MLP: Wordplay, Not Wii

Your luddite Mrs. Language Person, ever unimpressed with what today passes for "gaming," respects those heady artforms of yesteryear. Much prefers a play on words, does she:

Such clever games display more skill, insists the Snitty Old Bitty. Perhaps the most challenging form of wordplay is the palindrome - a string of words which reads the same backwards. The term was first used in 1629 by English poet-playwright (and literary critic) Ben Jonson, Will Shakespeare's contemporary and competitor. The first, credited to English poet John Taylor in 1614, read:

"Lewd I did live, evil did I dwel." [sic]

A good palindrome is a rare find and hard to construct. Some are quite tidy:

"Madam I'm Adam"

"Ma is as selfless as I am"

Others may qualify, but sound awkward to try:

"Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam."

"Able was I ere I saw Elba" (apropos of Napolean)

"Rats live on no evil star"

So we turn to the palindrome's cousin, the anagram, in which one reorders the letters of one word or phrase to make another. Consider these clever examples from fellow language person Bill Bryson's book, "The Mother Tongue:"

Western Union (no wire unsent)

Circumstantial evidence (can ruin a selected victim)

The Morse Code (here come dots)

Intoxicate (excitation)

Schoolmaster (the classroom)

Older societies respected words, ascribing them more meaning than today's lackadaisical treatment. The anagram may be the oldest of word plays, appearing in ancient Greek poetry. In Biblical times and among Jewish Cabalists of yore, names which formed an anagram were credited with mystical meaning. French King Louis XIII appointed a royal anagrammatist to entertain the court with amusing anagrams of people's names.

For puzzle-lovers your MLP offers the rebus, popular in the 1700s when people challenged one another to write entire letters with them. The rebus is a verbal riddle, an arrangement of words which suggests other words and gives a clue to meaning. Sometimes these come with limited drawings, such as small pictures, lines, or boxes. Others are simply arranged artfully:

The solution? John Underwood, Andover Mass.

Are you "thodeepought" (deep in thought) or reading this "chetongueeek" (tongue in cheek), Dear Reader? Word puzzles keep the mind sharp and ward off symptoms of the "aged aged aged" (middle aged).

Try this one: HIJKLMNO

Did you guess water? H to O... H2O.

And now it's time for MLP to

Mrs. Language Person (sit down and shut up) and Sholeh Patrick are columnists for the Hagadone News Network. Contact them at [email protected].