Getting Wordy

Im no good at math, but I have always loved word puzzles. When I was a kid, I could take a 24-hour road trip from Michigan to Florida with just "The Big Book of Cryptograms" to occupy me. (Five children and two adults crammed into a 1970s Ford station wagon -- whoo hoo, good times.)Dont you find it interesting that no matter how much time passes, the stuff that fascinated you as a child doesnt ever really fade, it just becomes more pronounced?For instance, right now Im on a pangram kick. A pangram is a sentence that contains within it every letter of the alphabet. Heres the most famous one (you probably remember it from typing class): "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."Well, Ive started writing and embroidering a series of pangrams about 21st century life. Say, for instance, Queen Elizabeth were to drink one glass of tipple too many and start fantasizing?(Study for Pangram "Queen Elizabeth", 2012, by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti.Cotton, thread. 8"x 10". SOLD.)The work above was part of the recent "Incognito" show at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. (Im working on a bigger version now.) Future pangrams waiting to be embroidered include subjects like Isabella Blow, Michael Fassbender, Gwyneth Paltrow, Balthazar Getty and more. (And maybe Nicky Minaj too -- she has rather a good name for pangrams because it takes care of j, k, and y in one fell swoop.) I sold another embroidery in the "Incognito" show as well. Talk about the past pushing its way into the present -- this one is based on a word puzzle I came up with in college and have been playing ever since. The goal is to transform a four-letter word into its exact opposite by changing just one letter at a time. To challenge myself even further, I set myself the task of having each new word along the way add to the meaning so that its not just a string of nonsense, its a poem.Here it is. Its called "The Journey From Love to Hate":(By Lisa Borgnes Giramonti, 2012. Cotton, thread. 8"x 10". SOLD.)Theres going to be an embroidered series of these "Four Letter Words" too. (My next upcoming group show is in July at the Marine Contemporary Gallery in Venice -- details to come.)Do you have any word games that you like to play?xx/Lisa