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For
quite a few years my
sister-in-law had been
sending me a word game, or
"puzzle," as they called it,
from The New York Times magazine. The game consisted of a small circle with a letter inside it surrounded by a larger circle with a letter inside it, surrounded by a larger circle divided into six equal compartments, each with a different letter inside. Using these seven letters, and only these seven letters, you were challenged to make as many words of five letters or more as you could. Proper nouns were not allowed, nor hyphenated words or contractions. The letter in the center had to be used in every word.
When the pandemic came along,
I found myself wanting more
of these word games. But all
I could hope for was one a
week. So I made up my own
word game, which is very
similar to The New York Times version. In my game, you simply think of a word with seven different letters, no more, no less, and use the letters of that word, which I like to call the "seed word," or "breeder word," to make as many words as you can. My game is the same, otherwise, as The
New York Times game, except that in my game you don't have to use a certain one of the letters in every word. Some seed words are, or course, more fruitful than others. I try to avoid using words with a "q"or a "z" or an "x." I try to think of seed words that have a preponderance of well-used consonants and vowels.
Some breeder words produce a
surprising number of
offspring. The word
'hectares,' for example,
is a very prolific word
maker. When I thought of the
word 'scholar,' I could tell
by looking at it that it too
would be a good breeder. One
of the words it produced was
a word I had not seen or
heard for decades. The only
time I had ever encountered
the word 'lascar' was while
reading a Sherlock Holmes
story as a teenager. It was
the first and only time I
have ever had a brush with
the word. As soon as it
popped up on my internal
screen, I began recalling
some of the details in "The
Man with the Twisted Lip."
One of the inhabitants of the
house in the story was
mentioned only as a "lascar,"
who lived in the shadows and
was never described. I
remember thinking that it
might be a word invented by
Conan Doyle. I also
remembered having concluded
that it was likely a word
brought back from the fringes
of the British Empire.
Recently someone looked it
up, and it turns out that a
"lascar" is a sailor from
India or Indonesia. No
mention of him being a shady
character, which was the
impression I had while
reading the story. For many
years my subconscious had
associated lascars with
rascals.
Playing this word game has
helped me discover quite a
lot about the condition of my
vocabulary. Words that had
been hiding in the back of my
word bank vault, behind
Grandma's possibly gold
bracelet, have been suddenly
recalled to life. Having
dredged up a lot of forgotten
words, "miasma," "arcana,"
"inanition," and "plethora,"
to name a few, has not,
however, given me the desire
to use these words again.
They have somehow crossed
over into the realm of the
obsolete.
Many of these words bordering
on the archaic are perfectly
good words that ought to be
used now and then. But many
of them do seem, at least to
me, to be slowly moving into
the realm of the archaic.
Other words that have cropped
up while playing the game,
such as 'midden' and 'dolmen'
are truly archaic, having
lost their usage after the
middle ages.
Whether or not my word game
has any value other than the
fun of it, certainly it is
better than reading the
dictionary. The forgotten
words pop up in unexpected
places, and for a moment I
feel like I have run into an
old acquaintance on the
sidewalk. In any case, my
word game has served as a
breath of fresh air on the
voyage of rediscovery.
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