Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Word Play

From the editor of Word Ways magazine comes an extraordinary volume sure to reinterpret our vision of words and our understanding of language. Ross Eckler taps into the virtual renaissance of recreational linguistics with this impressive and detailed collection of some of the most challenging games and puzzles that have stumped word lovers for decades.
Gathering his life's work of word manipulations, letter deletions, and linguistic transformations into one volume, Eckler presents a dazzling array of alphabetical mind-benders and conundrums, illustrating the intricacies of letter-play with hundreds of examples.

Eckler, a Ph.D. in mathematics, who with his wife, Faith, edits Word Ways magazine, has written a marvelous book for anyone who loves words and word play. Eckler includes explanations of acrostics, palindromes, anagrams, word squares, and word worms. There are pages of examples of each type of word play. A sample from the section on transforming one word into another through a word ladder changes less into more in five moves: less-loss-lose-love-move-more. The field of recreational linguistics has made great use of computer technology in the last few years, leading to more and more complicated word relationships, and the author expects great things to come in the future. Anyone who writes, does crossword puzzles, or plays Scrabble will find this book a gem. Recommended for public libraries.?Lisa J. Cihlar, Winfield P.L., Ill.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Letterplays, or "words-as-letters, in distinction to words-as-phonemes or words-as-carriers-of-meaning," are the focus of this collection of recreational linguistics. Eckler showcases letterplays gathered from Word Ways, the quarterly journal that he has edited and published since 1970. Sections are arranged so that specific types of logological endeavors, such as anagrams, word ladders, lipograms, palindromes, and shiftgrams, are introduced, defined, and displayed via lists, tables, and examples. Lists include "Q-Not-Followed-by-U Words" and chain link sentences, in which the last two letters of one word make up the first two letters of the next (as in "Martha has aspirin in industrial allotments" ). At the heart of this book is how letters can be manipulated to form words and relationships rather than relate meaning. Word lovers, Scrabble players, and crossword fans will find this intriguing. Jennifer Henderson