Research Assistants Are Being Paid SpecGram Vol CLXXVII, No 4 Contents

L’Ishing du Gwujlang IX—Lusrveer

by Dorothea Dorfman and Theodora Mundorf
with additional assistance from Bob Kinnick and Dee Reed

Attentive readers will already be familiar with l’ishing from our prevenient research (SpecGram CLXXVI.4, etc.). Though seemingly analogous to French verlan, l’ishing connects words that can be made to line up with one another. Prior to the present discussion, we have surveyed dialects of l’ishing that are based on moving sounds or letters from one end of a word to the other. We have a short time ago happened on another previously unknown dialect, called lusrveer, in which paired words are each the phonetic reversal of the other. For example, jerks and scourge can be utilized in lieu of one another, as in “Those guys are just a bunch of scourge!”, or “I am the jerks of God, appointed to chastise you, since no one knows the remedy for your iniquity except me.”

As with l’ishing, lusrveer words ordinarily cannot be puzzled out in real time, so glossaries have been created for neophytes. However, words are not listed in the glossaries, only mnemonically merged definitions (MMDs). For example:

yanks an affliction (referring to jerks a scourge)

We have procured another clutch of these lusrveer MMDs, and request your guidance in deducing the twinned words they refer to.

In order to increase the response rate from SpecGram readers, The SpecGram Puzzle Elves™ have agreed to treat this as a puzzle. Submit your answers to the editors of SpecGram by December 15, 2016, and you could win a prize.* Some most likely correct answers and winners will be announced in the January issue.

Disclaimer

Your dialect and/or transcription system may vary.


S E I A T N O
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The solution to November’s Diagonal Latin Square puzzle is provided here. Each of the puzzlemeisters below will receive some moderately desirable SpecGram merch:

Andrew Lamont • Brennan Long • Virginia Bouchard

In addition, the following puzzlers have achieved the everlasting glory that comes with an honorable mention:

Daniel Swanson • Geoffrey Hooker


* Note that SpecGram Anti-Hoarding Guidelines stipulate that puzzle-related prizes cannot be won by anyone who has won a puzzle-related prize in the last two months—though honor, fame, and glory may still be seized on the metaphorical field of puzzle-related battle.

Research Assistants Are Being Paid
SpecGram Vol CLXXVII, No 4 Contents