From time to time we take you behind the scenes in the newsroom here at The Anagram Times and introduce you to our intrepid reporters. Today, let's meet Steve Allison.
Q How did you get into anagrams?
A A long-ago magazine article about you and your website - I loved it!
Q Do you remember the first anagram you made?
A No, but I remember thinking that it would be a near impossible task for me.
Q Do you have a favorite anagram?
A Having grown up with Vietnam and the Nixon/Agnew White House, I'm a fan of the classic "Spiro Agnew" anagram - "Grow a spine." The off-color variant makes me laugh, too...
Q How do you pick a news headline to anagram?
A I read news daily, and every once in a while a news caption strikes me as having a hidden angle - sarcasm, irony, and the like. If the caption is missing an essential letter or two, I use Google News to look for related articles which have the missing letter(s).
Q How do you make anagrams? Manually, software, a combination, etc.?
A I always start out manually, but after I've chopped it down about half way, using the essential words I want, I use the anagram engine to look for other candidate words, then finally anagrams with the remaining letters.
Q Describe the moment when you are working on anagramming a phrase and the last few letters just fall into place and you realize that you have an outstanding anagram on your hand.
A Like getting to the last piece in a large jigsaw puzzle and, miraculously, it fits the rest of the puzzle perfectly!
Q Approximately how long do you spend on an anagram?
A Usually about 30 minutes (but I throw away about 80% of what I start)
Q What do you do in your non-anagram life?
A Making music, writing poetry, woodworking, and hanging out with my wife, children (4) and grandchildren (8).
Q Some people use anagrams for divination. Do you think there's a mystical angle to anagrams?
A Writing of any form seems mystical - we can leave words as a legacy for future generations and we have benefited from the same! To me, anagrams overlap a bit with art, comedy, and poetry.
Selected anagrams from Steve Allison:
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