Steve, I know how the thing works, but I can't solve it. I can, however, offer some clues to other solvers. It's a multi-syllable word: "head" means first syllable, "tail" is last syllable, "middle" is one or more syllables remaining after first and last are taken off (hence "middle" is "left"?), and means nothing. Maybe with a little help from my thesaurus I'll figure it out... --seed