HAMBA Results

[eLLioTT morEton]

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, Frances Poodry wrote:

> hamba (n.) in the study of Near Eastern literature, the use of
> sequentially-applied alphabeticals to refer to otherwise anonymous authors.
> From /hamba/, the first letter of the Persian alphabet.
>
> by Ranjit Bhatnagar [3 points]

Wikipedia says that the first letter of the Persian alphabet, not 
surprisingly, is "alef"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_alphabet

... as Hutch rightly guessed:

> Don't know the Persian alphabet, but I would expect the first letter to be
> something similar to Arabic's _alef_. ­ Hutch

> hamba (n.) 1. (Art) [fr. Chimwiini: hamba] a plaiting technique in which
> strands undergo the same permutation, repeatedly, until the original
> arrangement is repeated  2. (Math.) any element of Sn, the symmetric group
> on n letters, whose order is maximal in Sn.  3. (Educ.) a technique of essay
> writing in which a  small number of points are repeatedly rearranged so as
> to give an exaggerated impression of substance.
>
> by Elliott Moreton [10 points]

Partly inspired by this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieze_group

Thanks, Fran, for including all the comments!

em