Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a word game in which the object is to guess the color-related terms suggested by his clues. Try this one: What color-coded term is suggested by the phrase “information gained without serious effort”? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Off Color Word Game”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett. And across from me is the amazing Greg Pliska. Hello, Greg.
Hello, Grant. Hello, Martha.
Hi, Greg.
And you’re our quiz guy.
I am your quiz guy.
What do you do in your day job? Let’s see, you’re a composer.
Yeah.
And you’re a father.
A father.
Right. And she’s…
One of the two things I get paid for.
You get paid to be a father?
No, that’s the other one.
Well, I thought after you did the sperm donation, the money stopped.
No.
Oh.
No.
Wow.
It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
How about that?
No, this week’s quiz is off color.
Oh.
No, that doesn’t mean you get to haul out all your favorite X-rated slang terms.
I’m sorry.
What it means is that each answer is a phrase with a color in it, except that that color isn’t used literally in the phrase.
For example, if I gave you the clue, a place where actors relax between scenes…
Here’s the green room.
It’s the green room, which isn’t necessarily green, although some etymologies say that that’s…
And sometimes they do paint them green.
So if you understand how this quiz works, then let’s get off color.
All right.
Let’s go.
Okay.
All right.
Here’s your clue.
Restrictions that enforce moral standards, such as prohibiting the sale of beer on a Sunday.
Blue laws.
Blue laws.
Blue laws.
Absolutely.
Okay.
A partial loss of electrical power.
Brown out.
A brown out.
Brown out.
Absolutely.
Which, of course, is never actually brown.
It’s either dark or light.
No, but it’s brown power.
That’s what it’s called.
Brown power.
What does that mean?
Brown power.
It’s power that’s either operating at a lower amperage or lower voltage than it should be.
Of course he knew that.
That’s an interesting…
I never heard that.
I always assumed brown out was just because it’s not a complete blackout.
That’s what I thought.
There’s both of them, actually.
Both the terms coexist, and they have some overlapping kind of self-reinforcement there.
That’s cool.
See, this is a great show.
I should listen to this show.
I’ve learned so much.
All right.
Here’s another one.
These are easy.
Of little or no value?
Small red potatoes?
Good.
You have the right color, Martha.
Do I?
Yeah.
Red is the color you’re looking for.
Not a red cent?
Red cent?
Not worth a red cent.
Oh.
Exactly.
Okay.
How about that?
Exactly.
Which actually referred originally to a copper U.S. coin, which was, you know, reddish in tone.
Although now, of course, when we say that, we don’t literally mean the color red.
Red, yeah.
Here’s a good one.
A lockdown of a hospital when a newborn goes missing.
Oh, pink alert.
Code pink?
Code pink.
Is it really?
Yeah, code pink.
I had no idea.
Here’s the next clue.
False and sensational reportage.
Oh, yellow journalism.
Yellow journalism.
Rarely as of an event.
Once in a blue moon.
Yeah, very good.
We can just rip these things off.
Sure, go for it.
Generic or unbranded as a product?
White label.
White label, indeed.
Huh, white label.
Here you go, one more.
Information gained without serious effort?
I know this one.
That wouldn’t be blackmail.
No.
No.
White knowledge.
White knowledge?
It’s a term coined by the science fiction author Terry Pratchett, and it describes things that you know, but you don’t know how you know them.
You pick them up.
White noise, for example, is kind of this all-pervasive noise that kind of, you can’t really pick an individual sound out of it.
And white knowledge is the same thing.
Oh, that’s nice.
You have this knowledge.
It’s in your brain.
It comes when called for.
And you’re like, how did I know that?
Right.
I have no idea how I knew that.
But it’s there.
And he really is referring to cultural knowledge, the things that we all believe to be true.
Exactly.
Yeah, sort of background facts.
Background facts.
Somehow it seeped into all of our brains.
We all know these things.
Right.
Cool?
Well, it wasn’t in my brain.
I didn’t know that.
Oh, I am.
I’m sorry.
I am actually trying to look at Greg.
So handsome.
Aw.
So there you go.
There’s some white knowledge for everybody to let seep into their brains today.
Well, Greg, that was super-duper fun.
Thank you very much.
Always glad to have you here.
And if you’d like to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, or words and how we use them, the number is 1-877-929-9673.
Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.
