The Whirl of Words
The Whirl of Words

Author: Jonathan Berkowitz

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2021-06-02

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1039107133

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Why do word puzzles fascinate us? How do they help develop problem-solving skills? How do they teach us about geography, literature, sports, and popular culture? How are they an international language? Jonathan Berkowitz offers a brief history of wordplay, with insights into puzzles and the brain. He offers tips on how to solve puzzles and explains the educational value of puzzles. Challenges in the form of rebuses, anagrams, codes and cryptograms, crosswords, and wordplay with numbers supply even more fun! The Whirl of Words is a unique, rich, and intriguing tour of a wide variety of word puzzles certain to stimulate a brain work-out.

Professor Renoir's Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights
Professor Renoir's Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights

Author: Randall Platt

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2019-07-23

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0062643363

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A gripping historical fiction friendship story that will grab everyone by the heartstrings and never let go. A giant, a dwarf, and three doomed circus animals . . . By her fourteenth birthday, Babe Killingsworth measures 6ʹ9ʺ and weighs 342 pounds. In 1896, what other options does a giant have but to join a carnival? Her only real talent is handling animals: “Critters is folks to me.” The cheap outfit her feckless father sells her off to offers critters galore; an escape from Neal, Idaho; and a bit of fame. It also opens the doorway to exploitation and neglect. But Babe’s love for Euclid (a chimp) and Jupiter (a bear) keeps her anchored, and in Professor Renoir’s Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights, she is among her own kind. Enter Carlotta Jones, billed as the world’s smallest girl, whose elephant act leaves much to be desired. At thirty inches tall, Carlotta is beautiful, spoiled, and demanding and has very little talent—Egypt, her elephant, dances better than she does. How can a giant like Babe and a dwarf like Carlotta ever see eye to eye? They don’t at first, but soon they understand that a common enemy can bring anyone together—even a giant and a dwarf. "Platt proves again she is unafraid to tackle intensely emotional issues for young readers in this beautifully written piece. Like its title, it inspires both curiosity and delight.” —Booklist

The Codebreakers
The Codebreakers

Author: David Kahn

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1996-12-05

Total Pages: 1307

ISBN-13: 1439103550

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The magnificent, unrivaled history of codes and ciphers -- how they're made, how they're broken, and the many and fascinating roles they've played since the dawn of civilization in war, business, diplomacy, and espionage -- updated with a new chapter on computer cryptography and the Ultra secret. Man has created codes to keep secrets and has broken codes to learn those secrets since the time of the Pharaohs. For 4,000 years, fierce battles have been waged between codemakers and codebreakers, and the story of these battles is civilization's secret history, the hidden account of how wars were won and lost, diplomatic intrigues foiled, business secrets stolen, governments ruined, computers hacked. From the XYZ Affair to the Dreyfus Affair, from the Gallic War to the Persian Gulf, from Druidic runes and the kaballah to outer space, from the Zimmermann telegram to Enigma to the Manhattan Project, codebreaking has shaped the course of human events to an extent beyond any easy reckoning. Once a government monopoly, cryptology today touches everybody. It secures the Internet, keeps e-mail private, maintains the integrity of cash machine transactions, and scrambles TV signals on unpaid-for channels. David Kahn's The Codebreakers takes the measure of what codes and codebreaking have meant in human history in a single comprehensive account, astonishing in its scope and enthralling in its execution. Hailed upon first publication as a book likely to become the definitive work of its kind, The Codebreakers has more than lived up to that prediction: it remains unsurpassed. With a brilliant new chapter that makes use of previously classified documents to bring the book thoroughly up to date, and to explore the myriad ways computer codes and their hackers are changing all of our lives, The Codebreakers is the skeleton key to a thousand thrilling true stories of intrigue, mystery, and adventure. It is a masterpiece of the historian's art.

Word Freak
Word Freak

Author: Stefan Fatsis

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2001-07-07

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 0547524315

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This “marvelously absorbing” book is “a walk on the wild side of words and ventures into the zone where language and mathematics intersect” (San Jose Mercury News). A former Wall Street Journal reporter and NPR regular, Stefan Fatsis recounts his remarkable rise through the ranks of elite Scrabble players while exploring the game’s strange, potent hold over them—and him. At least thirty million American homes have a Scrabble set—but the game’s most talented competitors inhabit a sphere far removed from the masses of “living room players.” Theirs is a surprisingly diverse subculture whose stars include a vitamin-popping standup comic; a former bank teller whose intestinal troubles earned him the nickname “G.I. Joel”; a burly, unemployed African American from Baltimore’s inner city; the three-time national champion who plays according to Zen principles; and the author himself, who over the course of the book is transformed from a curious reporter to a confirmed Scrabble nut. Fatsis begins by haunting the gritty corner of a Greenwich Village park where pickup Scrabble games can be found whenever weather permits. His curiosity soon morphs into compulsion, as he sets about memorizing thousands of obscure words and fills his evenings with solo Scrabble played on his living room floor. Before long he finds himself at tournaments, socializing—and competing—with Scrabble’s elite. But this book is about more than hardcore Scrabblers, for the game yields insights into realms as disparate as linguistics, psychology, and mathematics. Word Freak extends its reach even farther, pondering the light Scrabble throws on such notions as brilliance, memory, competition, failure, and hope. It is a geography of obsession that celebrates the uncanny powers locked in all of us, “a can’t-put-it-down narrative that dances between memoir and reportage” (Los Angeles Times). “Funny, thoughtful, character-rich, unchallengeably winning writing.” —The Atlantic Monthly This edition includes a new afterword by the author.