The Wordsmith

by Chris Sinacola

Big Bang for NASPA

Word freaks should never be without a book, and my personal feeling is that something other than the SCRABBLE dictionary is de rigueur for any tournament, be it a local one-day or a road trip. During the three-day Hartford Open in June, I brought along Simon Singh’s delightful Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe, hoping that immersion in the scientific account of creation might allow a few more killer words to slip into my brain, perhaps pushing a game or two from no man’s land into the win column. Failing that, I could at least console myself with a good book on Saturday night – as I did when my play of SQUARKS failed to draw a challenge in a narrow loss.

Retracing the halting steps of ancient and medieval philosophers and astronomers toward a greater understanding of the universe does in fact yield a wealth of interesting words for our lexicon. Examples include EPICYCLE, ETHER, DEFERENT, PERIHELION, APOGEE, and many other terms pertaining to celestial mechanics. Another favorite, ALMAGEST, “a medieval treatise on astrology or alchemy,” has a particularly interesting history.

The Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy penned a work in 150 AD that would serve as the basic astronomical reference for centuries to come. Ptolemy’s original Greek title, Mathematiké Sýntaxis, or The Mathematical Treatise, was also referred to in Greek as Hé Megálé Sýntaxis, or The Great Treatise.

In 827 AD, this work was translated into Arabic for ease of use by Islamic scholars, who corrupted the Greek word for greatest, and gave it the title al-kitabu-I-mijisti. By this time, Europe had fallen into cultural darkness relative to the Arabic world, and it was only later that Western Europeans rediscovered Ptolemy’s work by translating the Arabic into Latin. Thus, from Greek, through Arabic, into Latin, and thence on to English, we have ALMAGEST, and enough dictionaries agree to make it part of our lexicon.

Many other arguably “proper” nouns have made such a transition from the annals of science. Another personal favorite is CEPHEID, as in Cepheid variable, a star (usually a yellow supergiant) whose luminosity can be measured and used as a “standard candle” to determine stellar distances. The tale of how astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt unpuzzled the Cepheids a century ago makes for great reading. Her efforts laid the groundwork for major advances in astronomy, including Edwin Hubble’s discovery of the expanding universe.

The Cepheids take their name from an inconspicuous northern constellation, Cepheus, which Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable informs us was the name of the king of Ethiopia, “husband of Cassiopeia and father of Andromeda.” ANDROMEDA, I hasten to add, is acceptable. If you guessed it’s a plant, points for you. It’s the bog rosemary. I mentioned this to my wife, who noted she had just planted one in our backyard. Clearly, I’ve been paying too much attention to the dictionary!

It strikes me as more than a bit unfair that Hubble, arguably the greatest astronomer of modern times, has thus far failed to get his surname into our lexicon, while Cepheus, Andromeda, Draco and so many other historical figures have been so honored. Any number of rockhounds have also made the cut thanks to their earthbound discoveries, including such gems as PROUSTITE, PEROVSKITE, and AUSTENITE, the last of which startled me one day during a beat down from Quackle. I mean no disrespect toward geologists, but I am holding out hope that HUBBLE* will someday be acceptable. Personally, I think it would be a good term for the gravitational wobbles that stellar light undergoes. There may already be a technical term for this, but I’m not aware of it if there is.

One final tale from Singh’s book concerns the Russian-American scientist George Gamow, who drew upon Middle English when he needed a term to describe the mix of subatomic particles that made up the early universe. “He called this mix YLEM (pronounced ‘eye-lem’), a word he stumbled upon in Webster’s Dictionary,” Singh writes. “The obsolete Middle English word means ‘the primordial substance from which the elements were formed’ – a perfect description of Gamow’s hot soup of neutrons, protons and elections.”

It is entirely likely that had Gamow’s thumb landed elsewhere in the dictionary, we Scrabblers would have been deprived of one of the oddest looking and most delightful four-letter-words in our arsenal – or, as the Middle English would have it, our “word hoard.”

Some references suggest YLEM derives from a Greek word for matter. I am not convinced of the connection, but, for SCRABBLE purposes, just remember that YLEM takes a front hook of X for XYLEM. The only other acceptable five ending in –LEM is GOLEM, a term from Jewish mysticism for an automaton-like servant made of clay, deriving from the Hebrew for an embryo, or something incompletely developed – a meaning not unlike YLEM, come to think of it.

PERIBLEM, PHELLEM and PROBLEM round out the list of -LEMS likely to emerge from the primordial alphabet soup of SCRABBLE.

As for my fortunes at Hartford, I did close out Sunday with a fairly big bang, winning four of five and turning my rapidly collapsing universe into a steady-state model at 10-10, +189.

Postscript: A few weeks after Hartford (and after penning this piece), I was playing at the Lexington, MA Club #108 and held an opening rack of CDEEHIP. My opponent opened the game with BANTER, and I managed only PI(N)CHED in reply, failing to discern either DECIPHE(R) or CIPHE(R)ED. Only later did I realize that my friend CEPHEID was winking at me from that rack all along. It didn't play, but failing to recognize one's friends is always disappointing.

Chris Sinacola is co-director of the Worcester, MA SCRABBLE Club #600 and a sometimes very dense white dwarf on the tournament circuit.