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.