Asterix reloaded

As a follow-up to the last post: the asterisk works both ways!   You can not only search Noam* to get the spelling of 'Noam Chomsky' but also *Chomsky to get the spelling of his first name.

This feature works in Google Number Search as well, however the placement of the asterisk is a bit peculiar.  The asterisk doesn't go just before the word-number but before the NUM operator.

So you would type (2466759 is Chomsky): *num:2466759
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=*num%3A2466759Placing the asterisk BEFORE the search term has somewhat different applications than placing it after the search term.  What are these applications?  One use is to find out the name of company post-merger, as in BNP Paribas or ABM AMRO.  Another use is to find people who have a certain surname, like Rockefeller.   Or perhaps you are a chemist and want to know all of the compounds ending in Hydroxide.    Same case for meteorology - types of clouds

My question is how would this work on a cell phone.   I can understand that two of the portals on 466453.com would allow you to NUM the WEB and also ALLNUM the WEB (or similar terminology) without asking you to insert a 'num:' or 'allnum:'.  In this manner, I can see how the user can append an asterisk to a query on the NUM search.  The user, however, couldn't place an asterisk before the NUM function in this scenario.  I can only guess that somehow the NUM the WEB function will somehow seek for an asterisk if placed directly before a search term.  That way the user can benefit from the uses of the asterisk just like in normal Google (except the asterisk doesn't - everyone join in - work with ALLNUM).