C.W. Hooper of Keswick sent this creation to the Strand in August 1901: “It contains all the letters of the alphabet, twenty-six in all. They can be traced with patience. The letter N is the smallest (in the centre), and is the only indistinct one.”
Author: Greg Ross
A Semimagic Geomagic Square
From Lee Sallows:
Thanks, Lee!
“A Square Poem”
This poem, by Lewis Carroll, can be read line by line in the conventional way, but the same text results when it’s scanned “downward” in columns, reading the first word of each of the six lines, then the second, and so on:
I often wondered when I cursed Often feared where I would be -- Wondered where she'd yield her love, When I yield, so will she. I would her will be pitied! Cursed be love! She pitied me ...
Roundup
Obscure words from the personal collection of Eric Albert, from a Word Ways article in November 1988:
agroof: face downward
amphoric: resembling the sound produced by blowing into a bottle
benedict: an apparently confirmed bachelor who marries
bort: the fragments removed from diamonds in cutting
callipygian: having shapely buttocks
charette: a period of intense group work to meet a deadline
clishmaclaver: gossip
crepitaculum: the rattle of a rattlesnake
famulus: a magician’s assistant
favonian: like the west wind; mild
formication: the feeling that ants are creeping over one’s skin
fucivorous: subsisting on seaweed
genethliacon: a birthday ode
gobemouche: one who believes everything he is told; literally, “one who swallows flies”
Grimthorpe: to restore a building badly
illth: the reverse of wealth: ill-being
kittly-benders: thin ice that bends under one’s weight
nevermas: a time or date that never comes
nixie: a piece of mail that can’t be delivered because it’s illegibly or incorrectly addressed
quavery-mavery: in an uncertain position
supermuscan: greater than that which is typical of a fly
Albert gives his sources in the article, but I find all the words above in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Close to Home
In 1940, George Gamow published Mr Tompkins in Wonderland, in which a bank clerk attends a lecture on relativity and then finds that Einstein’s principles have become apparent in the ordinary street scenes before him:
A single cyclist was coming slowly down the street and, as he approached, Mr Tompkins’s eyes opened wide with astonishment. For the bicycle and the young man on it were unbelievably shortened in the direction of the motion, as if seen through a cylindrical lens. The clock on the tower struck five, and the cyclist, evidently in a hurry, stepped harder on the pedals. Mr Tompkins did not notice that he gained much in speed, but, as the result of his effort, he shortened still more and went down the street looking exactly like a picture cut out of cardboard.
In later adventures Tompkins explores cosmology and quantum physics, again in an exaggerated world in which extreme effects become observable. Gamow called this a “fantastic but scientifically correct dream.”
Holorime
“A Lowlands Holiday Ends in Enjoyable Inactivity,” a poem by Miles Kington:
In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise, eh, lass?
Inertia, hilarious, accrues, hélas!
In certain British dialects, the two lines sound the same.
Twice-Told Tales
An invertible word made of impossible letters, by Basile Morin:
An emphatic assertion by Douglas Hofstadter:
In 1908, after observing that chump in cursive reads largely the same upside down, the Strand asked for similar specimens and received this:
Close Enough
Writing in the New Yorker in 1949, John Davenport documented a rising language he’d observed among his countrymen. He called it Slurvian. “When Slurvians travel abroad, they go to visit farn (or forn) countries to see what the farners do that’s different from the way we Murcans do things. While in farn countries, they refer to themselves as Murcan tersts, and usually say they will be mighty glad to get back to Murca.”
bean. A living creature.
course. A group of singers.
fiscal. Pertaining to the body, as opposed to the spurt.
line. King of the beasts.
myrrh. A looking glass.
plight. Courteous.
sport. To hold up, to bear the weight of.
wreckers. Discs on which music is recorded for phonographs.
Writing in the Saturday Review in 1970, Cleveland Amory noted a similar phenomenon in the national pastime:
The pisher no longer goes inna wineup, but a stresh. The firss pish is stry one, followed by ball one. Then stry two, ball two, ball three — the full cown. The ba–er fouls one inna the stanns an the cown remains aa three an two. Finally he flies deep to the senner feeler who makes a long run anna fine runnen catch up againssa wall, beyonna warneen track.
“Geographical Enigma”
Charles Craik of Weston-super-Mare received this enigmatic postcard from a friend in 1901 and sent it on to the Strand:
I think it rather cleverly done, and it took me some time before I could understand its meaning.
The principal message is on the big island in the centre of the map — an invitation to meet the sender at a café, with the day. The name of the island below on the left-hand side is at once translated, ‘If so, do.’ The names of the land at the bottom of the map are meant for ‘Same time and place as before’ and ‘Don’t let anything hinder you’ respectively.
The following is a translation beginning at the top and working to the right: ‘Straights of cash. If you don’t come, all sorts of ills befall you. Come early. Let me know if you can come or not. I say, there’s a peculiar thing! You’re getting it by degrees. Can’t you see? Bay rhum. Get your hair cut! Deuced bad straights. See you later. Don’t you see? Devil take you. You are a merry cus! Good old flipper. Love to all. Oh! Tut, tut. R.S.V.P. Yours ever, Guy.’
Self-Made Man
But despite the gaiety of his song, Balso did not feel sure of himself. He thought of the Phoenix Excrementi, a race of men he had invented one Sunday afternoon while in bed, and trembled, thinking he might well meet one in this place. And he had good cause to tremble, for the Phoenix Excrementi eat themselves, digest themselves, and give birth to themselves by evacuating their bowels.
— Nathanael West, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, 1931