h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: An Anagram Entry: 'A Mean, Angry Rant' - A34257035
Author: Jordan is as God made me. - U201497

Another late nighter for me. I was quite surprised how many of those people I was able to find links to. And frankly disappointed that we don't have entries for Einstein, Connery, Mao and the Rolling Stones.

If anyone here has any good anagrams I haven't found, please let me know so I can add them in. There are *tons* of anagrams out there, but only a few are any good it seems. And before anyone asks, the second part of the entry's title is an anagram of the first part. I think most people would have caught on to that, but there's always somebody...

Hi Jordan
Great Entry

This character is a baddie who always disguises himself using an anagram: A20361647 and the last Doctor Who Christmas special, the heroine (are we allowed to use that word any more?) was Astrid (A33314960) which is an anagram of TARDIS.

Sir Paul McCartney A16932297 is fond of anagrams, you'll have to check his album titles but I know his latest is a tribute to his late wife Linda: Memory Almost Full = For My Soulmate LLM. (Linda Louise McCartney). Then there's this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7311450.stm which further proves his cleverness (or the hacks, whatever)



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Can you just pop tags around your final table

Re: Rolling Stones: A29303101 won't that do?

You haven't mentioned the fact that anagrams are beloved of crossword complilers. E.g. 'Made a Cornish drink' (= mead); 'Voices rant on' (=conversation); 'Mystics in a heap' (=metaphysicians); Apt is the cure (=therapeutics)

People:

Horatio Nelson...... Honor est a Nile
Adolf Hitler........ Hated for Ill
William Ewart Gladstone.... Wild agitator means well
Henry Wordsworth Longfellow..... Won half the New World's glory
Florence Nightingale.... Flit on, cheering angel.
Robert Louis Stevenson.... Our best novelist, Senor!
Theda Bara (actress, screen name).. Deliberate rearrangement of 'Arab death'


It might also be worth mentioning 'antigrams' - in which the letters of a word are rearranged to form a word or phrase meaning the opposite of the original:

Evangelists = evil's agents
militarism = I limit arms
misfortune = it's more fun
infection = fine tonic
filled = ill fed
violence = nice love
funeral = real fun
united = untied
marital = martial
= satan

A

You and Big Al have listed some fine examples (though very well known), but I wouldn't say they are the most entertaining. [I have quite a few like that of my own that I use from time to time on the cryptic crossword thread.]

If you want to see what the experts come up with nowadays, take a good look at this site: http://www.anagrammy.com/forum/dateorder.html

There, the most highly prized anagrams are *relevant* and also form *complete sentences*. One that I feel sure you'll enjoy:

For the evil that men do ~ doth live on after them.

That sort of thing.

Very nice! It might just be my computer, but 2 of the names in the people table are missing for me.

Wow, great feedback Thanks everyone for taking the time to read and comment.

GB -

"Re: Rolling Stones: A29303101 won't that do?"

I link to that with "He" in "He'll sing so rotten", as Jagger is of course the main vocalist. I thought it was kind of clever. But that entry's about one member of the band, rather than the band, so I wouldn't link to it in that context.

I've added one about the McCartney-Mills anagram situation, along with a footnote explaining.

El -

"Very nice! It might just be my computer, but 2 of the names in the people table are missing for me."

Are those the ones under Alexander the Great? I couldn't work out how to skip two in a table, because there were three I wanted to use for him. So I just left those blank. Not ideal, but I'll keep fiddling with it (unless someone wants to let me know how to do this)

BigAl -

I've stolen some of those you mention, and created a section on Antigrams, with some of yours and a few more I picked up elsewhere. In fact, I feel like I've stolen enough from you, I'd feel remiss if I didn't offer you a co-author credit?

"You haven't mentioned the fact that anagrams are beloved of crossword complilers."

To be honest, I was going to create a section at the end called "Uses of Anagrams" to include crosswords, but it was approaching 2 AM last night, so I decided to put it off until today. I've just added such a section, which mentions crosswords, jumble puzzles and Scrabble.

Rudest Elf -
That site is massive and incredible . I've just taken a few minutes to look through it, and have stolen a few choice anagrams, but I'll return to it when I get a chance. I've also edited that sentence to say 'more' rather than 'the most'.

'I'd feel remiss if I didn't offer you a co-author credit?'

I'd be honoured tgo be co-author on one of your Entries Jordan, especially one on wordplay as this is one of my forms of entertainment . However, I wouldn't like to usurp your chance of a single-author Entry. I'll leave it up to you

Clint Eastwood - Old West Action

Doctor Who = Torchwood (the new spin-off, in case you don't know).

I did the same with Hank Marvin, and Diana Ross. I seem to be better with personal bios than groups.

This is great, J. I think you start off with too complex an example of an anagram - maybe use something simpler first and then use the example of your first sentence afterwards.

There are a few I could mention, but there's one I really think you should include because it became a big joke in British politics a few years ago:

Virginia Bottomley (an MP at the time) - I'm an evil Tory bigot.

Okay, I've added a few more pointed out in this thread and updated the intro to create a simple example first.

Great stuff!

I found a good BBC anagramming story, which might be good if only as a link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2006/06/14/anagram_feature.shtml

The longest anagram in the world, apparently, is a 42,000-odd letter reworking of Jonathan Swift's 'The Battle of the Books'. The longest single-word anagram using non-scientific words and mixing the letters well is undefinability - unidentifiably. And, if anyone is still reading, the longest anagram that is also a homophone is discrete - discreet.

Use or avoid as you will. I just got bored while waiting for my chips to cook

42,000 words? Well, it takes all sorts I guess.
I've reworked the anagram of the first sentence. This one still makes no sense, but it's at least somewhat... linear sounding?

This is getting w-a-y too deep into territory for me, sorry

Brilliant entry - well done!

I'm glad you mention the evil Tory bigot - she was my MP until recently, but I never had the courage to quote the anagram to her when she was canvassing at the door.

Political anagrams crop up regularly in the letters pages of the satirical magazine Private Eye. One that sticks in the mind relates to this story from 1983:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/14/newsid_2534000/2534615.stm

The anagram:

Mr Cecil Parkinson, Secretary of State for Energy =
Rotter freely fornicating on S Keays. Scram, creep!

I don't know what your intentions were with this entry, Jordan, but (apart from the lists of anagrams) it really is insubstantial... when compared with Wiki's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagram

And... no offense to you or anyone else, but you need look no further than the 'Anagrammy Awards forum*' for all the examples of anagrams you'd ever need (I contributed some of my best anagrams to them for about a year ).


* From this month's nominations: http://www.anagrammy.com/cgi-bin/current.pl

"bush (noun):
A single low plant with many branches that arise from or near the ground. =
Bush (person):
A snooty, lethal, incoherent, inhuman, wrathful, warmongering b&stard."

Scroll down to the 'Long Category' for a couple of truly hilarious offerings.

This cannot be done with pencil & paper (or even Scrabble tiles): you need a sophisticated computer program. Still, the stuff these dedicated people produce, day after day, is amazing.

"El -

"Very nice! It might just be my computer, but 2 of the names in the people table are missing for me."

Are those the ones under Alexander the Great? I couldn't work out how to skip two in a table, because there were three I wanted to use for him. So I just left those blank. Not ideal, but I'll keep fiddling with it (unless someone wants to let me know how to do this)"

Yes, that's what I meant. I must not have read it closely enough to realise that they were Alexander too. No idea about Guide ML to fix it though.

Change the first three rows in that table to the following:


&nbsp;Alexander the Great&nbsp;
&nbsp;Axed the rare tangleA reference to one legend of Alexander the Great, which states that upon finding the Gordian Knot, which no one could untangle, he simply took his sword and cut it up.&nbsp;



Extra heart. A legend.



Extra-hated General.



Icy

Oh, thanks a lot Icy, that works perfectly. Fairly simple fix too, I should've thought of it. "it really is insubstantial... when compared with Wiki's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagram" The day I start holding up Wikipedia's articles as examples of how my entries should look is the day I give up on h2g2. :) I try not to even look at Wikipedia's entries on my topics. I've said I'll take a look at the anagrammy forums when I have a spare hour or two, and I will. It is pretty impressive, after all.

Wow, you've managed to insult the BBC four times in just one anagram.