Letter Mitosis 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 rumbling in the top of Zamboni, it’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, guys.

Rumbling, rumbling, rumbling slowly but surely and determinedly to get the job done.

Now, I hope you like this one.

This is the second in a series of three quizzes I constructed focusing on double letters.

We already made new words by splitting an O into two O’s in words like cop that became coop.

And now our letter mitosis looks at E.

I’ll give you a clue to a word that contains an E, which, if it splits into two E’s, will make a new word, which is also clued.

For example, to fix the pigsty, I used the ball-shaped side of my hammer’s head.

Would clue both pen, as in a pigsty, and peen, as in the head of a hammer.

Ball, peen, hammer. Got it.

Pen and peen. Yes, pen and peen.

So we’re looking at vowel mitosis. I love that expression, or letter mitosis.

Yes, I do too, yeah.

Vowel mitosis, yeah.

Single lead to double E. I think we can do this, Martha.

That’s right. I know you can.

I think we can.

Now, there are no etymologically related words here.

I’m not going to do fed and feed. That’s cheating.

And no invite and invitee.

Not good enough.

Yeah, we’d have to talk about ablouts and all that.

Let’s not do that.

Let’s not do that.

Here we go.

The right to exist has been granted to a special breed of honey-making insects in Peru.

B and B.

B and B is a pretty simple one to start off with, yeah.

Oh, so B-E and B-E-E.

Right, yeah.

Here’s the next one.

A decade ago, my daughter was three.

Now she’s a very young adult.

Aww.

So that was 10 years ago?

Right.

And now she’s a teen?

That’s right.

Now she’s 13.

So 10 and teen.

10 and teen.

My friend Scarlett plays the saxophone.

Your friend Scarlett plays the saxophone.

Oh.

Okay.

Red and Reed.

Red and Reed.

Red and Reed, yeah.

Yes, very good.

I love a nice concise clue.

I have so few of them.

Anyway.

The official ended the race as our boat was stuck on a ridge of coral.

Oh, the official meaning a person?

Yes.

Like a ref?

A ref and a reef?

Yes, the ref ended the race as our boat was stuck on a reef.

Do they have refs in boat races?

Yeah, sure.

Okay, yeah.

They do now.

They have officials.

I don’t know if they call them refs.

For the purposes of this one little universe you’ve just created, they do.

Tiny little mini Weverse, this Weverse right here.

I’ll wager you’ve never tried borscht as good as mine.

I’ll bet you’ve never tried beets as good as mine.

Beet soup as good as mine.

This beet soup is something you never had as good as.

It’s not good English.

I could do some borscht right now.

Cool.

Now that’s the quiz.

And I want to give a special shout-out to Ben, Ken, and Fred.

I don’t think it would have been so keen if I’d freed myself by using proper names.

So I’m sorry they got left out.

Oh, that’s nice that you had help, though, John.

Thanks. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks, John.

That was not easy.

But we really enjoyed it.

I’m taking my Zamboni out of here.

Bye, guys.

Take care.

And we’d enjoy talking with you, too.

So you can call us, 877-929-9673, to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever,

Or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.