The Anagrammy Awards is a monthly anagram competition. March winners:

• THE CRIME INVESTIGATOR = HE INTERROGATES VICTIM
• A TRAINED SUSHI CHEF = HE’S A TUNA-FISH DICER
• ASTEROID THREATS = DISASTER TO EARTH

My favorite from the hall of fame — this:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THAT IS THE QUESTION; WHETHER ‘TIS NOBLER IN THE MIND TO SUFFER THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

can be rearranged to spell

IN ONE OF THE BARD’S BEST-THOUGHT-OF TRAGEDIES, OUR INSISTENT HERO, HAMLET, QUERIES ON TWO FRONTS ABOUT HOW LIFE TURNS ROTTEN.

Can’t beat that.

uglyography
n. bad handwriting; poor spelling

opiniaster
n. one who obstinately holds to an opinion

afterwit
n. knowledge gained too late to do any good

Autological words describe themselves:

• pentasyllabic
• seventeen-lettered
• descriptive
• uninformative
• English
• pronounceable
• confusionful
• wee

Heterological words don’t:

• abbreviated
• adverb
• purple
• carcinogenic
• plural
• phonetic
• misspelled

So is heterological a heterological word?

jentacular
adj. pertaining to breakfast

A kadigan is a placeholder for an unspecified word. You know: blivet, deelie-bob, device, dingus, doodad, doohickey, doofunny, doover, fnord, gadget, geemie, gizmo, hoochamajigger, kerjigger, oojah, oojamaflip, thingamajig, thingamabob, thingamadoodle, thingo, thingum, thingummy, thingy, thing-thing, whatchamacallit, whatchamajigger, whatsit, whosey, whoseywhatsit, whosis, widget, whatsitsname.

These are common words that do useful work, but they have no formal part of speech, falling somewhere between nouns and pronouns. “Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly,” wrote William Penn, “for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.”

Palindromes:

• Campus motto: Bottoms up, Mac!
• Do geese see God?
• Dennis sinned.
• Name now one man’s sensuousness. Name now one man.
• Never odd or even.
• Plan no damn Madonna LP!
• Rotary gyrator
• Roy, am I mayor?
• Sex at noon taxes.
• Ten animals I slam in a net.
• Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw?
• Tarzan raised a Desi Arnaz rat.
• Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.
• Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus.
• Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
• Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
• Rettebs, I flahd noces, eh? Ttu, but the second half is better. (Stephen Fry)
• Rats drown in WordStar.
• “Sit on a potato pan, Otis!”
• “Do nine men interpret?” “Nine men,” I nod.
• A slut nixes sex in Tulsa.

And “Gnu dung, sides reversed, is gnu dung.”

hadeharia
n. constant use of the word “hell”

What to write in a slacker’s letter of reference:

• “You would be fortunate to get this person to work for you.”
• “No one would be better for this position.”
• “He doesn’t care how many hours he must put in.”
• “There is nothing you can teach him.”
• “I refer him with no qualifications whatsoever.”
• “Waste no time in making him an offer.”

“All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend him too highly.”