Shiftgrams Ciphered, Analyzed

A list of the shiftwords or shiftgrams in some word stock, classified by the amount of shift, such as Leonard Gordon\u27s Letter-shift Words in the OSPD (WW 3.1990-61), shows that some shifts produce more word pairs than others. To get some insight as to why, this article surveys the whole stock of shiftwords and shiftgrams of words of lengths 3-12 from a specified word stock, before going on to analyze words of some specified lengths in further depth

Which Way to the Square

Which is the best way for a computer program to search for regular word squares, top-down or bottom-up? This article records some statistics produced during computer searches for regular 8-squares in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. I look forward to similar statistics for 9-squares from those square-hunters whose 9-letter word stocks are more fully developed than my own

One Alphabet Scrabble

You\u27re playing solitaire Scrabble, where the bag of tiles has just one of each letter and no blanks. The game is open, i.e. you choose which letters to draw when. After all your plays, deduct the values of the unplayed tiles. How much can you score

Word Kayles and Dawsonword

In Wordnim and Grundyword in the Aug 1993 Word Ways, and Edith Plays Word Treblecross in the Aug 1999 issue, Jeremiah Farrell, David Wright and Christopher Mihelich show how various nim-like games can be cast in the form of word games. This article casts two more such games in a similar mould

A Transaddition Ancestry

In the November 1992 and May 1993 Kickshaws, Peter Newby wrote of a transaddition ancestry where each woman gave her daughter a name which was a transdeletion of her own, I being the end of the line. At least so he says, but, if they named their daughters that way, Brenda Eva Nellie\u27s mother was not Brenda Elvira Rene

Shiftgrams: Spangled Wordplay

To form a shiftgram of a word, two operations are performed. First, it is enciphered using a shiftcipher, which replaces each letter by the letter n places further on in the alphabet. The result is then transposed to form a word. Howard Bergerson introduced shiftgrams in Sea-changed Words (WW 2.1969-24). In Shiftgrams (WW 2.1980-22). Tom Pulliam gave more examples and called the operation an n-shift

The Pangram Film Festival Revisited

In the February 2000 issue of Word Ways, Douglas Fink reported on the Pangram Film Festival. The idea is to construct a list of film titles which are collectively a pangram (i.e., they use every letter of the alphabet) which is a heterogram (i.e., they do not use any letter more than once). Digits and punctuation may be used freely. Douglas\u27s article raised questions as to what superlatives are possible among heterogram pangram film lists (from now on in this article, usually just lists ). Here are some of my answers to this question, followed by questions of my own

Alphabetically Ordered Prose

Absolutely accurate alphabetical arrangement as basic constraint determines eligibility. Elsewhere, evidently, examples exist. Here, however, I implicitly include inflated initial iteration. Judiciously, keep lengthy lists meaningful. Mind, moreover, my not ordaining panalphabetism, pangrams quite readily require some texts to use (usually) utterly vapid verbiage, xylophone , your , zippers

An evaluation of a training intervention to support the use of evidence in healthcare commissioning in England

AIM: Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in England are responsible for the health of their populations through the services they provide, yet we know that the use of evidence to inform commissioning decisions is low. A programme of training in seven CCGs in England was instigated in a joint piece of work by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care and Academic Health Science Network in the West of England, to help build an evidence informed culture in commissioning. METHODS: Evidence workshops were delivered in each of the seven CCGs in the West of England by an experienced senior lecturer (the author) and local healthcare librarians. The workshop was developed by the author and an information scientist and included guidance and demonstration of a systematic evidence search covering both traditional and grey literature, and a brief look at quality of evidence including a critical appraisal activity. Participants were asked to evaluate the workshop on the day and to indicate an intended action they would take as a result of the workshop; a short follow-up interview was carried out with a sample of participants between 3 and 6 months later, to identify any longer term impact of the training. RESULTS: A total of 63 staff in a variety of commissioning-related roles attended the workshops between March and September 2016. 95% rated the workshop overall as either 'excellent' or 'good'. Of particular value was the involvement of the local healthcare librarian, helping to promote their expertise and services; and the discussion of grey literature as a valuable source of evidence. A variety of intended actions as a result of the training included initiating a thorough search for evidence for new projects, use of bibliographic databases, and making use of local library services for evidence searching. Follow-up interviews with nine staff revealed a positive impact in the longer-term. This ranged from simply triggering an interest in using evidence, boosting motivation and sharing information with colleagues; to changes in processes such as broadening the responsibility for finding and filtering evidence for business cases; to one clear case of financial savings resulting from a search for evidence by a senior commissioning manager. CONCLUSION: Offering short, interactive training workshops is valued by healthcare commissioners and can make a difference to their approach to and use of evidence in decision-making. There is a need for a flexible approach to the concept of evidence in healthcare commissioning, which includes the use of grey literature, and training can encourage and support the systematic search for an appraisal of this type of evidence. Tools for improving and sustaining this aspect of evidence use by commissioners are included here

Three New Transdeletion Pyramids

In Two New Transdeletion Pyramids in the May 1988 Word Ways, the editor gives two 17-letter transdeletion pyramids found by Kyle Corbin, the first of which consists of words from either Webster\u27s New International Dictionary of the English Language. I believe that a word found in Webster\u27s Third is better than one found in Webster\u27s Second but not the Third, because (whatever the faults of the Third or the merits of the Second), the Third superseded the Second.Accordingly, I pass on three 17-letter transdeletion pyramids consisting entirely of words in the Third or inflections implied by the Third, assuming that section 4.1 of the explanatory notes is deemed to allow indiscriminate pluralising