New Sports 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 we’re joined by our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Here we go. This is actually related to sports.

I call it exports.

I’ll take a sport and change its first letter. I’ll describe the change that occurs in that sport that would result from changing its name. You tell me the name of the new sport.

Now, bear in mind the wordplay might be orthographic or it might be phonetic.

For example, in this sport, you’re allowed to punish an error by shocking the shortstop or center fielder with 50,000 volts.

Tazeball?

Tazeball, yes.

I would not want to see that.

In this sport, you score points by somehow getting a large turnip across the goal line.

Rootball?

Rootball is correct, yeah.

Rootball from football.

Not all of them end in ball, by the way.

Based on a racket sport, this sport occurs only once a year on a Sunday in June. It includes a series of events, grilling steaks, taking out the garbage, farting, and making really bad jokes, usually about farting.

Sad mitten. I don’t know.

No, that’s a good guess, but you’re on the right track.

Who do we talk about on a Sunday in June who makes really bad jokes?

Dad mitten.

Dad mitten.

Dad mitten. Okay, gotcha.

This sport remains essentially unchanged, except for the fact that several large predatory animals, canis lupus, are released periodically throughout the lakes.

Wolf.

Wolf.

Wow, I’d watch that.

I know you were.

These extreme sports, they’re really getting out there.

Jack Nicklaus, getting on in years, having a hard time staying away from the wolves.

Watch him, look at him run.

Clap, clap, clap, clap.

This game remains, again, relatively unchanged, except the hoop is switched out for a tiny rubber ring.

The plumbers and mechanics who play it like it a lot.

A gasket ball.

Nice.

Gasket ball, yeah.

Oh, man.

Tiny.

Probably you can get a big gasket, but still tinier than a hoop.

I don’t see the point of this sport, which swaps out rods and reels in favor of crossing your fingers and hoping really hard that you catch something.

Oh, wishing.

Wishing.

Yes. Not exactly a spectator sport.

In this sport, two men attempt to knock each other out using smoked salmon.

Loxing.

Loxing, that’s right.

Finally, in this sport, instead of four guys careening down an iced track, there’s just one guy who approaches the other teams and says, it’s a nice ice track you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.

Mob sledding.

Mob sledding.

That’s right.

Don’t get involved in mob sledding.

Yeah.

Anyway, those are my suggestions for new sports.

All right.

That’s pretty rich, dude.

Yeah, I’m watching those Olympics for sure.

Thanks, Bob.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks, John.

Take care.

This show is about words and language and goofing around just a little bit.

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