March 22, 2007

• This is a republication …

  of an article last published here on May 28, 2005.

  AN INTRODUCTION TO ANAMONICS

  It occurs to me that throwing around terms like “the SIGNAL sevens” or “SIGNALS = ETCHING PORT / LASINGS# = WATCH VIVE” is not being very fair to my reader.  It’s bad enough I let myself get carried away with convoluted thinking and forget to be concise, but gee, I can at least give you a hint about what I’m doing.

  If you’re a regular reader of my Scrabble posts to the Crossword-Games-Pro mailing list, maybe you can skip this.  Or maybe not.

  By “the SIGNAL sevens,” I mean, the list of seven-letter words that can be formed from SIGNAL plus a blank tile, or AGILNS+? in traditional Scrabble shorthand.

  By “SIGNALS = ETCHING PORT,” I mean that you can find one or more *eight*-letter words from SIGNALS plus a blank tile, where the blank can represent any of the letters in “ETCHING PORT.”  Another way to express the same thing is AGILNSS = CEGHINOPRT, where I’ve simply alphabetized the tiles in the second presentation.  Technically, it should be SIGNALS + ? = ETCHING PORT, or AGILNSS + ? = CEGHINOPRT.  The “+ ?” gets left out in the interest of brevity.

  When I list two anamonics (I’ll explain that term in a bit) for the same group of letters, such as the SIGNALS anamonic followed by a second anamonic, LASINGS# = WATCH VIVE, that generally but not always means that LASINGS# + W, LASINGS# + A, LASINGS# + T, etc., for all of the letters in “WATCH VIVE,” represent one or more words acceptable according to international Scrabble rules but not in the United States and Canada.  For example, LASINGS# plus W is SWALINGS#, a word found in the Chambers Dictionary, which is published in Scotland and is the basis for the British half of sowpods.  See essay on “Sowpods History, and the Need for Coexistence.” 

  Okay, what’s with the word anamonics and what’s with all these pound signs and why are the words followed by pound signs colored red?

  Let’s take “anamonics” first.  I’ve been using this system of memorizing lists of words that can be generated from six- or seven-letter stems since 1987.  It’s an amazingly powerful method but I’ll let you learn that for yourselves.  Anyway, in late 1992 or early 1993, Nick Ballard and Charlie Carroll published a series of articles in the now-defunct publication Medleys, describing their own independently discovered technique, which I’d been using for five years but without having written about it.  Nick and Charlie coined the term “anahook” to represent the letters of ETCHING PORT or WATCH VIVE.  That is, an anahook is any letter that can be combined with a stem such that the new group of letters can be anagrammed into an acceptable Scrabble word.  SIGNALS + E would be GAINLESS or GLASSINE or LEASINGS and (from my British-words example) the same letters, LASINGS# + E, would be SEALINGS#.  I immediately began a correspondence with Nick and Charlie, during the course of which I coined the term anamonic to mean a *mnemonic* for remembering a given set of anahooks.  Anamonics is a term now in general usage by Scrabble fanatics such as myself.

  As for the pound signs, they signify that a word is British-only, or, from the OSW half of sowpods.  As you’ll see in the essay previously referred to, OSPD stands for Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, the American reference for Scrabble, and OSW stands for Official Scrabble Words, the list of official words in the United Kingdom.  I present these pound signs as a courtesy to American Scrabble players, who need to be warned against playing words such as SEALINGS# in American tournaments.  And they’re also there as a courtesy to myself.  I mean, as an American, I need to keep the words separate just as my countrymen do.  Why red?  Well, it’s a lot of work, but it’s another useful visual aid for remembering, so I take the pains.

  Another term you’ll see occasionally is negamonic.  Think of it as an exclusionary anamonic, if you will.  SIGNAL = [ROLL] means that R, O, and L don’t work as anahooks for SIGNAL.

  Any other questions?  I encourage you to email me.

  • 4:19 pm
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