Mad Pancakes and Mad Gangster Slang Quiz

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And it’s time for our weekly slang challenge,

Where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League.

Today’s contestant is Joe Miller from Howell, New Jersey.

What you know, Joe?

Hi there.

Come on down.

What do you do there in New Jersey?

I work for an integrator on security systems for border and airport type operations.

Oh.

Well, Joe, you must have a favorite slang term you’d like to share with us.

I do indeed.

This is a family flying, my wife and I.

She drives a yellow VW Beetle, and we have a term called the Beetle Effect.

When you’re driving down the road and you come up behind somebody

And their speed is not all that constant.

We tend to drive with a cruise control on, so our speeds are usually pretty constant.

Sometimes somebody starts slowing down because they’re not paying attention or whatever

When you’re behind them, so she or I will tend to pull out

To try to pass that person.

And she, far more often than I,

Finds that that sort of wakes up the person

That she’s trying to pass.

And they speed up and kind of defeat

The purpose of the whole thing.

Yes.

Sometimes she falls back and gets in behind them,

And after a little while,

They start losing their attention again.

Is it because she drives a…

Something happens to her far more often than it does to me,

So we call that the beetle effect.

Because she drives a beetle and you don’t.

You think it’s because people don’t want to be passed by a beetle?

It’s hard to say.

It might be the bright yellow colors more often wakes them up.

Or it may be that people have a perception that the beetle, which is an incorrect perception,

That the beetle is not a very powerful car, and so we shouldn’t be passed by.

You’d be humiliating.

It could be the flashing lights on top of the car and the sheriff’s logo on the side.

No, I’m kidding.

I’m kidding.

We never thought of that.

Well, are you ready to play a game?

Sure.

All right, well, I’ve got a quiz for you.

I’m going to give you a sentence with a blank in it and two possible answers.

Only one of them is correct.

If you need help, Martha’s standing by.

All right?

Right here.

All right, here’s the first one.

The New York Knicks might have enough blank to sign a pair of maximum salary-free agents in 2010.

Do the Knicks maybe have enough A, board butter, or B, cap room?

That’s board, B-O-A-R-D, butter, B-U-T-T-E-R, and cap room, C-A-P-R-O-O-M.

Well, board butter sounds more like something that would involve the playing of the actual game,

Something that helps you move around quickly on the court.

Cap sounds more like something like they have enough room before they reach some kind of salary cap

That the league might have on paying players.

I don’t really know the NBA particularly, but I would guess cap room would mean they have enough money before they hit some kind of lead cap.

Makes sense to me.

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

That is exactly right, Jill.

Perfect answer.

And your explanation was right on target.

It means the team hasn’t yet reached the salary ceiling set by the NBA.

It’s short for salary cap room.

All right.

All right.

Let’s see how you do another one.

Ready?

Okay.

They blew up everything the houses the cars the people damn son that movie was mad blank

Was this movie we had a lot of explosions was it mad a pancakes or be gangster?

Pancake

Was it gangster or gangster?

Well gangster g-a-n-g-s-t-e-r

I’ll read it again.

They blew up everything.

The houses, the cars, the people.

Damn, son, that movie was mad blank.

Was it Mad Pancakes or Mad Gangster?

I’m going to guess on this one.

I’m probably overthinking this, but it’s interesting.

When I said the word pancake out loud, my wife, who’s in the other part of the room, said flattened.

She can’t hear any of the rest of this, but that’s the first thing she said.

And so I’m thinking, okay, that might be what it means.

So I’m going to go for the less obvious choice and go with pancake on this one.

What do you think, Martha?

I wonder if you’re overthinking that.

Pancake to me just sounds silly.

I mean, mad waffle, mad French toast.

Mad scones?

Mad scones, exactly.

You know, for some reason, I would go with the other word, but we could flip a coin.

It seemed like the, that’s the one that seemed more, again, that’s why I asked whether it was gangsta.

But I think I’ll stick with pancakes, just for the heck of it.

Okay.

Well, Martha, you’re right on target.

And Joe, I’m sorry to say it wasn’t pancakes.

I hope that the blowing up of things, the flattening of things wasn’t too misleading.

But it’s really just more about behaving, well, it just means great.

Being mad gangster is just a way of saying great.

Mad here is strangely being used as an adverb and not as an adjective.

So it’s like a way of saying very something.

So it’s very like a gangster, which is in the parlance of young black men on the Internet who primarily use this is a good thing.

Overtought that one.

Overtought that.

You know, Joe, you mentioned the Beatle effect.

I think this was the wife effect.

Should have gone with your instinct there.

Yeah, but you’re all right.

You got the first one with no problem, even had the answer, the perfect explanation for it.

So you’re doing fine, Joe.

Yeah, you did a great job.

Thanks so much for playing today.

Thanks a lot.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’d like to talk with us about language, the number’s 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-Wayword.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.