Speedrunning Word Ways #7.2

And now for something completely eiiae.

Today’s post had to be a quickie, but there’s a lot to talk about in the #7.2 issue of Word Ways (1974). Here’s the quick-and-dirty wrap-up:

With “Four-Letter Words,” Dmitri Borgmann, under the pseudonym Jezebel Q. Xixx, proposed an interesting statistical idea. Is there a sequence of ordering the alphabet so that four-letter words appear more often in the order of that sequence than any other? The order she came up with is:

The word born, for instance, appears with its letters in order if you cross out the other 22 letters. Same for quit and soar, but not quad or soap.

Borgmann conceded that…

In “The Words of Songs Without Words,” R. Robinson Rowe studied words built out of names for notes, such as retire assembled out of re, ti, re. Rowe used several different note-naming systems, though, some of which are less familiar to me. I’d probably just see what could be built out of do re mi fa so la ti do—maybe add sol if I was feeling feisty.

Dmitri Borgmann discussed the various meanings of “syzygy.”

“Anagrams: Ars Manga” represented a fascinating debate over the quality of anagrams by Judith Tarr Isquit and Xixx/Borgmann. At least, the debate is fascinating from a certain remove—I’d probably find it more frustrating if I were a participant.

Essentially, Borgmann bemoaned the state of anagramming and claimed he could do better; Isquit challenged the claim with a 25-person survey, and Borgmann refused to accept that the survey respondents knew a good anagram from a hole in the ground. Like any other art form, anagrams are difficult to judge, leading to clashes of orthodoxy and ego.

In “X-Terminated Words,” Darryl Francis discussed the sometimes-obscure words that both begin and end with X—like “Xixx.” Then as now, the most common of these is Xerox, though today Xanax has also entered the public jargon. And despite corporate America’s best efforts, xerox is also recognized as a verb.

“All-Vowel Hawaiian Words” by Hawaii’s own Prince Djoli Khasil was just as advertised. I don’t know nearly enough to be able to update this one, but I find it an absorbing survey…

What else? Lightning round:

In “Language Levels: Another Look,” Borgmann (as Ramona J. Quincunx) tests how obscure you have to get to find a fish beginning with each letter of the alphabet, then an insect, then an imaginary creature. Bet he’d love Scattergories.

In “Chesswords,” Borgmann comes up with knight’s tours through chess grids (some oversized) that spell sentences.

In “A Plurality of Singular Verse,” Willard R. Espy plays with plurals and adding s’s to the ends of words—turning asses to assess, for instance.

Darryl Francis’ “A 1961-Point One-Move Scrabble Score” is similar to other attempts I’ve documented, starting here.

“Pocket Webster Comparison” by William Sunners and “Still More Websterian Errors” by Darryl Francis represent a kind of dictionary scholarship that sees a lot less attention these days.

“Word Weights” by Charles W. Bostick (building on an earlier Francis piece) explores the implications of a Scrabble-like scoring system which emphasizes later letters: A is 1 point, B is 2, C is 3, and so on up to Z at 26 points.

“Of Sex and Fear” by Borgmann (as Merlin X. Houdini IV) gets into -mancy words and -mania words in addition to the -phobia words I’ve covered elsewhere.

I skipped the first piece, “Surrealistic Art Objects,” a meditation on palindrome composition by Paul Remley. Because that’s something I’ll want to explore in more depth—tomorrow!