of the details of play revealed that much of the score depended upon the formation of the high-valued words BENZOXYCAMPHORS and SESQUIDUPLICATE. The former word is worth 59 points before its 27-fold multiplication, but the …

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Secret Language, Maxey Brooke Nov 1974

Secret Language, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

When I was quite young, I was frequently mystified by the older kids speaking a secret language. It didn't take me too long to unravel the secret, and soon I was speaking Pig Latin (or Igpay Atinlay) with the best of them.

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Answers And Solutions Nov 1974

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Instructions To Authors Nov 1974

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.

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Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 24, No. 1, Albert F. Jordan, Theodore W. Jentsch, Carol Shiels Roark, Suzanne Cox, Louis Winkler Oct 1974

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 24, No. 1, Albert F. Jordan, Theodore W. Jentsch, Carol Shiels Roark, Suzanne Cox, Louis Winkler

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Some Early Moravian Builders in America
• Old Order Mennonite Family Life in the East Penn Valley
• Historic Yellow Springs: The Restoration of an American Spa
• The Use of Speech at Two Auctions
• Pennsylvania German Astronomy and Astrology IX: Johann Friederich Schmidt
• Courtship and Marriage: Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 36

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Colloquy Aug 1974

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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Curious British Placenames, Darryl Francis Aug 1974

Curious British Placenames, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Word Ways has frequently explored the oddities of United States placenames, in such major articles as Leslie Card's "A Tale of Cities and Towns" in the August 1970 issue, and Dmitri Borgmann's four-part "An Onomastic Study" beginning in the May 1973 issue. We believe that the quainter British placenames are even more peculiar than the United States ones discussed earlier, and would like to share them with American readers.

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Abecedaria Aug 1974

Abecedaria

Word Ways

In "A New Logology Cash Contest" in the May 1974 issue of Word Ways, Ralph Beaman invited readers to discover the linguistic principle governing the choice of thirteen words of one to six letters in length. To make the contest more difficult, he did not specify these words directly, but merely hinted at them using one-word definitions. His solution to the contest is paraphrased below.

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A Critique Of A Critique, Mary J. Youngquist Aug 1974

A Critique Of A Critique, Mary J. Youngquist

Word Ways

In her article "Anagrams: Ars Magna?" in the May 1974 Word Ways, Judith Tarr Isquit described the results of an experiment in which 20 anagrams and antigrams, ten composed by Jezebel Q. Xixx and ten composed by various members of the National Puzzlers' League, were rated by a panel of 25 people regarding their appositeness and grammatical correctness. In a critique following this article, Ms. Xixx argued that the panel was demonstrably incompetent, on the grounds that they rated an excellent antigram (of hers) much lower than a relatively inferior anagram (of the NPL).

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Front Cover, Publication Information Aug 1974

Front Cover, Publication Information

Word Ways

Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents

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Early American Word Puzzles (Part 1), William F. Shortz Aug 1974

Early American Word Puzzles (Part 1), William F. Shortz

Word Ways

For the millions of puzzle fans in the United States today, puzzles serve as a unique form of mental recreation. They amuse, they intrigue, and they pass the time. People like puzzles because words themselves are fascinating and most people like to be challenged.

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The Ham Gram, Hamilton V. Huster Aug 1974

The Ham Gram, Hamilton V. Huster

Word Ways

A Ham Gram is an American-style pun-anagram crossword puzzle. Each clue sentence (of nine words or less) contains a concealed answer, as well as its overt synonym. In the examples below, the synonym is underlined, and the letters of the covert answer are capitalized; the answer is then given in parenthesis. Several varieties of clues can be distinguished.

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A Revised Spelling Rule, A. Ross Eckler Aug 1974

A Revised Spelling Rule, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the February 1974 issue of Word Ways, Ramona J. Quincunx examined in some detail the ability of the venerable rule "Place I before E except after C, or when sounded like A as in neighbor or weight" to predict correctly the spelling of a myriad of IE- or EI-diphthong words in English. She concluded that a new jingle, probably longer than the original one, was needed to more accurately describe the vagaries of English orthography. It is the purpose of this article to present such a jingle, and to compare its performance to the original one in a …

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A Note On Translation, John Mcclellan Aug 1974

A Note On Translation, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

Most people are not very translation-conscious. If a book is enjoyable and reads smoothly and understandably we do not care if it is a translation or not. If on the other hand its prose seems stilted and lacking in clarity, or contains obvious errors, we may come to suspect that the piece is not in its original form; and a hasty glance at the title page immediately confirms this suspicion. It is a translation from another tongue, and perhaps not a very good one at that.

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The Palindromic Astronaut, John M. Meyer Aug 1974

The Palindromic Astronaut, John M. Meyer

Word Ways

Few recent events captured man's interest and imagination as much as the Apollo program culminating in the landing of astronauts on the moon. This interest was in great part stimulated by the extensive TV coverage, particularly during the later moon walks; never before has it been possible to look over the shoulder of an explorer of an utterly strange land. Many writers, including the astronauts themselves, have searched for words to describe their transcendent experience.

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My Last Words, Dmitri A. Borgmann Aug 1974

My Last Words, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

In the August 1972 issue of Word Ways, Darryl H. Francis shook the world of logology to its very foundations by publishing a list of the alphabetically last words and names beginning with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. This had been a hitherto secret list, jealously guarded by the priests of logology as their Holy of Holies, and passed on from one generation to the next only by word of mouth, with eternal damnation as the inexorable penalty for anyone who violated his oath of silence by divulging that list to the uninitiated.

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The Language Game, Philip M. Cohen Aug 1974

The Language Game, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

Everybody knows of English English, American English, and Pidgin English. Many know of dialects of other languages, such as High and Low German, or Lake and Bodega Miwok. However, certain obscurer dialects are harder to find in the literature: Alto Saxon, for instance, or Super Yuman. The Cornell Linguistics Circle has prepared a list of some of these lesser-known dialects, and Word Ways has been granted permission to reproduce it for the benefit of its readers. Further contributions from readers would be welcome.

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A High-Scoring Scrabble Game, Ron E. Jerome Aug 1974

A High-Scoring Scrabble Game, Ron E. Jerome

Word Ways

Games between average Scrabble players are likely to produce a total score somewhere between 400 and 60 points; games between experts (e.g., those who qualify for the National Scrabble Championships held in London each June) often score twice as much. However, if the two Scrabble players co-operate instead of compete with each other, far higher scores can be achieved. For example, in the May 1972 Word Ways, Darryl Francis detailed a Scrabble game in which the combined scores of the two players was 3108 points!

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Mysterious Acrostics, Jezebel Q. Xixx Aug 1974

Mysterious Acrostics, Jezebel Q. Xixx

Word Ways

Most of us know what a word square is -- or, at least, think we do. Those of us who do not know, consult Webster's Third New International Dictionary in order to find out.

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Word Torture, Ralph G. Beaman Aug 1974

Word Torture, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

Readers of Word Ways know that a Beheadment is the removal of the first letter of a word to generate a new word: SWORDMANSHIP - S = WORDMANSHIP. Similarly, a Curtailment is the removal of the last letter: GAMINESS - S = GAMINES (defined in Webster's Third as "tomboys").

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Kickshaws, David L. Silverman Aug 1974

Kickshaws, David L. Silverman

Word Ways

Readers are encouraged to send their own favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Associate Editor. All answers appear in the Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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An Acrogemalic Apologia, Willard R. Espy Aug 1974

An Acrogemalic Apologia, Willard R. Espy

Word Ways

The conventional journalistic wisdom anathematizes any mouthful of a word like anathematizes. Write clearly, write crisply, say the commandments; be positive, not negative; active, not passive; concise, not prolix. Never use two syllables where one will do.

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The Terminal Man, A. Ross Eckler Aug 1974

The Terminal Man, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

They typical unabridged dictionary contains approximately 350,000 words: if inferred forms (for example, adding -S to nouns and -ED or -ING to verbs) are added, the total stockpile of English words and phrases probably exceeds 500,000. Large as this number is, it is easily topped by a less-well-known stockpile of words: the surnames of United States residents. As of June 1, 1964, there were nearly 1,100,000 different surnames for which Social Security cards had been issued since the program began 28 years earlier.

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Unusual, Obscure And Preposterous, Ralph G. Beaman Aug 1974

Unusual, Obscure And Preposterous, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

The recent publication of Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) prompts me to ask if readers of Word Ways really know their unusual, obscure and preposterous words. Below are 21 subjects and three columns of words. For each subject, find a word from each column that goes with it. For example, under BLIND (No. 2) one should select abacinate (17), chionablepsia (5) and exoculate (1). This is abbreviated as 2: 17-5-1. That leaves 20 combinations for you to match. Score yourself 5 for each correct group. A score of 70 or less (see Answers and Solutions) suggests you …

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Instructions To Authors Aug 1974

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors interested in contributing to the publication.

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Answers And Solutions Aug 1974

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Vowel Tetragrams, Darryl Francis Aug 1974

Vowel Tetragrams, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

We were recently fortunate enough to come by an extensive listing of tetragrams existing in the Second Edition of Webster's New International Dictionary. The listing is a straight computer printout of the tetragrams involved -- no attempt whatsoever has been made to link words with the tetragrams. So, given that a certain tetragram is included in the listing, one has to either rack one's brains to think of a corresponding word, or search Webster's Second carefully.

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