 | |
| Author | Howard W. Bergerson |
|---|---|
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Published | 1973 |
| Publisher | Dover Publications |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0-486-20664-5 |
Palindromes and Anagrams is a 1973 non-fiction book on wordplay by Howard W. Bergerson.
| | |
| Author | Howard W. Bergerson |
|---|---|
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Published | 1973 |
| Publisher | Dover Publications |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0-486-20664-5 |
Palindromes and Anagrams is a 1973 non-fiction book on wordplay by Howard W. Bergerson.
Over a third of the book is devoted to the study and collection of anagrams. Of the 1169 anagrams Bergerson lists, most are sourced to the files of the National Puzzlers' League, and some had been previously printed in Dmitri Borgmann's Language on Vacation . [1]
Other sections of the book cover palindromes of various forms, including palindromic poetry by J. A. Lindon, Graham Reynolds, and Bergerson himself. [1] Among these is Bergerson's "Edna Waterfall", a 1039-letter poem which was for some time listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest palindrome in English. [2] [3] Most of Bergerson's other original palindromes are credited not to himself but rather to Edwin Fitzpatrick, a fictitious 19th-century poet. [1] (Bergerson had invented Fitzpatrick some years earlier, [4] though did not openly admit to the hoax until shortly before his book was released. To Bergerson's surprise, his joke had fooled even his publisher. [5] )
Besides the titular forms of wordplay, the book devotes chapters to vocabularyclept poetry (a special form of anagrammatic poetry in which the words of a poem are rearranged into a new poem) and written charades.
Palindromes and Anagrams was a modest success when first published, selling over 13,000 copies by 1979. [2] It was favourably reviewed in Word Ways , the journal of recreational linguistics which Bergerson formerly edited; fellow ex-editor Borgmann wrote that the book succeeds in "impart[ing] to palindromes and anagrams a status, a dignity, and a future they have not heretofore possessed", and concluded that it was therefore "a sine qua non for all serious logologists, as well as for all laymen interested in verbal curiosities". [1] The book has since come to be regarded as groundbreaking and influential, and is said to be the greatest and most complete work on palindromes and anagrams up to the time of its publication. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] It is a particular favourite of comedian Alex Horne, who wrote that as a child it showed him how to "play with language like a toy". [11]
Edwin Fitzpatrick, the fictional Victorian palindromist to whom Bergerson credited many of the book's palindromes, proved to be a popular character among logologists. He was the subject of several anecdotes [12] [13] and eventually a comprehensive twelve-page biography by Robert Funt. [14]
A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward as forward, such as madam, racecar. There are also numeric palindromes, including date/time stamps using short digits 11/11/11 11:11 and long digits 02/02/2020. Sentence-length palindromes ignore capitalization, punctuation, and word boundaries.
Willard Richardson Espy was an American editor, philologist, writer, poet, and local historian. Raised in the seaside village of Oysterville, Washington, Espy later studied at the University of Redlands in California before becoming an editor in New York City, as well as a contributor to Reader's Digest, The New Yorker, Punch, and other publications.
Richard Lederer is an American author, speaker, and teacher. He is best known for his books on the English language and on word play such as puns, oxymorons, and anagrams. He has been dubbed "the Wizard of Idiom," "Attila the Pun," and "Conan the Grammarian." His weekly column, "Lederer on Language," appears in the San Diego Union-Tribune and his articles are in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States including the Mensa Bulletin.
Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde is a book dedicated to peculiarities of the Dutch language. It was written by "Battus", one of many pseudonyms used by Hugo Brandt Corstius. The title means "Upperlandic Language and Linguistics", where "Upperlandic" is word play on "Netherlandic".
Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff Sr. is the abbreviated name of a German-born American typesetter who has held the record for the longest personal name ever used. Hubert's name is made up from 27 names. Each of his 26 given names starts with a different letter of the English alphabet in alphabetical order; these are followed by an enormously long single-word surname. The exact length and spelling of his name has been a subject of considerable confusion due in part to its various renderings over the years, many of which are plagued by typographical errors. One of the longest and most reliable published versions, with a 666-letter surname, is as follows:
Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffwelchevoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswessenschafewarenwohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzenvorangreifendurchihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoralternzwolfhunderttausendjahresvorandieerscheinenvonderersteerdemenschderraumschiffgenachtmittungsteinundsiebeniridiumelektrischmotorsgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthinzwischensternartigraumaufdersuchennachbarschaftdersternwelchegehabtbewohnbarplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneuerassevonverstandigmenschlichkeitkonntefortpflanzenundsicherfreuenanlebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurchtvorangreifenvorandererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischensternartigraum Sr.
Dmitri Alfred Borgmann was a German-American author best known for his work in recreational linguistics.
Zzxjoanw is a likely fictitious entry in an encyclopedia which fooled logologists for many years. It referred to a purported Maori word meaning "drum", "fife", or "conclusion".
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence in English, often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.
A heterogram is a word, phrase, or sentence in which no letter of the alphabet occurs more than once.
Logology is the field of recreational linguistics, an activity that encompasses a wide variety of word games and wordplay. The term is analogous to the term "recreational mathematics".
Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics is a quarterly magazine on recreational linguistics, logology and word play. It was established by Dmitri Borgmann in 1968 at the behest of Martin Gardner. Howard Bergerson took over as editor-in-chief for 1969, but stepped down when Greenwood Periodicals dropped the publication. A. Ross Eckler Jr., a statistician at Bell Labs, became editor until 2006, when he was succeeded by Jeremiah Farrell.
Dave Morice is an American writer, visual artist, performance artist, and educator. He has written and published under the names Dave Morice, Joyce Holland, and Dr. Alphabet. His works include 60 Poetry Marathons, three anthologies of Poetry Comics, The Wooden Nickel Art Project, and other art and writing. He is one of the founders of the Actualist Poetry Movement.
The Palindromist is a magazine devoted to palindromes, published since 1996. Initially it was published biannually. The frequency switched to irregular. It is edited by Mark Saltveit, a Portland-based stand-up comedian who won the first-ever World Palindrome Championship.
Howard William Bergerson was an American writer and poet, noted for his mastery of palindromes and other forms of wordplay.
A panalphabetic window is a stretch of text that contains all the letters of the alphabet in order. It is a special type of pangram or pangrammatic window.
James Albert Lindon was an English puzzle enthusiast and poet specializing in light verse, constrained writing, and children's poetry.
A vocabularyclept poem is a poem which is formed by taking the words of an existing poem and rearranging them into a new work of literature.
Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities is a 1965 book written by Dmitri Borgmann.
The Puzzle Lovers Club was an American company which ran word game contests by mail.
Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought is a 1967 book written by Dmitri Borgmann.