Wordplay that involves changing one letter in a given word to produce a different legitimate word can be traced to Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece puzzle called the doublet. For example, given the initial ...

I have been thinking about things in the natural world with names that share a common attribute. One of those themes is the number of animals, plants, and even clouds, that include the word “tail.” ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...