Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Wordplay [Hardcover]

Ross Eckler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996

The grand master of American word play presents a life's work of the most challenging linguistic games and puzzles that have stumped word lovers for decades. Examples include acrostics, palindromes, homonyms, anagrams, lipograms, word squares, cadences, and isograms. 30 diagrams.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is the most mesmerizing book on wordplay to come along in years. Ross Eckler examines such eternal logological favorites as anagrams, palindromes, and word squares, as well as words that play in other ways. Here are words with all letters in alphabetical order, novels written without the letter "e," and dozens of ways to transform one word into another. Take "heathery," for example. How many times can you delete one letter and have a new word remaining? Or consider "add." What happens when you shift each letter one place down the alphabet? How about eight places? If you love words, this masterpiece is irresistible. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 279 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312140320
• ISBN-13: 978-0312140328
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,023,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars lots of information, lots of errors, October 10, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Syracuse, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Wordplay (Hardcover)

The book addresses letter and word play in such breadth as to command authority. The frequency of errors in its examples and tables, however, gives an opposite impression. I soon found myself playing a different game than any described in the text: looking for errors. (For example, a lipogram supposedly lacking the letter H contains the word "the"; another supposedly lacking the letter A contains the word "day" (p. 4). At least 3 of 100 purported palindromes on pp. 32-4 are not quite: "Tense I 'snap' Sharon's roses, or Norah's pansies net"; "Evil is the name of a foeman as I live"; "Stephen, my lad--ah, what a hymn, eh, pets?") I found 11 in the first 50 pages, and I would not be surprised if I missed some. Then I quit: it was less challenging than most of the play described in the book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book, second only to Borgmann's classic LOV., June 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Wordplay (Hardcover)

Ross Eckler's latest book on wordplay is destined to become a milestone in recreational linguistics. It is second only to Dmitri Borgmann's 1965 classic Language on Vacation. Eckler's offering should bring recreational linguistics (or wordplay, or logology) to a whole new generation of word enthusiasts. Great, great, great

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding book for lovers of the English language., February 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Wordplay (Hardcover)

Firstly, Ross Eckler is truly a grand master. He presents the distillation of several decades of study of the subject. I read the book almost in one sitting, cover to cover, and discovered many new and fascinating word plays. For example:

a) Exquisite 'e-less' texts, i.e. texts without the letter 'e'
b) Phenomenally palindromic dialogues (e.g.
ADAM: Madam, I'm Adam.
EVE: Name of a foeman?
ADAM: O, stone me! Not so.
EVE: Mad! A maid I am, Adam.
This goes on for two pages with every sentence by Adam and Eve being palindromic)
c) Amazing acrostics
d) Challenging 'chain-link' sentences. (e.g. tHE HElicoptER ERneST SToLE LEavES EScaPE PErilous etc.)
e) Tantalizing transpositions (e.g. five transpositions of an eight letter word; alerting, altering, integral, relating, triangle)
f) Transpositional poetry (e.g. there is a beautiful sonnet about 'Washington crossing the Delaware' and each line of the sonnet uses the alphabets in the phrase above)
g) Appropriate anagrams (e.g. DORMITORY, dirty rook; A GENTLEMAN, elegant man etc.)

There are two similar books that readers may find interesting.

1) A pleasure in words by Eugene T. Maleska, published by Hamish Hamilton, 1983

2) The play of words by Richard Lederer, published by Pocket Books, 1990

Thank you Mr. Eckler and Happy Reading to all.

Ravi Apte