A Maximal Panning Tree

The five-letter word network given below is partitioned into 27 subnetworks, each having a unique vowel-consonant pattern (Y in first position is deemed a consonant, otherwise a vowel). All words are in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary; each subnetwork lists the total OSPD words in it

A Near Solution to Mercer\u27s Pentomino Poser

Leigh Mercer wrote, November 6, 1968: A 6 by 10 rectangle can be built from the twelve pentominoes (the twelve ways five squares can be put together) in 2,339 different ways. I have drawings of these, and made a card-index of 2,339 cards from the drawings, discovering some interesting things no one else knew. They wouldn\u27t do for WORD WAYS, I fear ..

Two New Transdeletion Pyramids

The August 1979 Word Ways article Word Roots and Branches showed how the 17-letter Websterian word ANTICEREMONIALIST could be successively transdeleted down to a single letter: remove E and rearrange the remaining 16 letters to obtain NONMATERIALISTIC, remove N and rearrange the remaining 15 letters to obtain RECITALIONALISM, and so on. Unfortunately, it was necessary to include one non-Websterian word, RECLAMATIONIST (used in 1946 Saturday Evening Post article), in the sequence

Superulltramegalosesquipedalia

Recently, Jeff Grant of Hastings, New Zealand supplied the editor with the full 3641-letter name of the protein Bovine Glutamate Dehydrogenase, as constructed from the amino acid residue sequence shown in The Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure (1973), Volume 5, Supplement 1, published by The National Biomedical Research Foundation. Although this word has been cited by the Guinness Book of Records since 1976 as the longest word known, it was never written out in full there, nor has it apparently been published anywhere else

What\u27s In a Name (Powhatan?)

The presidential primary season is in full swing; the various candidates have been analyzed to death. Yet, one aspect of this competition has been ignored - the subliminal message lurking in their names. Names don\u27t lie! Here\u27s an onomastic tour of the leaders as 2008 begins

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

When There\u27s A Will...

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. The largest number of entries involved the use of the word will: puzzlemeister Will Shortz was featured in many, either writing a will or exhibiting will and determination

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

Queen\u27s-Move Graphing

In chess, the queen is the most versatile piece, moving in any of eight directions; unlike the king, which is constrained to move only one square at a time, she can move in a straight line until another piece is encountered. Translated to logology, this means that any word whose separate letters can be placed on chessboard squares so that it can be spelled out by a king, will also be spelled out by a queen. Furthermore, there will exist some words that can only be spelled out by queen\u27s moves