Eureka!

by Walker Royce

  Paragraphs are governed mostly by the style of the speaker or author. There are no rules for composing paragraphs, but there are effective and ineffective styles. Consistently long paragraphs intimidate readers. Consistently short paragraphs distract them. Well-constructed mixtures of long and short paragraphs, headings, lists, figures, tables, and other elements of composition provide structure to help the reader navigate your communications style. They also help readers understand the varying depth and breadth of the storyline.

  It is important to consider these three elements — words, sentences, and paragraphs — when writing, reviewing, speaking, listening to, and observing others. How you compose words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs are big differentiators in your ability to communicate.

  Composition and Style

  There are 200,000 to 300,000 words in the English language. There is no exact count since there are no rules about what constitutes a single word. For example, is thought one word, or do we count it once as a noun and once as a verb? Are singular and plural nouns counted once or twice? It is also ambiguous whether to count jargon (such as the baseball terms homer, pitch-out, double-header), proper names (Paris, Jack, February), or foreign words commonly used in English (adios, burrito, habeas corpus, aloha, sushi, karate).

  According to Askoxford.com, the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains more than 210,000 words (including 47,000 words that are obsolete). More than half of these words are nouns, about one-quarter are adjectives, and about one-seventh are verbs. The rest are interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, adverbs, and other forms. If distinct meanings of words were counted separately, the total number of words would probably approach three-quarters of a million. With hundreds of thousands of words that can be composed into jillions of sentences and an infinite number of different paragraphs, composition advice is pretty complicated. As with any other topic of infinite dimensionality, it is impossible to be very prescriptive. However, we can observe writing styles (patterns of grammar and composition) that represent more effective communications.

  Grammar is well summarized in Write Right, by Jan Venolia, and many other English reference books such as The Chicago Manual of Style. One indication of the complexity of English grammar is the ineffectiveness of grammar checkers provided in modern word processors. While spell checkers work pretty well at finding spelling mistakes and recommending alternatives, grammar checkers are rarely used because they provide little help. The rules of grammar, their exceptions, and the complications of context still favor human reasoning over programmed assistance. English grammar is best learned by reading, writing, and observing.

  When it comes to style, one book has stood out for three decades as the benchmark for English composition: The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. This book, which has fewer than 100 pages, has sold more than 10 million copies and is a must-read for anyone keen on improving their writing skills.

  Authors, whom many people revere as standout communicators, are not immune from poor communications techniques. Sometimes, we write drivel (defined as senseless composition). When we do, our audience turns off or, worse yet, finds humor in it. As an author, I constantly observe my own communications flaws and do my best to maintain a sense of humor so that I can laugh and learn from my own mistakes. Writing this book, which observes some good and bad patterns of writing and speaking, is like spitting into the wind. If you do uncover some odd usage, feel free to laugh. Trust me: My copy editor had me in stitches with some of the drivel I composed in early versions. Most of the remaining instances of drivel are intentional sarcasm on my part, meant to provide humorous examples. Any unintentional instances that remain are just examples of me being human.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Beauty of the Beast

  English uses 26 letters: 21 consonants and 5 vowels. We can create jillions of words, such as the word jillion, which is a slang word that means some indefinitely large number. Some words have a single consistent meaning; some have numerous context-specific meanings. For example, the words brain, north, golf, automobile, jury, and woman have pretty consistent meanings wherever they are used. On the other hand, try to figure out the meanings of these words without knowing the context in which they’re used: right, down, space, bridge, state, and branch.

  English has some very special classes of words:

  Words that contain exactly the same letters as other words but in a different order are called anagrams. Examples: canoe and ocean.

  Words that are spelled with different letters and mean the same thing (in some context) are called synonyms. Examples: love and adore.

  Words that have opposite meanings are called antonyms. Examples: forward and reverse.

  Words that contain different letters and are pronounced the same are called homonyms. Examples: gnu and knew.

  Words that are spelled the same but have a different meaning are called homographs. Examples: lead (a heavy metallic element) and lead (to be out front).

  Words that sound the same but are spelled differently are called homophones. Examples: not, nought, and knot.

  Then we have jargon (terminology and word usage that are meaningful only within a specific field of interest), slang (terminology and word usage that are meaningful only within a specific subculture), colloquialisms (regional slang), and much more. How confusing!

  No, how beautiful! This opens up tremendous opportunities for creative writing, diverse styles, puzzles, and humor that are unparalleled in other languages. Except in English-speaking countries (India, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and so forth), you rarely see puzzle books, crossword puzzles, or word games. And don’t these same cultures have a virtual monopoly on comedy and comics? Where else do you see such a thriving community of comedians? I think this is largely due to our language, which facilitates such a diversity of plays on words, puns, and subtle misusages of words.

  Here are a few trivial facts about English words:

  The longest common word with all the letters in alphabetical order is almost. Isn’t it strange that the longest word with this characteristic is only six letters?

  The longest word you can make using only four different letters is senselessness.

  The longest common word with no vowels is rhythms.

  The longest consecutive alphabetical sequence that shows up in English words is only four letters long (RSTU, as in overstuff and understudy).

  Ough can be pronounced in many different ways, as in Scarborough (uh), cough (off), dough (oh), hiccough (up), bough (ow), rough (uff), thought (aw), and through (oo).

  The word therein contains 12 substrings that are also English words (the, there, he, her, here, herein, er, ere, re, rein, I, in).

  The first number spelled out that contains an a is one thousand.

  If you could make an infinite list of the whole numbers and arrange them alphabetically, the last number listed would be zero.

  That last piece of trivia raises a strange question for philosophers and mathematicians: Can you define another infinite list that has a last element?

  Puzzle 6 contains a diversion that consumed me for a few years in the late 1990s and became one of my obsessions. This was before there were online dictionaries and other useful tools for word perverts like me to use. The puzzle consists of a short essay. Read it and observe the various word choices and sentence flow. The prose may not be appealing at first; it will certainly seem strained and convoluted. Once you solve the puzzle, it should be more appealing for its bizarre characteristic. This sort of creative writing is challenging mental exercise. Try making up your version and then tell me how convoluted it is.

  PUZZLE 6. A QUESTIONABLE PREOCCUPATION WITH VOCABUL ARIES

  This unorganized, nefarious, and unforgivable documentation is my offering to those tenacious puzzle solvers and delusional word voluptuaries. I work at a mountainside oceanarium that serves alliaceous bouillabaisse with cauliflower for malnourished tourists. A mendacious mountaineer, I
have bivouacked abstemiously among the tallest sequoias. I am also ambidextrous, mustachioed, and perspicacious, but not overanxious with speculation on the graciousness with which discouraged ideologues will facetiously appreciate this inconsequential regurgitation of language beautification.

  This sacrilegious education is authorized by unsanctioned authorities who are unequivocal fountainheads of miscellaneous puzzle regulation. These unrecognizable, ultraconservative millionaires popularized this puzzle’s groundbreaking equation. The solution’s boundaries are not insurmountable, but any underestimation of the “strangeness” of this paragraph could result in pandemonium, undiagnosed exhaustion, and evacuation from one’s subordinate sanity. This could lead to communicable pneumonia rather than the unavoidable neurological euphoria of uncomplicated stupefaction. The revolutionary title is simultaneously an ostentatious hint and a precarious permutation of encouraging words for those unaccomplished milquetoasts of the word-puzzle persuasion who need evolutionary rejuvenation and emasculation of their egos.

  The unprofessional words menstruation and ejaculation also belong here, but why? Any denunciation or repudiation of the gregarious sentence structure would be uncomplimentary and result in attenuation of hallucinogenic brainwaves. One precaution: The word choices are not unintentional. I could provide an unapologetic evaluation of the auditioned dialogue to be caught on audiophile audiotape. No more prosecutorial recapitulation, or continuance. Most discombobulated solvers get it instantaneously, with an autogenesis of an uncoordinated desire to be institutionalized.

  Solve this puzzle by answering three questions:

  Can you quantify the strangeness of this essay with one numeric measure?

  Can you identify two additional words that meet this strangeness standard?

  Can you find the two most special words in the context of this puzzle?

  Once you have solved this puzzle, you will likely say to yourself one of two things: “What kind of rubbish is this?” or “That is a trivial, yet breathtaking, example of the beauty of our language.” I hope it will be the latter.

  WORDS WITHIN WORDS AND WORDS AMONG WORDS

  One beautiful aspect of English is the amount of overlap in letter sequences, word roots, prefixes, and suffixes. You won’t see this unless you look for it. My brain is wired to observe and notice such things, and these next few puzzles explore this strange perspective of our language.

  Traditional word search puzzles are not very challenging. They are too mechanical with no real reasoning behind them. The following pages present a few different versions of word searches that will expose you to the strange world of hidden words within normal text. Although the challenge is still to search for words, they have all been disguised within proper English prose. Here are a few general tips:

  The hidden words may be in plain sight; namely, the word may stand alone in a sentence as a normal word.

  The hidden word may be a substring (like the word car is a substring in the word careful) or a superstring (like the word wish is a superstring spanning three words in the phrase “…now I should go…”

  Weird sentence structure and unnatural word choices are the clues to uncovering hidden words.

  Sometimes an odd sentence structure or unnatural word choice is simply misdirection to confuse the solver. Sometimes the hidden words are present in a normal sentence structure and word choices.

  Not only are these word searches fun to solve, they are fun (and challenging) to construct. As you read these puzzles, you may come to the conclusion that some of this is drivel. I confess: Some of it is. Please grant me poetic license and enjoy the puzzles. Then try constructing a sentence that sounds more natural. Asking a rookie to solve these unique, enjoyable puzzles in a taxicab is hopeless on a week night. If I have attracted you into my world of word perversion, I will have at least succeeded in opening your mind to a new set of mental exercises.

  Here’s a simple example. One of the sentences in the last paragraph contains all of the pieces of a well-known board game hidden within the words. Can you find them? You may or may not have noticed that asking a rookie to solve these unique, enjoyable puzzles in a taxicab is hopeless on a week night. And you thought that was the perfect example of drivel!

  The contrived paragraphs in Puzzle 7 contain at least 124 different letter sequences for animals. The wording is strange and sometimes forced, but therein you find the clues. There are also a few bluff words and decoys just to keep you guessing. With a few exceptions, every three-letter word that represents a different animal is included. There are also animals of 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 letters. The sequences can be found in different hiding places.

  Some are in plain sight, as a normal word such as Jay.

  Some are substrings within a single word, such as ant in the word antique.

  Some span multiple words, such as fox in …stiff OxyContin.

  Punctuation is used as camouflage in this puzzle and should be ignored in identifying letter sequences.

  As one hint, here are the numbers of hidden animals for each word length: 47 three-letters, 34 four-letters, 21 five-letters, 12 six-letters, 8 seven-letters, and two eight-letters. See how many different animals you find buried in the puzzle.

  PUZZLE 7. WORD SAFARI

  My mother Jill amazes me. Her only vehicle is a grubby antique police car I bought for her on a lark with my millions. She epitomizes a flamboyant woman on the go. Attempting to pique her desire, I smartened up and met her at a pleasant eatery in the main section to share some guacamole and Crown Royal. I regret that we have been avoiding our kids for a year, so we decided to fly them up and away from Iceland with their sealed, new travel kits. Our son Jay had lost rich sums in a sticky glob steroid sham. Steroids are not terrible murderous drugs, but we abhor seeing our son crave new vices to rely upon. Yesterday, Jay caught a bad germ. He was feeling undermined by a nasal monotone. Fortunately, he went to a doctor for a medical cure and was put routinely on stiff OxyContin. Our boy sternly resisted swallowing the pill for a second or two. Then musk oil was sponged on his naked body and he became leery when he heard eerie noises. The attending nurse monitoring Jay was a half-inch taller than him. In khaki winter pants, a bronze braid, and frumpy thongs, her job assignment was wandering the corridors and acting tough as nails. She ate a sugar cube, moaned, howled like a dog, started disco dancing, slugged an intern, and asked why nurses can’t elope in a spacesuit. It was surreal to see a pediatric attendant lose it on the job. At least Jay, a keen and shrewd observer, does not rock the boat. It bugs me to see someone stagger, trip up, or slip. I get sad when big egos prey on others. Many of those who gloat are selfish cowards and the rest of them are board-certified loons. I want to live a gleeful life of learning, be a very good role model, and have a long natural lifespan. There is no prestige realized from work, but a good job is one key long-term item for calmly making it through life.

  Hidden in the contrived paragraphs of Puzzle 8 are 100 different letter sequences for major American cities. The wording is strange and sometimes forced, but therein you find the clues. There are two cities from each state. Each city is either over 50,000 in population or is one of the top 10 most populated cities in its state. Some city names could come from multiple states, but to solve this puzzle and get just two from each state, you will need to pick the right city-state pair.

  The first 50 cities are relatively easy, the next 40 are more diffcult, and the last 10 will require most people to spend some serious time on the internet to solve the puzzle correctly. The sequences can be found in different hiding places. Some are in plain sight, as a normal word such as Lincoln. Some are substrings within a single word, such as Mobile in the word automobile. Some span multiple words such as Brooklyn in the words …brook. Lynn …

  Note that in this puzzle, punctuation is used as camouflage and should be ignored.

  PUZZLE 8. WORD GEOGRAPHY

  Paul, Lynn, Jack, Alan, Charles, Tony, Norm, and Louise drove their automobiles to Helen’s cabin
on the lake. Charles arrived in a Lincoln first; Paul was second in a Plymouth, and Norm showed up last. Louise had auburn hair and was Jack’s only daughter. Helen is from a happy home, very chic, a go-getter, and a freewheeling globetrotter. I entered the cabin that some say is just pleasant. A few others might call it provocative or plush. I loved the gazebo, stone walls, and garden veranda with little rocking chairs next to a meandering brook. Lynn donated the boorish art for display. There was a statue of a pueblo Indian, a polished marble bust of Fred Flintstone, and a bronze statue of old man Chester Arthur near the pine bluff on the high point of the property. The gazebo is elevated over water, looking out on a barren corral, eight pig pens, and rock hills that looked all askew.

  Happier, relaxed and thirsty, we drank sugary tea, scones with butter, Columbian coffee, and cola. Then I ate a taco made of mahi-mahi and a sandwich. I tasted the salmon roe but it had an odd odor of fennel, ginger and rotting pineapple. Tony and Paul played their harmonicas perfectly with Alan. Singing old Dionne Warwick tunes about providence and frank fortitude, our voices carried afar. “Good Night,” Tony said with a perplexing tone as he sat up. Eloquently, he recited a poem with frank lines about independence.

  First and foremost, we wanted a real ranch or a genuine cabin. We found one last August. After months, we looked for land on a lake with a long beachfront. There were no cabins for sale matching the modest options we desired: a mineral spring, fields for an easy dock entry, and running water. Townspeople were busy unsnarling tons of traffic on cordoned-off streets. We knew Arkansas roads need more rule of law to neutralize the chaos. We wanted to help a sorry set of traffic cops park some cars out of danger. “Man, townspeople should take time out for a cinema with a nice holiday tone,” Jack remarked.