Under the heading "What you get out of this column depends on what you put into it, or possibly on what is put into it by some other reader with more wit than sense and more time than you," I present the following splendid example of reader involvement above and beyond.
The reader in question is Mike Morton, occasional Dr. Dobb's contributor from the state of HI, and the subject is anagrams, as in "Swahili Menace" or "whale is anemic" for "Michael Swaine," "Legal bits" for "Bill Gates," "prig to peer" for "Tipper Gore," "Scorn in joke rubs old drab Jon" for "Jon Erickson, Dr. Dobb's Journal," and "Mr. Machine Tool" for "Michael Morton."
Dear Swahili Menace:
Your Brain Games are great; I especially enjoy the anagrams, although I'm too lazy to do them myself. A little program I wrote found a few answers for me. "Real friend or nuts" is clearly "Flatus error in den," referring to the hazards of excessive Jolt consumption while working in a home office--all too common in the software biz. But this answer had some lively competition from the following:
Copyright © 1992, Dr. Dobb's Journal
Meanwhile, "Magic land of lost tribes" appears to be a reference to those who worship and continue to attempt the revival of lost programming languages: "BASIC: Lost idol fragment." But some other possibilities are:
Yours for a new word order, Mr. Machine Tool