Customer Reviews

Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Wordplay

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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.

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

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

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

Ross Eckler has synthesized 30 years of developments in the field of wordplay in a single, scrupulously organized volume. To accompalish such a task must have required a Herculean effort of mental strength! He coined the term "letterplay" to distinguish it as written wordplay involving, for the most part, the combinatorial effects achieved by manipulation of the letters of the alphabet. The best-known types of letterplay serve as a starting point--anagrams and palindromes--that lead to the twilight zone of language where the alphabet dances like a mysterious diva, showing words as they're rarely seen. In fact, Eckler has edited Word Ways magazine ever since 1970, the magazine that ushered in what many believe is the Golden Age of Wordplay. More wordplay has appeared in English in the past 30 years than in any language in the history of the written word. To "read all about it," buy this indispensible book! There is none like it, and there will never be another like it. Eckler knows all, and tells all!