This month’s Puzzle Corner activity has an ocean theme. In it, students
are presented with a number of anagrams. Anagrams are words or collections
of words whose letters are rearranged to form new words or collections of
words. For example, an anagram for canoe is ocean.
Anagrams have a long history
in the puzzle community. Lewis Carroll, who was really the 19th century mathematician
Charles Dodgson, was an inveterate puzzler, and anagrams formed a signi€cant
part of his repertoire. Anagrams and puzzles also play an important role
in some of his books, like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
This activity
presents a number of words or phrases whose letters are to be rearranged
to form new words or phrases that are somehow related to oceans. The €rst
page contains the words or phrases to be rearranged. The number of lines
appearing after the original anagram indicates the numbers of words in
the rearranged anagram. A second page providing hints is given to keep students
(and possibly their teachers) from getting too frustrated. You may want
to
let students work on the anagrams for a little while before giving them
the page with the hints.
Ocean Anagrams (187k PDF file)
I hope that you and your class find the anagram activity
enjoyable.
