The start of celebrity anagrams: In 1996, I got the idea of trying to find messages in people's names. At this time, I did not know that this was a centuries old pastime nor did I know the word 'anagram'. Being an avid Boggle player and an occasional Scrabble player, I had a fair knowledge of anagrams. The first name I tried was Demi Moore. I quickly found Rodeo mime (less common than the rodeo clown but apparently in existence). The second name I tried was Clint Eastwood and in a few minutes I had found Old West action. I found out later that it was a well known anagram.

The year of the anagram:  It was August 1997 and I was now devoted to finding as many anagrams of celebrities that I could. I loved the concept of anagrams because I was always fond of puzzles and now every person's name was like a puzzle and so I had an endless source of them. Generally, I was not interested in finding anagrams of people that I knew personally, like friends, coworkers or even myself. Likewise, I wasn't interested in finding anagrams of ordinary words although I dabbled in it. It was specifically famous people's names that I was interested in. I concentrated first on actors but when I couldn't think of any more, I went into sports, music and historical figures.

My original approach:  My methods for finding anagrams were fairly basic at the start. Using Scrabble tiles, I would search for a good key word, preferably topical and then I would search for a phrase or sentence from there. Failing that, I would often look for something crude. I am generally not fond of base humor but it seemed easy to find profane messages in people's names. In fact, when one searches through anagram archives on the internet, they tend to be filled with really obscene and awkwardly constructed anagrams.

The awkward construction is readily understandable. Since an anagramnatist must use the exact letters in a given subject, it is somewhat rare that you find a befitting message with correct spelling and proper grammar. That's why the same batch of anagrams keep resurfacing, such as Dormitory = Dirty room. Few subjects work out that perfectly.

The crude element to many anagrams is not so readily obvious, but upon closer examination, it also becomes quite explainable. For starters, short words have a much higher probability of being found within a given letter group and many profane words are short, hence the term 4-letter word. English contains loads of words describing genitalia, bodily functions, sexual activity, etc. Plus, there are plenty of words not originally intended to be suggestive that have acquired additional slang meanings. It's quite surprising how many short, high-probability words have acquired vulgar slang meanings and these words tend to have more impact on the mind when used in the vulgar context.

The early anagrams: Below are 5 anagrams taken from my earliest list that are representative of the time, presented in all capital letters as was my practice then.

NICOLAS CAGE = A CLOSING ACE
ROBERT DE NIRO = TORRID ON BEER
ALBERT EINSTEIN = TEEN NAILBITERS
MORGAN FREEMAN = FROM A GREEN MAN
MICHAEL LANDON = A MANDOLIN LECH

These anagrams are typical of my early ones but they appear cringe-worthy to me now. A closing ace & Torrid on beer are bland and meaningless, lacking imagination. Later, I found Laconic sage, Gal’s cocaine & A scenic goal for Nicolas and Reborn to ride for De Niro, improvements in both cases. Teen nailbiters for Einstein is the most curious of the bunch. Looking at an anagram like this now, I would instantly spot that the S in nailbiters can be mixed with the letters of teen to make tense. Tense nailbiter is a more cohesive anagram. However, Elite brain sent which I later found for Einstein makes this point moot. And From a green man? That shows very little anagram skill. A mandolin lech illustrates a flaw of mine at the time. If I found a long or interesting word within a name, I would catalog the resulting anagram even if it was crud. I should also mention that the all capital letter format was poor presentation.

Not all the anagrams I found at the beginning were of poor quality. I found many gems which are currently in the galleries now. But I also found a large array of crummy ones, far more hopeless than the 5 listed above.

Here's an interesting one! Early on, I discovered that Axl Rose must be an anagram (I'll leave you to find it), which would explain the curious spelling of his first name. It's not hard to see. Many people have found it.

The anagram that changed my approach:  During the first year, I continued with the same basic approach and I studied around 4000 names if I were to guess. About a third of the actor and musician anagrams now contained on this site were from that period. My anagrams stood well when compared to the ones on internet archives and I already had my sights on trying to publish either a book or a series of articles on my findings. One name that I studied around that time was Helena Bonham Carter. The two key words that I remember trying to use the most were actor and role. As always, I would look for topical first. Then I switched to earthman as the key word and I found Earthman on her cable. I thought that was OK. Then I found a couple more unmemorable ones and I eventually found No heart can blame her.

Initially, I prefered the former anagram to the latter. Gradually, I began to like No heart can blame her more and more. It's like a great song lyric. It's a sensible, grammatically correct sentence. Looking back, I find it hard to believe that I could prefer Earthman on her cable. I consider that to be a meaningless and poor quality anagram especially from an 18 letter name with fairly easy letters to work with. But I would have to say that No heart can blame her definitely influenced my approach to anagrams.

I began to appreciate poetic sounding anagrams more. For example, when I studied the name of another actress, Monica Potter, I originally found three anagrams: Top actor in me, Notice at prom & Romantic poet. Because the rather stilted sounding Top actor in me was topical, I used to think that it was the best, but of course Romantic poet is clearly the superior anagram. I also preferred positive anagrams to unflattering ones, that is if the letters were willing. For instance, a common archival anagram for Robbie Coltrane is Blob recreation. That's not very nice. I found A noble Brit core. (He is a Brit)

In addition to the new emphasis on the search for good English, profane anagrams were definitely on the way out. I kept the obscene anagram list for a while after I stopped trying to find them but I eventually tossed them all out. I'm sure there are people who would have found them to be hysterical but I doubt that a reputable publisher or editor would be interested and they didn't reflect my sensibilities as well.

Demi Moore

Rodeo mime

Clint Eastwood

Old West action

Robert De Niro

Reborn to ride

Axl Rose

?

Axl Rose: Can you figure this one out?

Helena Bonham Carter

Earthman on her cable ? No heart can blame her !

Monica Potter

Romantic poet

Robbie Coltrane

A noble Brit core

Anagrams revisited:  After about a year, I was tired of anagrams and I stopped composing them. I dabbled in them occasionally but I hardly did them for about eight years. In 2006, I rediscovered anagrams with some new insight, probably in part to my interest in cryptic crosswords. I would often go through old lists and I was continually finding improvements.

My first article: In the summer of 2006, I began E-mailing many publications trying to sell the idea of anagram articles. The first bite came when The Hockey News said they were interested. I studied the entire NHL from preseason team rosters, appoximately 900 names. I spent about 200 hours in total, deriving the anagrams and making the article. They warned me that they would summarise the article and I said no problem, I expected that. When the article was printed in the November 7, 2006 issue, I was shocked to see the finished result.

First off, they actually edited two of the anagrams. For instance, I couldn't come up with a very good anagram for Sidney Crosby. The best I could do was Nerdy, icy boss. I included his name in a secondary list only because he was rookie of the year and one of the league's true stars. Someone at The Hockey News thought 'No problem, I'll just change icy to ice'. They also changed Martin Lapointe's anagram I'm a pro in talent to I'm a pro talent. Yes, it sounds better but unfortunately it isn't an anagram. They didn't seem too concerned.

Worse than the faulty anagrams was the writing. The title of the article was 'Spellbound by the NHL' which is passable, although hardly inspired, but listen to the subheading: 'Players often call each other names and get cross, but what happens when you cross up a name?' Ouch! The rest of the article wasn't much different and then they stuck my name to it at the bottom. I didn't write a word of it. Amazingly, nowhere in the article does it mention the fact that Steven Galen came up with the anagrams. Anyone reading would think that I supplied the text only. Oh well, I got paid.

Inside Hockey web articles: Shortly after my disappointing experience with The Hockey News, Inside Hockey let me write two articles for their website and they were posted exactly as written. The first article was posted on Christmas day, 2006 and it remains there to this day along with the second article.

Inside Hockey anagrams part 1
Inside Hockey anagrams part 2

Chess and anagrams:  The most fun article I did was for Chess Life magazine. I was originally supposed to do one for Chess Canada but after months of hassles, I gave up on them. Chess Life looked at what I had written for Chess Canada and they were interested in doing an article. I replaced the anagrams of Canadian players with ones of American players and the article went in the May 2007 issue. I worked very hard on finding the anagrams and I was dealing with some very difficult names, mostly of Slavic origin. One of my favorite anagrams was of the daunting name Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. I found I had shaky arm over army. I have both observed and played in many chess tournaments. I've watched players in complex positions with time running out on their clock and I have seen plenty of shaky arms over armies. Alexander Grischuk = Crush a relaxed king was another favorite.

"Players often call each other names and get cross, but what happens when you cross up a name?"
Say what??

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov

I had shaky arm over army

Alexander Grischuk

Crush a relaxed king

Arrival of stevengalen.com: After these articles, I left anagrams for a year but in the fall of 2008, I decided it was time for a website and my anagrams finally had a proper home. The idea of having galleries relating to a variety of topics seemed to be the right approach. Originally, the galleries were merely lists with a few pictures thrown in but then I got the idea of adding commentary, a feature which I had not seen before in an anagram presentation. Starting with the Harry Potter anagram gallery, accompanying text was added with the idea of explaining how anagrams related to the characters and plot. Analysis of visitor trends demonstrated that this was clearly a winning idea as the two Potter pages were outperforming all the others with a very low bounce rate and a high average time per visit.

Eventually, all pages were transformed to the new format and all future pages would be designed with the same format with a few wrinkles added here and there. When doing the Potter pages, commentary was generally aimed at relating the anagrams to the plot whereas with most pages, commentary was more often aimed at saying something about the subject. The principle is the same, however, in that it adds color and makes the presentation less monotonous.

Improved solving techniques: Being away from anagrams did not diminish my ability to find them. Playing a lot of on-line Boggle kept my anagrams sharp and doing cryptic crosswords gave me some new insight. My basic approach to finding anagrams has altered greatly over time. Originally, I placed a lot of emphasis on finding significant key words, but many interesting anagrams rely more on phrasing. Now, I often start with prepositions and articles as keys. Some great anagrams can be found this way. For example, The Statue of Liberty = I better fly to the USA. I believe I started with 'to the'.

Abbreviations: I have also greatly increased the frequency in which I use abbreviations. I used to give up on many names, especially ones with too few vowels but abbreviations, which are perfectly acceptable in anagrams have opened up so many possibilities. An example is Henrik Lundqvist, who plays hockey in the NHL. I used three abbreviations in his anagram: NHL TV used rink IQ. Not only is it a decent anagram from a very challenging name, it's hockey related to boot.

- by Steven Galen