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αdvαnced Move-αnαgrαms—The Yì Līng

by Trey Jones

As noted previously, the joy of Chomsky’s innovative “move-α” was that it freed the language/speaker/linguist/syntactician to move anything, anywhere, at any time, for any reason, as long as doing so didn’t violate any important principles or parameters (with the important ones being those that don’t obviously need to be violated to make one’s theoretical point). In a somewhat more constrained variety of that spirit, we present another Move-αnαgrαms puzzle for your amusement.

If you aren’t already familiar with Move-αnαgrαms, reviewing the earlier puzzles may give you some needed background. (That is, being a typical linguist, I will just assume you are familiar with the relevant literature before plowing onward!)

This version of Move-αnαgrαms is a bit more complex than earlier versions. As before, each set of letters in the puzzle forms an anagram, but with a twist. Every line not on the top inherits a left-over letter from the previous line, and every line not on the bottom donates an unneeded letter to the following line. So far, so good.

        C A T F        
        I S H C        
        A L F H        
E R O N L     I P P O N
      E E P H A T      
        C A T ·        
        F I S H        
        C A L F        
H E R O N     H I P P O
    E L E P H A N T    

In a nod to Systemic Functional Linguistics, we’re allowing multiple inheritance in this iteration of the puzzle. When two anagrams are both above another anagram, they each contribute their left-over letter to the anagram below. When an anagram is above two other anagrams, it contributes the same left-over letter to both of the anagrams below it.

A simple worked example with very untricky anagrams should illustrate the process. The sample puzzle is shown here in the upper panel.

In the first line, CATF is an anagram of CAT, with F left over. F moves to the next line, and FISHC is an anagram of FISH, with C left over. C moves to the next line, and CALFH is an anagram of CALF, with H left over. Now things get a little tricky. The H moves down to join both ERONL and IPPON. HERONL is an anagram of HERON, with L left over. HIPPON is an anagram of HIPPO, with N left over. Both L and N move down to the next row to join EEPHAT. LNEEPHAT is an anagram of ELEPHANT, and we’re done!

The entire decoded example is in the lower panel, with bold indicating letters inherited from lines above.

R A R E       N O D Y
B E V Y       U N O X
O N M E T A P H O R S
C O N G E S T I O N S
T O A D       A P E S
S E E R       H A L F
L O G I P I S T O L S
C U S L I M I T I N G
B E S T       V I C E
S U R E       M U L E

For any puzzlemeisters still reading, your actual, much trickier puzzle is now provided. It is inspired by the shape of one of the symbols of the mystical East Asian linguistic oracle, the Yì Līng (and not the Maltese voiceless pharyngeal fricative, Ħ—no matter what the heretics may say).

If you think you’ve got it all figured out, submit your solution to the editors of SpecGram by August 15, 2013, and you could win a prize. Solutions and winners will be announced in the September issue.

The answers to the June puzzle, EtymGeo™—Weird Little U.S. Towns, Part I, are: Eclectic, Alabama; Ptarmigan, Alaska; Nothing, Arizona; Experiment, Arkansas; Avocado, California; Hygiene, Colorado; Mystic, Connecticut; and Slaughter, Delaware.

The following puzzlemeisters had the great fortune both to have submitted correct answers and to have been selected by the Puzzlotron 4000 as this month’s winners:

Rouan van Ryn • Jeremy Martin

Honorable mentions go to Adam Hesterberg, Eric Chen, and Tanjam Jacobson, even though the Puzzlotron 4000 was not nearly as fond of them.

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SpecGram Vol CLXVII, No 4 Contents