Welsh: Reversed English!

In the February 1984 issue of Word Ways, Canadian Jay Ames presented a list of 121 English words which also happen to be Czech words - though their meanings in Czech are unrelated to those in English. Of these 121 words, 54 were words of 2 or 3 letters, too short to be really interesting. That left 67 worthwhile specimens of the genre under consideration

The Jotto Problem

The solution of difficult word problems seldom comes directly, or all at once. Usually, there is a gradual evolution toward the desired goal. Let us illustrate the process with what has come to be known as the Jotto problem

Sets of Mutually Antonymic Words

Two words - life and death, yes and no, black and white - precisely or approximately opposite each other in meaning are called antonyms. By and large, antonyms have received little attention in the logological realm. Exceptions have been two opposite concepts expressed by the same word (TEMPER means both to harden and to soften ) and two words anatomic in their most obvious senses which are synonyms in some other sense (to best and to worst both mean to get the better of ). Some words have numerous antonyms, phenomenon one of synonym rather than of antonymy

Crypotograms on the Prowl

One of the fundamental ways of enciphering a text for the purpose of concealing its message is to rearrange the letters of which it consists. The result is a so-called transposition cipher. If we apply its principle to individual words or names, we can achieve interesting results. For example, ECHOIC turns into CHOICE with the mere shift of its first letter to the end of the word: CLAIMED converts into DECIMAL (or into MEDICAL, DECLAIM, CADMIEL, MEDALIC, CAMELID, or MALICED): and MOUNTAINEER becomes ENUMERATION. Tens of thousands of other English words and names can similarly be transposed

The C-14 Problem

William Shakespeare--the 16th-century dramatist and poet, not the 19th-century musical composer and pianist--is credited with using the longest English world faithfully alternating consonants and vowels: the 27-letter HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS. The term is, unfortunately, both a nonce word and obviously Latin, not truly English. The Funk & Wagnalls Unabridged, apparently by way of a back formation, has converted the word into HONORIFICABILITUDINITY, a 22-letter term wholly English in appearance, possessed of a simple meaning ( honorableness ), and also alternating consonants and vowels regularly. Since 1913, when that dictionary was first published, these two words have stood unchallenged in point of length

Antifrequency Words

Almost all English letter-frequency counts agree that the four least-often used letters of the alphabet in English text are J, Q, X, and Z. What the relative frequencies of these four letters are is in dispute

Long Isograms (Part 1)

One of the aesthetic delights available to logologists is contemplating isograms: words, names, and other verbal entitites in which each of the alphabetic letters used appears the same specified number of times. PSEUDOMYTHICAL, for instance, is a solo isogram, using each of 14 different letters once; HAPPENCHANCE is a pair isogram, using each of 6 different letters twice; and SESTETTES is a trio isogram, using each of 3 different letters three times. In a cryptographic context, solo isograms are known as nonpattern terms; in a pangrammatic setting, as partial pangrams. Beyond trio isograms lie hitherto unexplored higher orders -- tetrad, pentrad, and hexad isograms. Short isograms are plentiful, long ones a rarity, making the search for the latter a logological challenge and their discovery unusually rewarding: the numerical balance they display is an unexcelled form of verbal beauty

History Reinterpreted

All of creation, whether animate or inanimate, strives to satisfy the ultimate, elemental logological low - one requiring that designations to begin with letters in the first half of the English alphabet (A through M)

A Puzzler\u27s Paradise

Listed below are 34 kinds of word puzzles, games and curiosities, each one in scrambled form. Your assignment is to rearrange the letters of each one into its correct order. Simple enough? Of course! Why 34 scrambles, instead of some number that shows a healthy respect for the decimal system? Because 34 happens to be the total of each row, column and main diagonal in a magic square of the fourth order - sufficient reason

The V-14 Problem

In a previous article, we explored the problem of finding 14-letter words and names beginning with the letter C and alternating their consonants and vowels regularly: words such as COLONIZABILITY and CAPACITATIVELY. Although C is a very common first letter in English words and we exerted herculean efforts, we were able to find only 14 single, solidly-written words conforming to the conditions imposed on the problem, and 12 two-word terms. Those conditions excluded obsolete, dialectal, slang, and colloquial words, and outright coinages