A Horse of Another Color

Authors

William Sunners

Abstract

William Van Sant, a government clerk in Washington D.C., won 50 thousand dollars in 1950 by using the word CAMELOPARD to identify an illustration of a giraffe in a contest puzzle. This unfamiliar word united perfectly with other object-names in a diagram that yielded a higher numerical total (based on letter-values) than it would have had he used GIRAFFE. His achievement demonstrated the importance of having a large collection of synonyms as an aid in contest puzzle-solving.

Recommended Citation

Sunners, William (1978) "A Horse of Another Color," Word Ways: Vol. 11 : Iss. 4 , Article 16.
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/wordways/vol11/iss4/16