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False Plurals, Darryl Francis Aug 1971

False Plurals, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

A number of words in English are more commonly found in their classical plural form than in their classical singular form. Because of this dominant usage of the plural form, many people remain unaware that each of the words is already a plural and they treat them as if they were singular forms. For example, the word APOCRYPHA (writings of doubtful authorship) is the plural of APOCRYPHON. But as APOCRYPHA is often regarded as the singular, the erroneous plural APOCRYPHAS is sometimes encountered.

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Note On Repeated Letter-Shuffling, J. A. Lindon Aug 1971

Note On Repeated Letter-Shuffling, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

In the February 1970 Word Ways, Walter Penney's cryptographic Puzzle 1 asked the reader to determine the order of a set of cards bearing letters after a single shuffle, if the original order and the new order resulting from two identical shuffles were given. The solution, with its reference to trial-and-error, was rather unsatisfactory. In this short note, we suggest a more systematic approach to such problems.

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The Lost Word, Ralph G. Beaman Aug 1971

The Lost Word, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

Logologists everywhere were long enamored of the word SUBBOOKKEEPER. For, in simple compact form, it was not only unique in having four double letters, but also these pairs appeared one after another in magnificent progression. Unfortunately, Webster's Second, where the word appeared, has been superseded by Webster's Third, where the word is not. And so SUBBOOKKEEPER has been tossed on the junkpile of obsolete words.

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Another Charade Crossword, Ernst T. Theimer Aug 1971

Another Charade Crossword, Ernst T. Theimer

Word Ways

In the August 1970 issue of Word Ways, I introduced the reader to the charade crossword puzzle. (Actually, Word Ways readers were introduced to the charade crossword concept even earlier -- see Walter G. Leight's "The Cryptic Crossword" in the May 1968 issue.)

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Asteroid Names, Darryl Francis Aug 1971

Asteroid Names, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Previous articles in Word Ways have dealt with American placenames and state-names as items of interest to the logologist. In this article, we are going to examine a further set of well-defined names -- those of the asteroids.

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Instructions To Authors Aug 1971

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.

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Eight-Letter Numerical Tautonyms, Leslie E. Card Aug 1971

Eight-Letter Numerical Tautonyms, Leslie E. Card

Word Ways

If letters are assigned values according to their numerical positions in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc.), an eight-letter numerical tautonym is a word in which the sum of the values of the first four letters is equal to the sum of the values of the last four letters. For example, B, A, C and K have the numerical values 2, 1, 3 and 11, which sumes to 17, and A, C, H and E have the numerical values 1, 3, 8 and 15, which also sums to 17; thus BACKACHE is a numerical tautonym.

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Mexican Memory, John Mcclellan Aug 1971

Mexican Memory, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

Some years ago my wife and I used to visit Acapulco in Mexico in the winter. It was my custom then as now to get up early and, there, I would walk around the town, especially in the market district, before the heat of the day set in: for the Mexican sun grows increasingly wicked as the day progresses and one is better off swimming than walking at noon.

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Pattern Words, Murray R. Pearce Aug 1971

Pattern Words, Murray R. Pearce

Word Ways

Webster's Third New International Dictionary (NI3) defines pattern-word as, "(in) cryptology: a plaintext idiomorph". The same source defines idiomorph as, "a pattern of repeated letters in cryptography". Thus to a cryptanalyst any word with one or more repeated letters is a pattern-word. PROPER, STATE and MUUMUU are pattern-words, whereas THING, WORD and UNCOPYRIGHTABLE are not. In a simple substitution, monoalphabetic cryptogram, pattern-words can provide a method of quick solution where the cyrptogram is of the easy or medium-difficult variety. Thus a long word ending with the pattern -ABCC is very likely to end in NESS. The ending -DBBC is often …

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Difference Words, A. Ross Eckler Aug 1971

Difference Words, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In his book Beyond Language (Scribner's, 1967), Dmitri Borgmann introduces the concept of difference words. As he points out in Problem 45 (The New Chemistry), the letters of the generating word FORM occupy positions 6, 15, 18 and 13 in the alphabet. The difference between 6 and 15 is 9; between 15 and 18, 3; and between 18 and 13, 5. The letters of the word ICE occupy positions 9, 3 and 5 in the alphabet. Therefore, ICE is called the difference word of FORM. For most words, of course, this process leads to a meaningless jumble of letters instead …

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Answers And Solutions Aug 1971

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Kickshaws, David L. Silverman Aug 1971

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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Front Cover, Publication Information May 1971

Front Cover, Publication Information

Word Ways

Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents

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Alternating Monotonies, Ralph G. Beaman May 1971

Alternating Monotonies, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

A word containing the same letter in every other position for a sequence of three or more is here called an Alternating Monotony. For example, MONOTONY contains the letter O in the second, fourth and sixth positions.

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A New Pentomino Puzzle, J. A. Lindon May 1971

A New Pentomino Puzzle, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

Polyominoes -- the many different shapes of dominoes having three or more faces -- were introduced to recreational mathematics by Solomon Golomb in 1954. Since then, they have been extensively investigated; many of their mathematical properties are discussed in Golomb's Polyominoes (Scribner's, 1962). Perhaps the most interesting polyominoes are the 12 distinct pentominoes -- all the possible shapes of dominoes having exactly five faces. There are many ways in which the pentominoes can be assembled to form rectangles of size 3 x 20, 4 x 15, 5 x 12 and 6 x 10.

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Loony Logos, Mary J. Youngquist May 1971

Loony Logos, Mary J. Youngquist

Word Ways

A few years ago, a word game called Wacky Wordies was making the rounds. I think it is time that Word Ways readers had a chance to enjoy this game -- the puzzles are equally fun to make up and to solve. Each of the items below represents a familiar word or phrase. For example, C C C C C C C can be immediately recognized as The Seven Seas. Now have fun with the others!

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Caroline, Darryl Francis May 1971

Caroline, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Many of the articles which have appeared up to now in Word Ways begin with a theme, and then present various words which satisfy some criterion of criteria imposed by the theme. For example, in an earlier article of ours, "Zero Redundancy Rides Again", which was presented in the August 1970 issue, we began with a theme which was to compile a list of words ending with different two-letter combinations. Eventually we managed to find 595 examples. So: we began with a theme and ended up with 595 words.

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Iatrologs And Iatronyms, Darryl Francis May 1971

Iatrologs And Iatronyms, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The world of medical terminology abounds with some of the most amazing words that word-lovers are ever likely to come across. Many of these words, though, are destined never to be appreciated by legions of logologists. In our small way, we are going to attempt to remedy this. We are going to discuss several medical words (IATROLOGS or IATRONYMS) in the hope that one, some or all of them eventually find their way into your everyday speech.

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A Hollow Diamond, Palmer C. Peterson May 1971

A Hollow Diamond, Palmer C. Peterson

Word Ways

A form is an array of interlocking vertical and horizontal words which has a boundary tracing out a simple geometric shape. Word squares (of any size) are perhaps the most well-known examples of forms. A wide variety of different forms were constructed between 1870 and 1905. One of the more elaborate forms is a Hallow Diamond, first devised by L. M. N. Terry in 1904 (A Key to Puzzledom, William W. Delaney, 1906). All but one of the words or phrases in the form below are given in boldface in Webster's Second Edition, or are plurals of such …

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A Whitman Echo, Howard W. Bergerson May 1971

A Whitman Echo, Howard W. Bergerson

Word Ways

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not today is to justify me and answer what I am for.
But you, a new breed, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.

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Colloquy May 1971

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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Transposition, Yale Chapman May 1971

Transposition, Yale Chapman

Word Ways

Would you believe that over eight hundred fifty transposable words of eight or more letters can be formed from only these letters:
A A B D E E F G I I L N O P R R R S S T T U

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Logomachy May 1971

Logomachy

Word Ways

This column is devoted to various word games in which readers can match their wits against each other. Rules of play, if not given below, can be found in earlier Logomachy columns.

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A Note On Catoptrons, John Mcclellan May 1971

A Note On Catoptrons, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

The suggestion that Palindromes may be enriched must be a traumatic statement to practitioners of that artful craft, so we will just say that possibly its image may be changed. We ourselves have labored at the making of Palindromes (often to bring forth a mouse) and are aware of the beauty and difficulty of them. We are not damning with faint praise.

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Isolated Letters, Darryl Francis May 1971

Isolated Letters, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Here is a list of 26 dictionary terms, each of which begins with a different letter of the alphabet, that letter standing by itself as a part of the term.

This list was fairly easy to compile. Obviously, to find a term beginning with the letter A, one has to search the A section of a dictionary. Once such a term has been located -- usually, fairly quickly -- one can then progress to the B section in search of a term beginning with that letter. Proceeding through the alphabet in this orderly manner, by the time one reaches Z …

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Symmetry - Ytremmys, Ralph G. Beaman May 1971

Symmetry - Ytremmys, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

A crossword puzzle should be symmetrical. The diagram on the following page certainly is -- even though it looks more like a maze than a crossword puzzle.

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More Vowel Trigrams, Frank Hardington May 1971

More Vowel Trigrams, Frank Hardington

Word Ways

In the February 1971 Word Ways, Delphi Knoxjaqzonville presented a list of words and names displaying vowel trigrams. However, she only considered the letters A, E, I, O and U as vowels, excluding Y. From five vowels 125 trigrams can be generated, while from six vowels the figure is 216. In her article, Miss Knoxjaqzonville gave examples of words and names which used most of the 125 AEIOU trigrams, and appealed to readers to search for words which used the 91 trigrams contianing the letter Y. I decided to respond to her appeal.

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Answers And Solutions May 1971

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Instructions To Authors May 1971

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions for authors wishing to contribute to the publication.

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One Plus One Equals One, Charles E. Karrick May 1971

One Plus One Equals One, Charles E. Karrick

Word Ways

One afternoon not too long ago, I went with my wife as she bought the week's supply of food. Dodging the precariously placed displays, I turned down the aisle where the spices were shelved. Suddenly, in front of me was a poster advertising a reduced price for a particular spice. The word THYME, which was printed in huge block letters resembling a doctor's eye chart, made an immediate impression upon my logological mind.

I observed to my wife, "Notice the word thyme, which is a one-syllable word. Yet, it is made up of two one-syllable words, thy and me …

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