Recently added articles from Word Ways:
Punderful etymologies.(puns)
May 01, 2009; ... Scoffing at puns is a conditioned reflex, and through the centuries groan-ups have aimed a steady barrage of libel and slander at pun ladies and pun gents. Three hundred years ago, the playwright and critic John Dennis sneered, "A pun is the lowest form of wit." Many of you Verbatim ...
Counting.(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Pre> COUNTING Numberless son,Let me teach you(Or you teach me)Your natural lore.While we're aliveArithmetic's ...
Some irregular haiku.(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... These poems have 17 syllables but unapologetically fail the 5-7-5 line pattern for haiku. Let me unapologise. Japanese haiku in English translation also usually fail that test and must even be teased into 17 syllables. To the purist I say: only Japanese haiku, untranslated, are true haiku ....
Colloquy.
May 01, 2009; ... Don Hauptman wrote the New York Times: To the Editor, "Pun for the Ages" by Joseph Tartakovsky (Op-ed, March 28) is an entertaining and informative review of the positive and negative aspects of wordplay, and well-timed in its proximity to April Fool's Day. ...
The New Model Five-Jog Knight.(word puzzles)
May 01, 2009; ... Now lumbering into the lists comes the New Model Five-Jog Knight--no, not some odd-gaited Cromwellian cavalryman, but a new, improved, larger, shinier and more complete version of the vanquished old Five-Jog Knight (who now, in the newcomer's brilliance, seems a knight light indeed). As a ...
Riding with Mom.(A POEM)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... This is an excerpt from Gardner's 1969 book Never Make Fun Of A Turtle, My Son (Simon and Schuster, illustrated by John Alcom). <Pre> Riding with Mom When Mom takes you out For an afternoon rideAnd allows you to sit On the seat by her side, ...
Aaddeennoorr.(the drug Dronedarone, and its being a single letter A away from being a 12-letter term containing two instances of six different letters)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... According to Wikipedia: "Dronedarone (also known as SR33589 or Multaq) is a drug under--evelopment bSanofi-Aventis, mainly for the indication of cardiac arrhythmias (irregular heartbeat)." Note that drug name--DRONEDARONE. it's only a single letter A away from being a 12-letter ...
The second millenium.(Nobel laureate in literature Elias Canetti on words)(Quotation)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... Happy thousand--and that many congratulations. I put together Kickshaws a few times in the 1980s and I know how hard it was to gather just the right material. In the August 1987 Word Ways (20: 175-83), I quoted Nobellist in Literature Elias Canetti, from <The Human Province> (New York; ...
BO, the dog star.(palindrome featuring President Barack Obama's name)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... On March 16th, Rich Lederer emailed me the following palindrome, which uses "BO" in it referring to actress BO Derek. What did the star of the movie "10" say to the president of the United States? "OBAMA, I AM A BO." And there it stood for almost a month. Then, on ...
Daycronyms.(acronyms)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... Rich comments that "'a looping anagram of TGIF ('Thank God It's Friday') is GIFT, and the weekend is truly a gift--unless you're a workaholic, in which case you exult, 'TGIM!' I am reminded of a little gift shop in New Hope, PA, that carried greeting cards with a four-letter word visible ...
Boy Meets Girl.(KICKSHAWS)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... Ray Love wrote the following elliptical piece. "I find it sometimes interesting to read how people meet and fall in love. Some first encounters can be surprising ... and wryly amusing. With that thought, here is how one girl managed to find her true love. It's poetic justice. I simply call ...
Strange but true.(word games)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... In 1985, after getting back from a trip to Venezuela with my wife, I built a "Lettershift Calculator" using an unopened can of baked beans. I put seven strips of paper around the can. Each strip was divided into 26 parts with a letter of the alphabet on each part. When you rotated the ...
Ditto: a man of one word.(KICKSHAWS)(Fictional work)
May 01, 2009; ... In this dialog, one character speaks only one word throughout, and that word is "ditto," and his name is "Ditto." "Hey, man, I'm really hungry." "Ditto." "I'd like to get a burger at McDonald's." "Ditto," "I'll pay for mine." ...
The applesauce of your eye.(poetry and word play)
May 01, 2009; ... Louis Philips has a whole new orchard of apples that are sauced and ready to devour. Take it away, Louis! ** PIRATE OBSERVATION Cutlasses Cut lasses. ** R = a hint of respectability ** WHAT CHARLES DICKENS ...
No X in Nixon revisited.(palindromes)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... NO X IN NIXON has been cited as the longest palindrome that reads the same upside down. Okay, let's see what it looks like upside down. NOXIN NIX ON. Doesn't look the same to me. I made up a palindrome that really does read the same upside-down. It appeared in Alphabet Avenue. I have ...
Four-way rotational palindrome.(KICKSHAWS)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... In Ariel typeface, four letters, NOXZ, still form letters when they are rotated 90, 180, and 270 degrees. N becomes Z, Z becomes N, O becomes O, and X becomes X. (In lower case, bdopquxz work this way.) In the palindrome below, OZ is the L. Frank Baum creation, and ZO is a shortened form ...
Hooray Henry.(puns)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... "According to the Cassell Dictionary of Slang (1998)," Jeff Grant reports, "a HOORAY HENRY is 'a rich young man given to much public exhibitionism, drunkenness and similar antisocial activities, all based on an excess of snobbish self-esteem'. Despite the term's almost invariable ...
Minorca acronim.(anagrams)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009; ... Jeff has a created a geographicologological curiosity: "Mediterranean Island North Of Rocky Coastal Algeria is the perfect acronim for M1NORCA, and MINORCA is ACRONIM spelled ...
Palindromic ends.(KICKSHAWS)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... The following poem, by Susan Thorpe, takes a different approach to palindromic versification. <Pre> PALINDROMIC ENDS In Picadilly one day,The statue of loreWas wrapped in scaffolding."Twas an Eros eyesore. The trick should have beenA slight of ...
Pitch People.(KICKSHAWS)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Pre> PITCH PEOPLE Ray Love forwarded some winning examples from a Washington Post contest: "One ofthe contests the Post ran late last year involved pitchmen and pitchwomen. Theinstructions were for readers to choose an appropriate person, real or ...