Is It A Book? | Games | I s i t a b o o k ? Games to Help you stray from the Straight and Narrrow. "Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? " - Steven Wright Playing . . . What follows is a collection of generative devices to use for writing which is not narrative based. The arbitrary rules of these games have also been used by serious writers to produce ideas for poems and stories - some examples are given below. Playing with the Alphabet . . . A busied effigy, A shy joy-ache, elemental Pique, yours to feed, A blue ex-you I see... - Dennis Des Chenes Anagrams . . .
Most people think of anagrams as frivolous fun. Ana-{Mary}gram Army How well her name an Army doth present, In which the Lord of Hosts did pitch his tent! Below is an interesting variation on the anagram, an acrostic chronogram from the title page of a book printed in 1652: franCIs goLDsMIth The date in roman numerals (MDCLII) is hidden within the author's name. Palindromes . . . Eve. This goes beyond a clever trick to become real poetry. Wordplay. Wordplay is an irresistible pasttime; the urge to play with words can pop up while writing a dreary report, or in the middle of a friendly ego competition. The varieties of entertainment to be found are vast. While alchemists struggled to turn LEAD into GOLD, I spent months trying to turn OUNCE into POUND.
I wish I had had a list of five letter words, which also comes in handy when playing jotto. Of course, this also meant many hours browsing the dictionary, during which I ran across more than anyone's share of weird words and words derived from letter names, special words and hapax legomenon. After knocking myself out for half a year compiling the five letter word list, it took me ten minutes to make a list of two letter words. If the "pentagram" file contains too many obscure words, you might want to look at Donald Knuth's 5-letter word file used in a demonstration program for the Stanford Graph Base.
I have a small list of rebus words that can be broken up into smaller words. Words and WordPlay. Fun With Words > The Wordplay Web Site. LOTS OF PUNS. ...A guy goes into a nice restaurant bar wearing a shirt open at the collar and is met by a bouncer who tells him he must wear a necktie to gain admission. So the guy goes out to his car and he looks around for a necktie and discovers that he just doesn't have one. He sees a set of jumper cables in his trunk. In desperation he ties these around his neck, manages to fashion a fairly acceptable looking knot and lets the ends dangle free. He goes back to the restaurant and the bouncer carefully looks him over for a few minutes and then says, "Well, OK, I guess you can come in -- just don't start anything.
" ...This mushroom walks into a bar and starts hitting on this woman... ...This horse walks into a bar and the bartender says "Hey, buddy, why the long face... ...These two strings walk upto a bar... ...This grasshopper walks into a bar, and the bartender says "Hey! ...This baby seal walks into a bar and the bartender says,"What'll ya have... " ...A neutron walks into a bar. Back. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. The sentence's meaning becomes clearer when it's understood that it uses three meanings of the word buffalo: the city of Buffalo, New York, the somewhat uncommon verb "to buffalo" (meaning "to bully or intimidate"), as well as the animal buffalo.
When the punctuation and grammar are expanded, the sentence could read as follows: "Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo. " The meaning becomes even clearer when synonyms are used: "Buffalo bison that other Buffalo bison bully, themselves bully Buffalo bison. " Sentence construction Bison engaged in a contest of dominance. This sentence supposes they have a history of such bullying with other buffalo, and they are from upstate New York. A comic explaining the concept The sentence is unpunctuated and uses three different readings of the word "buffalo". Marking each "buffalo" with its use as shown above gives: Buffaloa buffalon Buffaloa buffalon buffalov buffalov Buffaloa buffalon. Usage Other words using the same pattern.