Celebrity Name Trivia Game

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And look who it is.

It’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

Hello, John.

Hi, guys.

Look, it’s me.

I hope you like the beard.

Do you like the beard, the new beard?

I do like the beard.

Beardalicious.

I have this great little quiz for you guys.

You know, at the Museum of Mathematics, where I work, we have this in-house code that we use when we refer to our exhibits.

Rather than use the exhibit’s full title, which are typically two words, we use the first two letters of each word.

For example, if we had an exhibit called, say, Jolly Integers, we’d call it Join.

That’s the first two letters of jolly and the first two letters of integers.

Okay.

Join.

Get it?

Okay.

Now, it occurred to me that you could use a shorthand for people.

Sometimes you’d get a nonsense word, like Abraham Lincoln would be Aboli, right?

Mm—

But sometimes you get a real word, like Paul Newman would be…

Mm, pain.

Pain, right, like a pain of glass.

Now, I’ll read you a short sentence about a famous person.

In that sentence will be a four-letter word made from the first two letters of that person’s first and last names, and you tell me who they are.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Wow.

At least you’re giving us the answer in the sentence, right?

Yeah, it’s right in there.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

And speaking of math, I wonder if you need to know math to be the prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Oh, Margaret Thatcher.

Yes, very good, Margaret Thatcher.

Oh, math.

Get it?

Yeah, that’s the word.

It would probably help if you tell people what the word is that is your clue.

Some people, it might go right by some people.

Okay, will do.

Good.

I’ll bet you wish you had as good A Way with Words as this playwright.

So four letters.

Wish.

It’s wish.

William Shakespeare.

Yes, William Shakespeare.

Nicely done.

200 years ago, pianos got used pretty hard.

I hope this famous composer had some lube ready to keep his working smoothly.

Famous composer.

Lube.

Lube.

Ludwig van Beethoven.

Yes.

Yes, Ludwig Beethoven.

Very nice.

I love it when you punch the word.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I try.

Thank you.

By the way, I make no guarantees if there was actually lube, piano lube, back in, like, 200 years ago.

Probably was like whale fat or something, right?

Probably, sure.

Now, this president was no joke.

He won a Pulitzer Prize and created the Peace Corps.

John Kennedy.

John Kennedy.

Very good.

Hola, Papi.

Did you know this influential 20th century artist was born in Spain?

Hola, Papi.

Pablo Picasso.

Papi.

Papi.

Papi.

Si, si.

Pablo Picasso.

Now, he’s been the host of a show on SiriusXM for eight years, but he’s been in the business a lot longer than that.

Howard Stern.

Yes, Howard Stern from the word.

I don’t know.

I’m still figuring out this game.

She’s working by gut alone, man.

Gut alone.

This is the subconscious just connected directly to her mouth.

And Grant comes in and just sweeps up.

That’s good.

Nicely done, Grant.

We make a great team, don’t we?

Yes.

Now, this astronaut didn’t just get near the moon.

He walked right on it.

Neil Armstrong, near.

Neil Armstrong, yeah.

Nice.

It has not just come near.

I would travel over Hill and Dale to see this talk show host.

I’d better hurry.

David Letterman.

David Letterman.

Now I get it.

Dale.

Yes, Dale.

David Letterman.

This is the last one.

Here we go.

If you mash together a bunch of different things, the result is sometimes likened to this author’s most famous character.

Mary Shelley.

Yes, Mary Shelley.

Frankenstein.

Right.

And the word is?

Mash.

Mash.

Mash.

Right.

Nicely done, you guys.

That was great.

That’s a good one.

This is a good one.

That’s really good.

John, thank you very much.

Fun times as always.

And we will talk to you next week, all right?

See you then.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, John.

Bye-bye.

And if you’d like to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever, call us, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

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