Anagram

The term anagram ( anagraphein of Greek, rewriting ' ) denotes a word from another word by rearranging ( permutation ) of the individual letters or syllables was formed. The operation of this letter conversion is referred to as Anagramming.

Generalizing can be formed by an anagram also that one or more lines of a poem or, more generally, any passage of text can be changed by Anagramming instead of a word, for example, a syllable, a word or a phrase.

In German, the anagram is also known as Letter or Letter sweeping change. In the vernacular, it is also known as Schüttelwort. A special form of the anagram are words that are read from the front and rear make sense (for example, storage and shelf ). The text is readable in both directions in this case, however, the order of the characters is inverted. The simplest form of an anagram is the transposed letters, in which only two letters - are reversed - adjacent to each other or not.

Often the anagram is confused with the palindrome, the forward and reverse reads the same. Since in this case but no letters are reversed, a palindrome is not a special case of the anagram. However, anagrams can be combined to palindromes such as Stock - shelf.

Origin

As the father of the anagram Lykophron applies the Greek grammarian and poet from Chalcis (c. 320 BC; † after 280 BC), with the sequence of letters απο μελίτος ( Greek for King Ptolemy II, Greek Πτολεμαίος, fawned of honey ').

The anagram in Arts and Entertainment

Often, it is the goal of Anagrammierens to achieve by the letters change a new set, so an anagram with altered sense. One such application of Anagrammierens is considered a linguistic form of art and can be seen as letters game or puzzle.

In poems, riddles and other forms of literature are of single words, but also formed of entire rows or records anagrams. This, and the long Deal with appropriate agreements to anagrammierenden sets, new and often surprising combinations are visible. In particularly ornate anagram poems there is often a relationship between the original meaning of a word and the meaning of the later anagrams, which were formed from it.

In magazines and newspapers can be found frequently and puzzles in Anagrammform, so-called business card puzzle. In most cases, the occupation of a person of the name and the city is to guess. For example: What is your profession exerts the person from having the business card? " Fr Inge C. Otherwise, Rheine ". Answer: " Schornsteinfegerin ".

Application as the encryption method

Anagrams were also used in science. Here the Anagramming served not as an art form, but to encrypt important information that should be initially not yet communicated to the public. For this, the plain text was to be kept secret anagrammiert, that is, his letters were changed arbitrarily. In cryptography, this is referred to as transposition. One way is simply to sort the letters of the plain text in alphabetical order. The resulting ciphertext by Anagramming was published.

Unlike the usual cryptographic methods, the purpose of this type of encryption was not to convey a message from a sender to a receiver so that he can decrypt with his key back and read it without that this would be possible a third party. A key exchange that is not held. The purpose of this encryption was rather first to publish only the ciphertext and to make only years later the corresponding plaintext public. Then everyone could easily Anagramming the plain text again and find that he received the identical ciphertext. Thus it was clear that the author of the original published anagram was already at the time of publication of the ciphertext in possession of the information contained in plain text. This procedure was used to secure the priority of scientific knowledge and so also can prove beyond doubt without having to reveal the scientific evidence itself early and endangering my own priority.

A decipherment, so cracking the ciphertext, without possessing the key, was practically impossible. Even with modern cryptanalytic methods is due to the large number of possible anagrams not create except in exceptional cases. This is confirmed by Friedrich L. Bauer in his standard work of cryptography: "In fact, experience shows confirmed by Shannon's theory that there is no Unizitätslänge for an anagram. " This means that a generated by Anagramming letters bag, it was the simple alphabetical order or an artful transition, can not be unambiguously converted back to the text originally agreed. This inability has nothing to do with lack of skill, time or computing power, but is a fundamental nature. While it may be possible to produce a different text from the anagram by rearranging the letters. But you can not be sure that this is the only, and therefore the right solution. Example: The anagram AELX may possibly have been formed by Anagramming the name AXEL, but maybe it was underpinned by the name ALEX.

• Galileo Galilei published his scientific knowledge " Cynthiae figuras aemulatur Mater Amorum " ( German: " The Mother of Love [meaning the planet Venus ] [ ie, the phases of the moon ] imitates the figures of the goddess of the moon after " ), with which he of his discovery of the phases Venus described, not as plain text in Latin, but in encrypted form as an anagram: HAEC IMMATURA A ME IAM frustration LEGUNTUR OY.

• Another anagram, the Galileo published, was SMAISMRMILMEPOETALEVMIBVNENVGTTAVIRAS. No one could discover in a sense, to Galileo called the plain text: " Altissimvm planetam tergeminvm observavi " ( German: "I observed the highest planet [ Saturn ] in three -faceted shape "). He was describing his observations of Saturn's rings, which he had mistaken the left and right of the Saturn sphere for two objects.

• Christiaan Huygens described 45 years later the Saturn rings correctly and likewise in the form of an anagram, in which he " nusquam cohaerente Annulo cingitur, Tenui plano, ad eclipticam inclinato " instead of the original sentence ( German: "He is surrounded by a ring which thin and flat, is nowhere connected with it and inclined to the ecliptic "), only the sorted series of letters published: AAAAAAA CCCCC EEEEE D GH IIIIIII LLLL OOOO MM NNNNNNNNN PP Q RR S TTTTT UUUUU.

• Robert Hooke also published his later named after him Hooke's law, the elementary equation of the theory of elasticity, in this way. Instead of the plain text Ut tensio sic vis ( German: " As the elongation, the force " ), he was initially only price: CEIIINOSSSTTUV.

• At the end of Carl Gustav Jung's Septem Sermones ad Mortuos is ANAGRAMMA: NAHTRIHECCUNDE GAHINNEVERAHTUNIN ZEHGESSURKLACH ZUNNUS. This anagram is unresolved. On websites you can find various hints and solution attempts. One possible solution is: CARL GUSTAV IUNG, IN KUESNACH, IAHR NINETEEN HUNDRED SIXTEEN.

Other examples

Biologists discover so many plant species that they sometimes missing original name for it. So you just called a in Bolivia (Spanish Bolivia [ boliβi̯a ] ) occurring cactus Lobivia, or from the name cotyledon is Anagramming the new name Tylecodon. Also, there are many different structures that want to be named: Thus, from the Petalum a tepal and from the panicle (slightly distorted ) the Spirre.

Various poets and writers use anagrams of their name as author name, Francois Rabelais Alcofribas Nasier for his work Gargantua and Pantagruel. The writer Paul Celan 's real name was Paul Ancel.

In Internet Parody versions circulating the line network maps of various cities (such as the London Underground or the Berlin Transport Services ), in which the station names were replaced with anagrams.

In the communications and speech recognition, the cepstrum is used as a special transformation of signals. Cepstrum was then derived as an anagram of the word Spectrum (English for spectrum). An important variable of the cepstrum is the so-called quefrency, a portmanteau, which was formed as a anagram of Frequency (English for frequency). All other parameters of the cepstrum were also replaced with anagrams of analog parameters of the ordinary spectrum, for example by Gamnitude magnitude, phase by SAPHE or Filtering by Liferting.