When Spiro T. Agnew landed on the national scene as the VP nominee for Richard Nixon in 1968, my father thought the name sounded like a fake name in a detective story—an anagram of something else, something that would, per detective stories, reveal all. So he tried to figure out what the anagram was. Which is so him. He loves word games. Still does, age 91. And because he was a reporter at The Minneapolis Tribune, and because columnist Will Jones heard about the effort, and because columnists forever need a new idea for a column, it wound up in the newspaper. 

All of this was hardly family lore, by the way. I don't even think my Dad remembered doing it. But a few months back, while I was searching for something else on newspapers.com, I came across the columns. They're amazing.

One of the strongest of the anagrams is TOWERING SAP. There's also PORING SWEAT, which, given Nixon, is spot on. But one anagram is shockingly prescient:

No, Agnew didn't go to prison because of Watergate, it was extortion and tax fraud, and he wound up pleading guilty to one count of tax evasion and resigning office in Oct. 1973. But so many of Nixon's inner circle went to jail because of W. GATE. Hell, just having PRISON is prescient enough. But W. GATE, too? Wow.

And how about those late '60s door prizes? “Laugh-In” and Polanski and bad kids shows and Pigmeat Markham. Amazing. Half of it would be canceled today.

As for the winning entry? That, too, was prescient. It was announced Oct. 5, 1968, five years almost to the day before Agnew resigned office. The most common response was GOP RATES WIN, so Dad went for imaginative from Peter Hepokoski of 1327 SE 7th St. Dad wrote: “I especially liked his 'go 'n' tap wires' (it's constitutional!).” 

GO N TAP WIRES
PRISON W. GATE

Apparently we never needed Woodward and Bernstein, just Will Shortz. I'll leave it to others to figure out the tea leaves from DONALD J. TRUMP.