Food Chains
Berry-picking at its ripest
At the recent American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Patrick Berry — long known for his elegant Rows Gardens and other puzzle forms — was given the Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award for Lifetime Achievement in Crossword Construction. In a tribute video, he gave some insight into the ever-active mind of the puzzlemaker, sharing this observation:
I was eating dinner a couple of weeks ago, and there was a bottle of steak sauce on the table that had the word meatloaf on it. And I noticed that if you removed one letter from meatloaf and anagrammed the rest, you could spell a second type of food. And if you removed one letter from that and anagrammed again — you could spell a third type of food.
He notes that this is the kind of thing his brain does all the time, so it’s a good thing he gets paid for it — we agree (and empathize). Now, we wouldn’t normally spoil a good meatloaf, but in this case we’ll give you the answer:
In wordplay, this process is known as a transdeletion — a shortening of transposed deletion.
Transdeletions → Iron, Steel, Sand
Transdeletions have been a wordplay staple for well over a century, so named by members of the Eastern Puzzlers’ League, the precursor to the National Puzzlers’ League. One early example appeared in Chicago’s Inter Ocean newspaper way back in 1894, when such things were all the rage.
Interocean is itself a fertile transdeletion of words like intolerance / crenelation (interocean+L) and phrases like Ancient Rome / Minoan Crete (interocean+M), a satisfying anagram pair.
At the extremes, in 1986 Word Ways editor A. Ross Eckler noted Kyle Corbin’s discovery of a well-mixed 17-letter “transdeletion pyramid” using words derived only from Webster’s Third unabridged dictionary.
In his book Wordplay, Chris Cole published a longer Websterian transdeletion, from an 18-letter word:
uneconomicalnesses (18) → sonoluminescenses (17)
Longer transdeletions with more inclusive criteria have been noted, and certainly longer ones are yet to be discovered.
Food Chains
But back to Berry’s query. His musing got us looking for more culinary transdeletions, one or more of which in succession we will call a food chain. Here, we present some discoveries, leading to a pictorial quiz. By convention, we’ll allow food and drink items, plurals, and the occasional brand name.
In honor of Patrick, we’ll start with a berry theme:
Q: What food item can be made by removing two letters from RASPBERRIES and rearranging the rest?
A: SPARE RIBS
As for food chains, there are numerous transdeletions that connect one food item to another to make a 2-link chain, such as:
albacore → acerola (a large cherry)
borscht → broths
lettuce → cutlet
marinade → Madeira
rump steak → tempuras
Can you identify these 2-link food chains? (Answers at end of post.)
Including brand names opens up more possibilities. For instance, start with the letters in JACK DANIELS. Now remove the J and rearrange. What are you left with?
Would you believe… ISLAND CAKE? Apparently it was the “dessert trend of 2020” in lieu of taking actual vacations during COVID-19 — though as mere word enthusiasts we cannot confirm this. (For more culinary detail you may have to visit Beyond Curdplay).
Can you identify the food items which can be formed by removing a letter from these brands, and rearranging?
Some chains connect 3 foods, as in Patrick’s original example
chitlins → litchis → chilis
oregano → orange → genoa
latkes → steak → sake
Some connect four:
maraschino → macaronis → Marocain → manioca
Marocain — the word that won the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee (look for our own Ben Zimmer as Vocabulary Judge this year!) — is French for “Moroccan”. It typically refers to a fabric, but is also a type of wine grape, and thus a link in our food chain.
Manioca is an alternate name for the cassava, more commonly known as manioc — a potential continuation of the chain, though it involves removing a letter without any rearrangement.
We’ve found food chains of length 5, one of which is in the puzzle below.
Last, we’ll note a trio of similar crustaceans:
First is the familiar lobster, which transdeletes to sorbet. We could choose to make a 3-link chain starting with the smoked fish bloaters (formerly popular in Yarmouth and other parts of the UK), but we would merely be distracting ourselves with a (literal) red herring.
Next, the spiny lobster called the langouste in French cuisine (it’s just French for “lobster”). Also known as a spiny lobster or (for B-52s fans) rock lobster, only the French form gives us a food chain, transdeleting first to tangelos, then to gelatos. We might start with an added C for gluconates —but this is more of a food additive than a food.
That two related crustaceans (lobster, langouste) transdelete down to such similar desserts (sorbet, gelatos) must be of some significance—at least in the wordplay world, if not the kitchen.
The last image shows a third relative — a langoustine, whose plural langoustines is an anagram of snail’s tongue. While we cannot confirm this to be a French delicacy, we also cannot rule it out. Continuing a food chain from this starting point is left as an exercise for the reader.
We hope that the fruits of Berry’s observation have led to some interesting and tasty discoveries. As a final challenge we offer the following visual puzzle, also featured in our May newsletter. The solution will be given in our June newsletter — make sure to subscribe so you won’t miss it.
Answers
1. pale ale → paella
2. farfalle → falafel
3. meusli → limes
4. Special K → pickles
5. Pepsi Cola → popsicle
Hat tip to Evan Birnholz, whose tweet sparked this idea.
