Help Fill the Word Gap!

Our language suffers from a word shortage. There are literally thousands of new phenomena that make modern life increasingly frustrating because we lack the words to aid us in dealing with them. This is because our surroundings change faster than our wordsmiths can provide us with the verbal handles needed to manipulate them

Reas\u27ning But To Err

Americans are great hobbyists. For the unimaginative there are supermarket style hobby shops where they can get pretanned leather, premolded plaster, preselected and prepolished stones for jewelry-making, ad infinitum. Then there are shops for collectors of different kinds, such as philatelists and numismatists. But there are some hobbies for which there are no corner shops, and upon which no financial empires are likely to be built. I know a man who collects railroad locomotives, another who presses the leaves of Chinese trees (which are hard to come by these days), and yet another who collects spider webs and mounts them on black velvet. I, too, am a collector, species logophilia - I collect words

Science and Magic at the Supermartorama

What started out to be a quickie trip to the market for my wife the other day turned out to be a full day\u27s opus, full of agonized choice-making. The shopping list demanded: cough drops, cough syrup, aspirin, mouthwash, cleanser, hair spray, hair tonic, deodorant, shampoo, shaving soap, toothpaste, detergent, all-purpose cleaner, dish-washing liquid, bath soap, spray starch, after-shave lotion, margarine, fabric softener, car wax, and cigarettes. It sounded simple enough, but little did I realize what lay ahead of me

The National Philosophy Test - II

The response to our first National Philosophy Test was almost unbelievable. Not one letter of protest! This avalanche of implied acceptance deserves a reward, and here it is

The National Philosophy Test - IV

Our National Philosophy Tests might convey the notion that we are committing against philosophy what sacrilege is to religion. On the contrary, we are in the mainstream of true philosophy through these tests: To ridicule philosophy: that is to be a real philosopher. The words are those of Blaise Pascal, a philosopher of respectable achievements. We were about to base this test on Descartes when we realized that we hadn\u27t yet covered Aristotle; that would have been putting Descartes before the horse

Concentrated Consonants

The twenty-two words needed to complete this puzzle are composed mostly of consonants. Indeed, only eight of the words contain any vowels. In order to make the task easier for you, we have supplied all the vowels

Super Titles

If someone were to tell you that he was in the REUSED METAL PRODUCTS INDUSTRY, it would probably take you a while to figure out that he was a junk dealer. Super titles are becoming increasingly prevalent as the lust for a burnished image dominates any interest in the substance it obscures

The Assination of English

If a college student of English were to hand you a paper purporting to demonstrate his grasp of his English professor\u27s teaching, and the paper included sentences such as, The President was assinated on TV before our veery eyes, or Hubert is the Greek sin of pride, what, besides a loud guffaw, would your reaction be

An Element Letter Square

The letter square is 30 x 30, and it contains the names of all 103 chemical elements. They are spelled sideways, up and down, diagonally, and backwards. How many can you find

A State Capital Letter Square

Can you find the capitals of all fifty states? They are spelled up and down, sideways, diagonally, and backwards