The column's name is "Words & Stuff." The column's name is called "Logophilia Weekly."

October 20, 2007 12:50 PM

"Words & Stuff" is a column on wordplay. It lasted from January 1997 to September 2003. The six alphabets of content include pangrams, nonlimericks, monosyllabism, names for wind, Gilbert and Sullivan's Xena, Warrior Princess, and an interesting cameo in Hamlet. Other highlights, with more in the archives.

Though the column itself hasn't been updated in a long time, Mr. Hartman is still alive and updating his journal.

posted by flatluigi (9 comments total)

The Xena bit was truly wonderful.
posted by Riverine at 1:10 PM on October 20, 2007

good stuff - monosyllabism reminded me of this
posted by hypersloth at 1:33 PM on October 20, 2007

Nice, and it raises an interesting issue: if a website is dormant, is that it? Or can old sites which are still worth reading live on?
posted by Phanx at 2:10 PM on October 20, 2007

The limericks link is really fantastic. Features meta-limericks like:

"There was a young bard of Japan
Whose limericks never would scan
When they said it was so,
He replied, "Yes, I know,
But I always try to fit as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can."

Plus -- a baf sighting!
posted by Rock Steady at 5:40 PM on October 20, 2007

Awesome link.

As to the windnames thing. My name, Kári, is the Icelandic name for the north wind (though the name is actually the same word, way back, as 'curly'). I've been told, but can't find corroboration online, that the Hawaiian name for for the south wind is pronounced the same (KOWrih).
posted by Kattullus at 8:07 PM on October 20, 2007

I just spent an inordinately long period of time reading every link in your posting...I'm sure I could've been doing something productive, but it doesn't matter...I'm just so happy now. Yes, I am a huge nerd. Thank you.
posted by SixteenTons at 8:12 PM on October 20, 2007

This MetaFilter comment has three a's, one b, two c's, twenty-six e's, nine f's, one g, six h's, twelve i's, three l's, four m's, fourteen n's, nine o's, nine r's, twenty-four s's, sixteen t's, five u's, five v's, five w's, four x's, & three y's.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:40 AM on October 21, 2007

The Xena 'musical' was hilarious.

...(And many have attempted, by a host of methods mystical,
To tell if our relationship's sororal or sapphistical).
posted by hojoki at 8:38 AM on October 21, 2007

It's now been eight months since this blog went on hold. The plan was to integrate the old Words & Stuff columns into this blog, and integrate some entries from my main blog, and relaunch this blog as a new Words & Stuff blog.

Instead, I set it aside and tried not to think about it. It was too big a project to tackle.

But I've been gathering material all this time; especially Neology-style material (words I haven't seen before), but also various other stuff.

And this weekend, links to Words & Stuff from both Metafilter and Languagehat inspired me to get moving again.
posted by flatluigi at 4:08 PM on October 22, 2007