Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle involves subtracting the names of Greek letters from sentences. For example, the name of which Greek letter could be removed from the following sentence to leave another English word? I piled my gear on the horse that was in front. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Greek Letter Word 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 here he is, our quiz guy, John Chaneski.
Hi, John.
Here he is.
Hi, Grant.
Hi, Martha.
How are you guys?
What’s up, bud?
Well, I have for you this week sort of a classic puzzle.
Now, a classic puzzle type is to take a word and remove one letter from somewhere in that word to leave another word, right?
Now, that’s what we’re going to do today.
Classic.
But you know what else is classic?
Greek.
So, the one letter you’ll be removing from these words is the name of a Greek letter.
For example, if I said, I piled my gear on the horse that was in front, you would remove the letter pi from piled to get the word led.
Now, as you can see, the sentence itself sort of clues the result word.
Okay?
Okay.
All right?
We’ll start with an easy one.
The alphabet is fun to learn, I’ll wager.
Alpha.
Alpha and bet.
We’re removing alpha from alphabet, and we get the word bet, which is also a wager.
Yes, very good.
Perfect.
That’s how we like to hear it.
Here’s another one.
The police detained him after he ate his fancy meal.
The police detained him after he ate his fancy meal.
I think it’s detained.
That’s what I zeroed in on, but…
That’s the word you’re looking for, yeah.
Oh, it is?
Okay.
Eta.
Yeah.
Take Eta, E-T-A, from detained, and it leaves dined, which is what he did with his fancy meal.
Yes, very good.
Perfect.
Now, when my kids emulate me, it makes me super happy.
When my kids emulate me, it makes me super happy.
Right.
So that would be mu, M-U.
Right.
And you take that out and you get elate.
Which is happy from emulate.
Yes, very good.
Here’s another one.
The Pinot Noir was rejected.
Oh, the pie from Pinot gives us not.
Yes.
Not.
Yes, it was rejected.
It was not.
How about this one?
This one Sharpie is for the three of us to use.
Sharpie.
Share.
Pie from Sharpie leaves share.
Yes, very good.
The tipsier patrons were in the upper level.
The tipsier, meaning drunker?
Yes.
The tipsier patrons were in the upper level.
Yes, so if you take out Psy from tipsier, then you get Tear.
The upper Tear.
Yes, very good, Martha.
Nice job.
Now, as for me, I’m going to hail a taxi and take out the Xi and just say, ta, goodbye, guys.
TTFN. We’ll talk to you next week.
This is a fun show about language.
We’d love to have you be a part of it.
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