T-T-T-That\u27s All, Folks!

The May 1996 Word Ways described the results of a National Public Radio competition of December 1995 in which listeners were challenged to write grammatical and understandable sentences containing the same word four or more times in succession. Some of the most interesting entries were based on repeated thats; this article summarizes them. Four thats is relatively easy, as achieved by the following strategy

Mary\u27s Little Anagram

May and her little lamb were lipogrammed in August 1969, univocalized in August 1986, and subjected to a variety of other logological indignities in November 1988. Here are six more way in which their story can be tortured, taken from my Word Row article in the January 1977 issue of the British magazine Games & Puzzles. See if you can figure out each modus operandi before reading the explanation at the end of the article

One More, Elvis

In the February 1993 Word Ways, Darryl Francis embedded 45 rearrangements of the letters EILSV in various dictionary words and proper names. If one doesn\u27t insist that the letters be adjacent in a word, all 120 rearrangements can be spelled out in words. In the list below, I have restricted myself to boldface words (including inferred forms such as plurals) found in Webster\u27s Second or Third, giving preference whenever possible to solid entries such as pELVIS or convuLSIVE

Levine\u27s Isomorph Dictionary

Among word buffs, 1971 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year that the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published, making this monumental work available at one-third the price and one-sixth the bulk of the original. An exceedingly useful lexicographic tool has been placed in the hands of many who formerly had to make a trip to the library to consult it. By contrast, one of the least-heralded publishing events of 1971 was the appearance of Jack Levine\u27s A List of Pattern Words of Lengths Two Through Nine. Nevertheless, I predict that the Levine dictionary may have a greater impact than the COED on word buffs. The information in the COED has been available in the OED for decades, but Levine\u27s dictionary enables the logologist to view Webster\u27s Unabridged in an entirely new light: specifically, it groups together all words with the same underlying pattern, such as EXCESS and BAMBOO (and, in fact, 23 rarer words also having the letter-pattern abcadd). Furthermore, the COED costs $75, but the Levine dictionary may be obtained free while the limited supply lasts

Undominated Alphabetic Sequences

In past Word Ways articles, various authors have explored words which contain consecutive letters of the alphabet (1) in order and adjacent to each other, (2) in order but not necessarily adjacent, and (3) neither in order nor adjacent. The longer the consecutive-letter sequence that can be found in a word, the more noteworthy it is; for example, oveRSTUffed is clearly more interesting to the logologist than fiRST. I define alphabetic sequence as undominated if a word can be found containing all the letters in that sequence, but no word can be found containing any longer sequence including all the letters of the original one. Thus, RSTU is an undominated sequence for words with letters adjacent and in order, for there are no words containing the pentagrams QRSTU or RSTUV, the hexagrams PQRSTU, QRSTUV or RSTUVW, etc. On the other hand, RSTU is not an undominated sequence for words with letters neither in order nor adjacent; VenTRiloQUiST, for example, contains the more inclusive sequence QRSTUV

A Word String Network

Logologists have been aware of word strings -- overlapping lists of words such as sat, ate, tea, ear, are -- since at least the time of the great English puzzle-constructor Henry Ernest Dudeney. However, no one seems to have realized that word strings can be diagrammed in a network, much as has been done for word ladders (see, for example, the May and August 1973 issue of Word Ways, or Chapter 4 of my book Word Recreations, published by Dover in 1979)

A Pangrammatic Limerick

A pangrammatic limerick

An Attempt to Reshape Capitalism’s Image

John Stuart Mill claimed to be a disciple of both Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo. This was a strange proclamation because each man advocated a competing theory of value; Bentham’s utilitarianism laid the foundation for the utility theory of value and Ricardo developed the labor theory of value. Mill’s goal in attempting to unify these theories of value was to provide a solution for the growing class conflict that plagued capitalism. Class conflict arose as feudalism was phased out and industrial capitalism replaced merchant capitalism as the dominant economic system. The Corn Laws symbolized this competition between classes. Capitalists were against the Corn Laws because the subsequent tariffs would lower their rate of profit. Landowners supported the Corn Laws because they increased the rent on land. Even Karl Marx held spoke out against the Corn Laws on behalf of the working class. Capitalism fostered persistent antagonism between classes as each struggled to gain or maintain power; no class was immune from this contest. Class conflict was therefore ubiquitous in capitalist society and generated widespread scrutiny and debate over capitalism. Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo took opposing sides in this debate. Bentham was initially supported it but died a reformist. Class conflict was resolvable but not under the current form of capitalism. Ricardo’s labor theory of value promoted the view that class division occurred naturally in a capitalist society. And since capitalism was the best possible economic system, class division was a necessary evil and could not be remedied. Both Ricardo and Bentham acknowledged that class conflict was inherent in capitalism but each treated it differently. In claiming to be a disciple of both men, Mill hoped to show that capitalism could exist alongside social harmony. His goal was to change the nature of capitalism. [excerpt