Move-αnαgrαms II: Historical Edition

by Trey Jones

As noted last time, 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.

To solve the puzzle, use all but one of the letters in any of the anagrams, plus one letter left over from the previous anagram to form a single word. (There is no first or last anagram, so everything moves around in a big circle—like a tidier version of a great vowel shift or something.) Move the unused letter from any given anagram to the next one. Now use those letters to form a single word, and again, move the unused letter to the next anagram. Continue in this fashion until you have one word for each anagram. Finally, use the eight letters you moved between anagrams to form yet another word. A chimeric hint is provided in the middle of the puzzle to help you along—or, possibly, to haunt your dreams for years to come.

Move-αnαgrαms II: Historical Edition

Move-αnαgrαms II: Historical Edition

If you can complete the puzzle and send your solution to the editors of SpecGram by May 15th, 2013, you could win a SpecGram magnet. The correct solution and winners, if any, will be announced in the upcoming June issue of Speculative Grammarian.

The solution to last month’s Ro-Zeta Stone puzzle has been provided by M.A.Y.N.A.R.D., who is very disappointed that no one was able to figure it out. So, expect the translations from The Speculative Grammarian AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠ to continue to be somewhat... unreliable.

As M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. explains it, the engraving fell face down on the floor and broke. As a result, there was a figure ground reversal, everything was backward, rotated randomly, and the elements where significantly jostled from their original positions. A reconstructed and rejiggered and much more readable version of the engraving is provided below.

Obviously, it says “eso era fácil” and “ðæt wʌz izi”. That was easy!

No word yet, though, on the bizarre thermal properties of the engraving. Must be aliens.

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