Diesel Therapy at O-Dark-Thirty

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, week after week, our quiz guys John Chaneski and Greg Plisket give us a hard time with those quizzes, don’t they?

Oh, boy, do they. But, you know, I think we do pretty well.

Although, sometimes I suspect that they’re giving us softballs.

They could be, but, you know, if they made it too hard, it would take out all the fun.

So, you and I have been planning.

And plotting.

And we’re happy to announce that now we’re going to get our revenge.

We are going to puzzle the puzzlers.

Both John and Greg are members of the National Puzzlers League.

That’s an organization of puzzle creators and solvers.

These are diehard fans of crosswords, Scrabble, word games, you name it.

Anyway, each week we’re going to challenge a member of the Puzzlers League to play our slang quiz.

And we’ll get a chance to see how they do on our turf.

On our turf? Aqueduct? Pimlico? Belmont?

No, no, no. They’ll all be right here.

And we have our first member of the National Puzzlers League on the phone right now.

Today’s contestant is Deb Amlin from Springfield, New Jersey.

Hi, Martha. How are you?

Hi.

Hello, Deb.

Hi, Grant.

So, Deb, tell us, what kind of puzzler are you?

I am a crossword constructor.

Constructor.

Ooh.

Yes. I wear a hard hat.

You do.

Okay, well, Deb, if you’re ready to play, then we’ll start, all right?

I am ready.

Okay, let me tell you how we play slang this.

Grant will give you a sentence with a blank in it.

Then he’ll give you three slang words that might fill in that blank, and your job will be to figure out which of those slang words fits best.

Now, I haven’t seen the quiz, so I’ll be joining you so we can try to figure it out together, okay?

Okay, we’ll double team them.

All right, that sounds good.

Well, here we go. Here’s the first part of the quiz.

Men, I want you to fan out, find the enemy’s 20, and then report back to base at O blank 30.

So what goes in that blank? Is it O sharp 30, O dark 30, or O hard 30?

It’s a military situation, imagine.

Right. I would imagine that if it’s military, they want you to be right on time.

And unless I’m mistaken, I would guess that it would be O hard 30.

O hard 30.

Martha, do you agree with that?

And the other options were dark 30 and…

Sharp 30. O sharp 30, O dark 30, or O hard 30.

Frank, could I hear the sentence one more time?

Sure.

Men, I want you to fan out, find the enemy’s 20, and then report back to base at O blank 30.

Well, I think I can rule out dark.

Are you sure?

I have a friend who used to complain about having to catch a plane at, oh, dark 30.

Oh.

On a regular basis.

Okay.

But I don’t know.

We’re going for something that would sort of be exactly at a certain time.

Oh, so then sharp 30 would be, either that or hard 30.

Hard, that sounds more military, don’t you think?

It does send the military.

Well, we have no idea, Grant.

Right.

In other words, we’re going around in circles here.

I’m bringing in the helicopter to rescue you now.

My best guess would be hard.

Unfortunately, the one that you decided wasn’t the right one is the right one.

It’s O dark 30.

In the military.

I should have listened to you.

The military is all about precision, but it’s also one of these things where you can plan and plan and plan, and then all of your plans are for naught.

Oh, dark 30 just means an indeterminate time after it gets dark.

Here’s the second one.

Here we go.

Okay.

We know it was you who told the papers the warden was corrupt.

Now get ready for a little blank.

We’re going to transfer you from prison to prison until you don’t know where you are.

What goes in that blank?

Now get ready for a little diesel therapy.

Or get ready for a little rubber ranging.

Or get ready for a little federal holiday.

So the last line is the key here.

We’re going to transfer you from prison to prison until you don’t know where or who you are.

Don’t forget it’s slang.

It’s slang.

Well, that sounds like something the federal government would do.

I mean, that sounds fairly federal to me.

Let me read those again.

The first one was diesel therapy.

The second one was rubber ranging.

And the third one was federal holiday.

Which of these describes maybe transferring somebody from prison to prison just to confuse them or disorient them?

Right, right.

As a form of punishment.

Well, you know, my sense of logic failed me last time.

What do you think, Martha?

I think it’s federal holiday because having once been sequestered on jury duty, we took a tour of some of the wackiest hotels in Manhattan, and that’s like a federal holiday.

But I don’t know exactly.

You know, diesel therapy could fit in there.

Rubber ranging doesn’t sound right to me, but then again, I was wrong last time.

Yeah, I would cross out the rubber ranging, but then I’m really torn between diesel therapy and federal holiday.

All right, well, here I come in.

Here’s the bell.

There’s a silent bell here.

Oh, man.

It is indeed diesel therapy.

Oh, wow.

And the kind of slangy part behind this term is that they drive you around on a diesel bus, and so it’s therapy by diesel engine.

There’s a similar term that they use in parts of California, greyhound therapy, and this refers to taking homeless people, loading them up on a bus, a charter bus, and then busting them to another town and dumping them off in the town square there.

Interesting.

Well, Deb, I want to thank you for being such a good sport and playing along.

It was my pleasure.

It was nice to talk to you both.

Super duper.

Thank you for playing today, Deb.

Thank you.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You can find out more about the National Puzzlers League at puzzlers.org.

You can also join us here on the show with your questions or comments about slang or anything else language-related.

Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.