Logology (or ludolinguistics) is the field of recreational linguistics, an activity that encompasses a wide variety of

word game Word games (also called word game puzzles or word search games) are spoken, board, or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties. Word games are generally used as a source of entertainment, but can ad ...

s and wordplay. The term is analogous to the term "

recreational mathematics Recreational mathematics is mathematics carried out for recreation (entertainment) rather than as a strictly research and application-based professional activity or as a part of a student's formal education. Although it is not necessarily limited ...

Overview

Some of the topics studied in logology are

lipogram A lipogram (from grc, λειπογράμματος, ''leipográmmatos'', "leaving out a letter") is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is ...

acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fr ...

palindrome A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the words ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date and time ''11/11/11 11:11,'' and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Panam ...

tautonym A tautonym is a scientific name of a species in which both parts of the name have the same spelling, such as ''Rattus rattus''. The first part of the name is the name of the genus and the second part is referred to as the ''specific epithet'' in ...

isogram A heterogram (from ''hetero-'', meaning 'different', + ''-gram'', meaning 'written') is a word, phrase, or sentence in which no letter of the alphabet occurs more than once. The terms isogram and nonpattern word have also been used to mean the s ...

pangram A pangram or holoalphabetic sentence is a sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding. Origins The ...

bigram A bigram or digram is a sequence of two adjacent elements from a string of tokens, which are typically letters, syllables, or words. A bigram is an ''n''-gram for ''n''=2. The frequency distribution of every bigram in a string is commonly used fo ...

s, trigrams, tetragrams, transdeletion pyramids, and

pangrammatic window A pangrammatic window is a stretch of naturally occurring text that contains all the letters in the alphabet. Shortest examples The shortest known naturally occurring pangrammatic window was discovered in October 2014 through an automated processi ...

s. The term ''logology'' was adopted by

Dmitri Borgmann Dmitri Alfred Borgmann (October 22, 1927 – December 7, 1985) was a German-American author best known for his work in recreational linguistics. Early life Borgmann was born on October 22, 1927, in Berlin, Germany, to Hans and Lisa Borgmann. F ...

to refer to recreational linguistics.

Notable logologists

A. Ross Eckler, Jr. Albert Ross Eckler Jr. (August 29, 1927 – December 9, 2016) was an American logologist, statistician, and author, the son of statistician A. Ross Eckler. He served in the US Army from 1946 – 1947. He received a BA from Swarthmore College wi ...

Willard R. Espy Willard Richardson Espy (December 11, 1910February 20, 1999) was an American editor, philologist, writer, poet, and local historian. Raised in the seaside village of Oysterville, Washington, Espy later studied at the University of Redlands in C ...

Jeremiah Farrell Jeremiah (Jerry) Farrell (December 12, 1937, in Hastings, Nebraska—July 4, 2022, in Indianapolis, Indiana)

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of L ...

* Mike Keith *

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...

References

Bibliography

Books

* * * * * * {{cite encyclopedia , last1=Johnson , first1=Dale D. , last2=von Hoff Johnson , first2=Bonnie , last3=Schlichting , first3=Kathleen , editor1-last=Baumann , editor1-first=James F. , editor2-last=Kame'enui , editor2-first=Edward J. , encyclopedia=Vocabulary Instruction: Research to Practice , title=Logology: Word and language play , year=2004 , publisher=Guildford Press , isbn=1-57230-933-4

Periodicals

*'' Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics''.

Greenwood Periodicals Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood (stylized ABC-CLIO/Greenwood), is an educational and academic publisher ( middle school through university level) which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as ...

et al., 1968–. ISSN 0043-7980. *''

The Palindromist ''The Palindromist'' is a magazine devoted to palindromes, published since 1996. Initially it was published biannually. The frequency switched to irregular. It is edited by Mark Saltveit, a Portland-based stand-up comedian who won the first-ever Wo ...

''.

Mark Saltveit Mark Saltveit (born 1961) is a Vermont-based stand-up comedian, palindromist and writer, known for being the first World Palindrome Champion. Saltveit's interest in wordplay goes back to his childhood, when he and his young brothers would discus ...

, 1996–. *'' The Enigma''.

National Puzzlers' League The National Puzzlers' League (NPL) is a nonprofit organization focused on puzzling, primarily in the realm of word play and word games. Founded in 1883, it is the oldest puzzlers' organization in the world. It originally hosted semiannual conventi ...