the authors of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," "Silas Marner," and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" have something in common besides being British. They are all better known by their pseudonyms, or pen names, than by their real names. Here are brief biographies of 15 famous writers who wrote pseudonymously. From the information supplied, identify each nom de plume: 1. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was a steamboat pilot before he became a writer. In 1863 he took on the pen name that was a nostalgic reminder of his riverboat days. 2. He meant what he said, and he said what he meant, and his books have pleased children one hundred percent. Theodor Giesel conjured up and drew creatures that now exist in the imaginations of generations of children. 3. Convicted of embezzlement, William Sydney Porter spent almost four years in prison, where he began his career as an immensely popular writer of short stories. Most of his tales are about life in New York and are marked by surprise endings. 4. An unpublished Atlanta writer named Peggy Marsh submitted an incomplete manuscript that filled a large suitcase. The title of the novel was to be Tomorrow Is Another Day, and its heroine was to be called Pansy. After a great number of changes, including the title and name of the heroine, the book was published in 1936 and quickly became an all-time bestseller, inspiring a blockbuster movie and, 50 years after that, a blockbuster sequel. 5. For many years, Manfred Lee and his cousin Frederic Dannay functioned as one author, an eccentric bookworm who allegedly wrote about his adventures as a detective. 6. Russian-born Yiddish author Solomon Rabinowitz took his pen name from a Hebrew expression meaning "peace be unto you." 7. British novelist and critic John B. Wilson is most famous for A Clockwork Orange. His works often combine wordplay and a grim view of life. Answers 1. Mark Twain 2. Dr. Seuss 3. O. Henry 4. Margaret Mitchell 5. Ellery Queen 6. Sholem Aleichem 7. Anthony Burgess Here's the Verbivore's Challenge. The first reader to submit the correct answer will receive a $25 gift certificate from Borders Books and Music. It's hard to imagine why a writer who goes to the trouble of scratching out a work of art would want to be known by another identity. On the other hand, if you were born Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin, Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault, or Aleksey Maximovich Peshkov, you did adopt a pseudonym. List them here: 1. 2. 3. Please enter your full name Please enter your email address Is your answer all filled in? Then press the SUBMIT button below. This quickly sends your answers back to SALON. There is no need to press this button twice. The winner of the last Verbivore Challenge was Robin M. Shapiro, who correctly guessed the following: 1.Many words in our language transmogrify into other words when their first letter is beheaded—march/arch, pirate/irate, slaughter/laughter. A rare cluster of English words change from one syllable to two syllables after beheadment, so that the shorter word is double the number of syllables of the longer word. Almost every member of this species ends in the letter d—dragged/ragged, drugged/rugged, paged/aged, snake/naked, twinged/winged—but one doesn't. Identify that word. Answer: Vague Language expert Richard Lederer's latest book is "Pun and Games," wordplay for kids. He comments on language for National Public Radio and other radio stations and is the Grammar Grappler for Writer's Digest. He can be reached at rlederer@tiac.net. Visit the newly-erected Verbivore web site at http://www.tiac.net/users/rlederer/index.htm