Talk:anamonic

Chemistry sense?

Google Books has three nineteenth-century citations for another sense of this word in chemistry, but I think they might be scannos for ammoniac or similar. Equinox 22:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Someone please explain better...

From the definition and example given I still do not understand what anamonic means. Can someone who does please give a more complete definition and/or example usage?

• See Wikipedia for examples (weird or what?) SemperBlotto 22:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. After visiting this page I comprehend only that anamonic has something to do with mnemonics and anagrams, though Flying Spaghetti Monster only knows what the nature of that relationship is. I am not sure why the following is included in the entry:

"For example, the DAMOSEL stem only appears in the second of the two Internet lists mentioned above. The given anamonic is PRIZED GALS."

If the quote is intended as an illustrative example it fails completely. If included to heighten a visitor's frustration level, however, it is a rousing success. As the page stands I find its value as a dictionary entry almost non-existent. Any Scrabble players out there willing to give this an overhaul? Pastanecklace 00:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The above means that any letter in "PRIZED GALS" (the phrase) can be added to the 7-letter combination "DAMOSEL" to produce a valid word. Example: L+DAMOSEL = slalomed. A skilled player would spot that the 7 tiles on his rack spelled DAMOSEL; this would remind him of the phrase "PRIZED GALS" (chosen to be vaguely thematically related to the seven-letter stem), and he would know that a high-scoring 7-tile, 8-letter play could only be made against any of the letters in that phrase, saving him time looking for impossible anagrams. Does that clear it up? I wrote the original definition and am not sure how to improve it while keeping it suitably concise for a dictionary. Equinox ◑ 00:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for elucidating, Equinox. 'Anamonic' does strike me as difficult to define succinctly, and I think you've made an admirable effort. Your explanation of the context and illustration of the anamonic in action is immensely helpful, especially for those of us who have never experienced the world of serious Scrabble play, with its memorization of lists of words and their anagrams! And while I may understand it better now, I think the quotation undermines your attempt to convey the meaning of anamonics: the reference to "lists mentioned above" is a bit disorienting, and the all caps use of an uncommon variant spelling of word that itself is not quite quotidian (outside of renaissance faires) as the example stem lends the vague impression of anamonics as an abstruse code. What do you think about the idea of replacing the quotation with an example that illustrates the mechanics of an example anamonic (ideally one whose stem and accompanying phrase consist of high frequency words), if possible? Something to the effect of, "'CASINO' can be combined with the individual letters from the anamonic 'CLUMSY BET' to form anagrams for the following words: coCains, oiLcans, acinoUs, Masonic, caisSon, sYconia, Bonacis, acinosE, acTions". Pastanecklace 01:55, 10 December 2009 (UTC)