Beheading.

I was not the only one enchanted by Ray Love's report on the Washington Post Word Contest in Word Ways 41(1) 28-29. Jeff Grant and Jennifer Smith made their contributions in Word Ways 41(2) 109. Here are a few of my own compositions. In the game of Beheading, the answers are words with their first letters to be removed.

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A device for mammoth communication

Christmas cards from Santa Claus 

A short-lived reign

Evolution gone bad

A Scottish flirt

Personally opposing the imperial system

Brideshead Revisited

Catching between the thighs

Girlfriend at school

Place of amusement where Christians were fed to the lions

Medicine to numb the pain of losing both parents

Winning the regatta on will power

Afraid to stray from the straight and narrow

The chart of pathetic prayers

Being less interesting than someone from Denmark

A rancid drink to keep awake

Not listening to advice for caution

American retirement fund withheld

Depressingly hyperactive.

I came across a boxed game titled Beheaded. It consists of a large deck of cards, each with four tasks on it. They are beheaded, double beheaded (removing the first two letters), triple beheaded (removing the first three letters) and beheaded trio (removing the first letter, and then the second letter). The words are given, and a player acting as the clue-giver is supposed to make up the definitions on the spot in limited time. The manufacturer is Steffy Game, but no information whatsoever is given. I did not succeed in my search on the Internet either, hitting only Steffi Graf's tennis game websites.

It occurs to me that there should be a companion game called Detailing, removing the last letters from words instead of the first letters. I expect this to be much harder, as the original word and the de-tailed word both start the same way, and words which start the same way tend to mean the same thing. Thus the words tend to be short.

Other people have beaten me to this, perhaps without knowing it themselves. In the hilarious Church Bulletins in Word Ways 41(2) 103--104, Helmet Bracke featured the following pairs.

Welcome to Tartarus (Hello/Hell) Perform a lewd song (Sing/Sin)

Under Colloquy in Word Ways 41(2) 94, Scot Morris dropped the following two gems.

Pets with passion (Caress/Cares)

Comfortable with trigonometric ratios (Cosiness/Cosines)

Here are a few of mine.

Running away from Bo-Peep (Lamb/Lam)

Avoid by re-routing (Shunt/Shun)

Female lead in old stage play (Lady/Lad)

Data on the counties (State/Stat)

Addendum:

On an entirely different note, I ask for non-standard conjugations. I am not interested in standard conjugations such as ring-rang-rung, and I am certainly not interested in sub-standard conjugations such as bring-brang-brung. My example of a non-standard conjugation is chick-check-chuck. I found this sign in an Asian YMCA. "Chick out time, 11 pm. Check out time, 11 am. Chuck out time, 1 pm." Find other examples and use them in context.

Andy Liu

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada