I

232

COLLOQUY

In "Ascending Magnitudes for K-Graphs", Dan Tilque incorrectly credited Lee S allows with Leonard Gordon ' s February 1995 k-graph containing 37 different number nam e s from TWO to NI~ETY-SEVEN (Figure 2, p 5). Dan notes another gremlin: "I reviewed the K-graphs in my article and realized that I severely undercounted the n urn ber names in the one with the most numbers (p 172, on the right). It seems that there are quite a few above one hundred thousand which, for reasons I can't explain. I failed to realize were there. My latest count of the number names in that graph is 1076 with 881,881 as the highest." He took a shot at the largest K-graphable number:

999 cenblUon 999 nonillion 999 septillionU L 0

990 billion 990 million 999H D NIB RETYM S C P

Leonard Gordon agrees that the right-hand graph on p 172 is the best possible for name counts, and adds a few K-graphs of his own:

Pig 1 largest K-graphable number name under one trillion (999,996,000 ,999 )

Pig 2 largest K-graphable number name using BILLION, MILLION, THOUSAND and HUNDRED (900,900,990,990)

Fig 3 K-graphable number using 18 different letters (885,885,880,885) Fig 4 largest K-graphable number name with no zeroes (8,882,882)

r---­.--­LMBRfig 3.Yfig l. fig 2.T

FIE0UHTSB YER

GV0N0N Y JE SLIN0H j I AI R THUsAI0M X0U

LBM

r--­

fig 4. R

G0 E

LIHN

T H0UI A

YS \II

Ed Wolpow wr thousands." 1973). he four Aroma aroma, Levina levin e menander, Me: salatis, Valer Animals (1970 Thyn n us th Yl four-volume , Improvements no botanical t the authoritie codification oj

Jeff Grant a proba bly thot OH (GH as in

Sir Jeremy M grams. It is disad vantage, ones. One of one im portant are helpful, 1

ful. Playing t initely i n the solved result resolve them is best to sta

Jeff Grants r of "Palindrom

DAREN NER) EVAN NAV E EZE EZE a J RO B BOR po NOEL LE ON

8am Long SUI

like 8 ylvia r­Fairfax, Cla d

The last par the f ollowing o cto me ani ng f ro m the Latl

Richard Hy d( 12-ietter iso:

ctly credited ~ontaining 37 2, p 5). Dan article and

the one with ! are quite a 't explain. I ,er names 1n

shot at the

septillion

1S the best ... n:

ION,

.880,885) ~,882)

R B M L

0 E I F

N 0 V G Y I

s U H T

233

Ed Wolpow writes "I'll bet the number of tautonyms in biology is in the thousands." Looking in H.L. Lewis's Butterflies of the World (Follett, 1973). he found 17 butterfly tautonyms not noted by Long: Appia appia. Aroma aroma, Aurea aurea, Clito clito, Cumbre cumbre, Lento lento, Levina levina, Librita lib rita , Ludens ludens Meita meita. Menander menander, Meza meza, Misius misius, Ridens ridens. Sabina sabina, Salatis salatis, Valeria valeria. Halstead's Poisonous and Venomous Marine Animals (1970) yielded a few more: Scomber scomber, Siganus siganus, Thynnus thynnus. He adds "It is interesting that the comprehensive four-volume An Arrangement of British Plants According to the Latest Improvements of the Linnaean System (1796) by William Withering lists no botanical tautonyms at all. This suggests that any 'decision' made by the authorities around 1900 [to ban botanical tautonyms] was mainly a codification of general practice."

Jeff Grant answers Richard Sabey's February Colloquy: "There are probably thousands of possible pronunciations for GHOTI. How about UH­OH (GH as in Edin burgh. OT as in Pierrot, and a silent I as in seize)?"

Sir Jeremy Morse writes "We have long played Jotto and insist on iso­grams. It is a game that even quite young children can play with no disad vantage, since simple words are indeed harder to find than rare ones. One of my sons and I play it in our heads, and this has taught us one important strategy: try to avoid one-crash results. Two-crash ones are helpful, and no-crash, three-crash and four-crash ones very help­ful. Playing the game this way requires one to memorize (a) letters def­initely in the word, (b) letters definitely not in the word, and (c) unre­solved results. Since one cannot carry too many of the last, I tend to resolve them rather than try short-cuts. It follows from all this that it is best to start with rare words like NYMPH or DWARF or QUACK."

Jeff Grants notes that AOITOA should be AOTOA in the first paragraph of "Palindromic Names". He adds a few more found by Dan Tilq ue:

DAREN NERAD the name of three people on Phonedisc 1996 EV AN NAVE a man in the 1995 Austin TX telephone directory EZE EZE a person in Runnemede NJ (Phonedisc June 1995) ROB BOR possible nicknames of three Robert Bors on Phonedisc NOEL LEON mentioned on p 37 of February 1996 Word Ways

Sam Long suggests that "Who's That Again?" be generalized to opposites like Sylvia Meadows, Gwen Black, Dolores Blythe, Cesar Chauvin, Nigel Fairfax, Clark Layman, and Flavia Schwartzkopf.

The last paragraph of Monte Zerger's "Calendar Curiosa" should have the following missing words added to the end of the second line: word octo meaning "eight" , while December, although the 12th month, comes from the Latin ...

Richard Hyde of East Herkimer NY called the editor's attention to the 12-letter isogrammatic name TROMPCZYNSKI. Alas, no one has found a

,

,

:

l

234

BEXLAH who would possess a no-repeated-Ietter name exceeding MELVIN SCHWARZKOPF in length!

In the :V:ay 1996 Colloquy, Susan Thorpe mentions Yl~ as representing the midpoint o f the alphabet. Acc ord ing to Jeff Grant, the OED reveals l:hat Y!~ is in fact: a word: a rare variant of MN is used in James Joyce's Ulysses r-("presenting a sieepy, soft, grunted response.

Richard Sabe y responds to a long-ago article on "Refractory Rhymes" in the No v ember 1990 issue: "TU FT ... has many rhymes, such as B U F FED and ROUGHED and SCUFT (in Webster's Second). I suggest replacing it with TUFTS. Ano t her word which is hard to rhyme is TUFTED, which has no rhyme I know except the computer-slan g CR U FTED."

Leonard Gordon says that it is better to play Jotto starting with a mutually non-overlapping set of four guess words, instead of the strategy used by Recreational Mathematical Software in the August Word Ways. He has developed three different Jotto programs and offers them to US readers on floppy disk for $2 (overseas readers should arrange for a US friend to send it via e-mail). His address is 2737 N Nordic Lane, Tucson AZ 85716-2309. Leonard w-ill describe the strateg ies in

detail in a forthcoming Word Ways article.

Jeff Grant notes "'Multiple Apostrophes' IT! the August Kickshaws re­minded me of once coming across a word with two consecutive internal apostrophes. It appea rs in Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary under ~AIN (own, adj) ... an Aberdeen (Scots) citation from 1871: An' he war latt'n aleen bOIs nain (And he was left alone by himself)."

The first line of "Writer Poor - Typewriter Poorer" was inadvertently omitted, making it difficult for the reader to realize that. this was an exchange of letters writ.ten under constrained conditions:

re your pre-1950 typewriter -- troy reporter 3-15-96

AU lower-case Ls were typed as numerical ones to avoid using the third line on the typewriter keyboard. On p 133, tip-toe should be tip-top. And did readers recognize that the letters of "Martha D. Washington Crossed It, Too" were anagram med to form the 12-line poem on p 186 in Kickshaws? (The last word should have been towed, not rowed.)

Dan Tilque and Leonard Gordon both found a way to include the number names from O~E through TWELVE in a Queen's-move graph:

F G HR x

F o U V I S x I N L E NO

S E T G T W V L W HR U

EULERIAN

LE ONARD GORD Tucson, Arizon

In t he May: he calle d wint~

spac e t o e xp r etc . ) His artic: and found by squ a re s fo u nd magic con stant are s i m p l y Eul

An Euler i mportant tool ure 2, it cons: which is 0, 1 ,2 a n d once in e p o s s ible combi: Eule r i a n sq ua r prov e d, as Eul

T h e tens diE nu mbers such eralize d . and h ave t h e same 1.S based on t h

I n o w sho w stric t l y as an ma g ic co nstant structe d t he IT

(which was 1 chalkboa r d , I de n s i t y in t h e Us i ng t he lett the units digi represe n t t he sq u are i n Fi g u 3-lette r en din€

All words im dicti ona ry. Fig but it took a as a wi nt sq u . con s t an t f or F