Curious Words and Language: 50 Brain Teazers

By Roy Whitlow

Words have fascinated many great men and women for centuries; Dr Samuel Johnson said, ‘Words are the signs of ideas’, while Rudyard Kipling said, ‘Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.’ Words can be like music and entertain, they can sooth and excite and give pleasure; they can also inform, instruct and educate. They can fulfil dreams or inspire them. Above all they can be fun. The aim in this book is not toward high literary merit, but toward a stirring of the little grey cells in (I hope) an amusing way. The brain teasers here I have collected over the past 40 years, some of which I have contributed to a few magazines. Some are attributed, some adapted and some quite original. I don’t claim that any are truly mind bending, but some are more tricky than others. Professors of English might have a slight advantage with a few, but really all can be solved with a modest understanding of words and language, some applied thinking and some common sense. They are meant as entertainment; if you learn anything along the way, then that is a bonus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roy Whitlow
• Release date: Jul 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301887736

Book preview

Curious Words and Language – 50 Brain Teazers

Compiled by

Roy Whitlow

Published by:

R.Whitlow, Bristol, UK

Smashwords Edition

Copyright: © 2013 Roy Whitlow, Bristol, UK

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, manual, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner

Discover other titles by Roy Whitlow at: http://www.smashwords.com/profile

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A Dictionary Of French Food & Dining:

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Part 2 – Names of Dishes on Menus

Part 3 – Terms Used in Cooking

Brain Teazer Series:

Knots and Numbers – 50 Brain Teazers

Curious Words and Language – 50 Brain Teazers

Logic and Thinking – 50 Brain Teazers

Magic squares – 50 Brain Teazers

Non-fiction (paper books)

Basic Soil Mechanics (Pearson Education, 2004)

Materials and Structures (Pearson Education, 1991)

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. A serious case of discrimination

2. Had Dad been had?

3. Letters in a riddle

4. Cracking the code of PsiPhiSpi

5. Some words spell trouble

6. Palindromes for fun

7. Making sense out of nonsense?

8. Sounds and phonetics in English

9. Synonym connections

10. A very odd paragraph

11. Good for your vowels?

12. Milli’s building blocks

13. Digital palindromes as words

14. Some word ladders or chains

15. What difference a letter makes

16. Strange numbers in names

17. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

18. A few curious words

19. Sounds like a good syllable

20. Forwards and backwards are different

21. A family of verbs

22. Anagrams that are simagrams

23. In which country are we now?

24. A point of view, but one of a number

25. Up and down words

26. What the Dickens?

27. Acting roomy enough without kisses from the Senate

28. Keep your vowels in order

29. One word or another

30. Six word ladders

31 Gone fishing!

32. Notice the notices

33. Vowels in reverse

34. A cities tour

35. Oh dear, oh dear!

36. Line up in order and number!