The theme of the Ubercross Abecedaria X is “anagrams.” “But…huh?” I hear you say. “Anagrams doesn’t begin with an X!”
Well, no, it doesn’t. I got a bit more playful with the last few themes, finding ways to present them that still related to the theme letter somehow but more tenuously. At first, I had an idea that the paths of swapped letters in an anagram could sometimes look like X’s, as in the examples below…
But I decided that was a little too confusing for solvers, so I went with my fallback plan. The theme revealer is “miX-up,” with a cheeky clue explaining that the X wasn’t the first letter this time…because the letters are mixed up, naturally.
Some of the material for this puzzle, I had gathered years before! Did you know I had a book on wordplay out before I was doing anything related to The Journal of Wordplay or the Ubercross Abecedaria?
The book is called Or The Other!: The 799 Awesomest Anagrams, it came out in 2018, and I happen to think the print edition would make a lovely gift this holiday season. I’m still deciding what to do with myself after the Ubercross project wraps, so picking up one of these could persuade me to pursue other publishing opportunities, too!
Over the next week or so, I’ll be sharing some material from that book (less than 10 percent of it, overall) that may just whet your appetite. Of course, these are mostly discoveries, not my creations. Many of my favorites and the lion’s share of my samples, though, were not purely human creations, but idle words joined together by a bot and its human creator/curator.
More on that tomorrow…or if you want to know what I mean immediately, you can get the Kindle edition and read it instantly instead. Or pick that up for yourself and grab the print edition for a friend or loved one! It all works for me!
‘Tiiis the season to be shilling…fa la la la la, la la la la…’cause the Christmas bills are chilling…fa la la la la, la la la la…
Purchased!
Just purchased. Looking forward.