The HanjieLinguru Puzzle α =  bilabial stops in “better butter” β =  postalveolar affricates in “inchworms itching” γ =  voiced velar stops in “greek grapes” δ =  voiceless fricatives in “three free throws” ε =  bilabial stops in “rubber baby buggy” ζ =  trills in Spanish “erre con erre guitarra, erre con erre carril” η =  sibilants in “she sells sea shells by the shore” θ =  alveolar stops in “tutor two tooters to toot” ι =  nasal stops in “many an anemone sees an enemy anemone”

Trey Jones
l’École de SpecGram, Tokyo

To keep up with this insane new publication schedule, we’ve imported another batch of Puzzle Elves™ from Japan, and they’ve come up with another bit of Linguistically-Themed Pseudo-Nihonese Puzzlicity: HanjieLinguru, a linguistiky variant of the hot Japanese picture logic puzzle Hanjie.

HanjieLinguru is a simple extension of the traditional Hanjie form, but keeping with SpecGram tradition, it incorporates just enough linguistikitude so that non-linguists will feel morally inferior. The rules are simple: first, replace each Greek letter with the number indicated by the clue provided. (The reference pronunciation is Standard American English or Standard Mexican Spanish, as appropriate.) Then proceed with the standard Hanjie rules to determine for each cell of the grid whether it should be black or white.

The cells in the grid are to be painted black according to the numbers given at the side of the grid, which indicate how many unbroken lines of painted squares there should be in each row or column, and how long each is. A clue of “2 1 4” would mean there are groups of two, one, and four black squares, in that order, with at least one white square between groups.

So, please try the HanjieLinguru puzzle, at upper right, with clues—but please don’t tell us about it if it makes you cry. If you think you and your atrophied visual-spatial cortex in that overdeveloped language-heavy brain of yours are up to it, email your solution to SpecGram. At least one random winner chosen from among those who send in correctly completed puzzles by July 15th, 2008 will be awarded a SpecGram magnet.

A solution (the correct one, even, if we’re feeling generous) and the name of the prize winners will appear in the upcoming August 2008 issue. And if you get to it right away, there may still be time to torture yourself with the Transform Puzzles from the last issue.

May Chomsky have mercy on your souls.

	I Told You it was Not the Whole (Number) Story—An Anthropological Linguistic Followup on Non-Integral Person in Åriðmatçəl Verbs—Claude Searsplainpockets & Helga von Helganschtein y Searsplainpockets
	SpecGram Vol CLIV, No 2 Contents