aenigmata symposii
«aenigma» is a latin word that has its origin from ancient Greek «αἴνιγμα»; it stand for riddle or brain teaser. The enigmas have been a very ancient custom among the Greeks to have fun proposing puzzles to solve. Their inclination for this type of entertainment is demonstrated by the fact that some eminent citizens have acquired a considerable reputation like inventors and writers of puzzles.
The «ars magna»
Anagram is built by using exactly the same letters of the original term, but with a different rearrangement. We also consider the anagram as an enigma: a primary form of cryptography. The ancient Greeks attribute the invention of the anagram to Lycophron (third-century BC) who surprised his sovereign Ptolemy Philadelphus greatly.
anagrams “means” ars magna
Assuming we have two lemmas, for example we can use two very simple words like “arc” and “car”. We can consider these words are anagrams of one another if it is possible turn the first term into the second by rearranging its letters and viceversa. It is immediate that “arc” and “car” are anagrams: we have just to permute “c” from back to first position. “Listen” and “silent” are anagrams, as are “arc” and “car”. We define “anagram” two or more meaning words that exactly reproduces the letters in another order using all the original letters exactly once. Note that both start and destination word must be make full sense.
Why we write the word «anagrams» and we can read it as the latin phrase «ars magna»?