Ian in Cincinnati, Ohio, has noticed that some words can lose one letter at a time and a meaningful word remains. For example, drama can become dram, then ram, then am, then a. The National Puzzlers’ League has several specific names for this: If the letters are removed from the beginning, it’s beheadment, and if the letter is taken from the end, it’s curtailment. If they’re taken from either end, that’s transdeletion. Synonyms for beheadment include beheading, decapitation, or apheresis. Curtailment is also known as apocope. If you can remove both the first and last letters, that’s terminal deletion. Another kind of beheadment is jokingly called T-totaling, where the beginning word starts with the letter T. This is part of a complete episode.
This week’s challenge from Quiz Guy John Chaneski involves non-rhyming pairs of words that both end in the letter Y. Try this clue: John and his wife Jennifer recently spent a whole day there last week participating in their civic obligation. What’s...
In this week’s brain teaser from Quiz Guy John Chaneski, each clue involves switching the first and last sounds of a word to form a new word. In the case of the word look, for example, swapping those initial and final sounds leaves you with...
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