Presidential Names Quiz

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And I’ll be darned if it isn’t our other quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Greg!

Hello, hello. You know, I take exception to that. John is the other quiz guy.

Oh, John is the other quiz guy. That’s right.

You say that like other woman.

Greg, how have you been? You never write, you never call.

When am I going to get grandchildren?

You sound like my wife’s mother.

I’m good.

I’ve been traveling.

I’ve been to London and the Dominican Republic, and I have an adorable baby.

What else do I need?

Did you bring us anything?

Nope.

That’s it.

See you later.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

You can give us…

Where’s that Chaneski guy?

Of course I brought you something.

I brought you a little quiz.

Oh, hot dog.

No, this week’s quiz is going to be all about the presidents of the United States.

All right.

I’ll see you guys later.

Bye-bye.

But, well, you know, because this is A Way with Words, I’m going to make all the questions have something to do with the alphabet, spelling, or other wordplay.

Oh, great.

Okay.

I think.

I think.

Yeah, you suckered into that one.

So this is basically, the quiz is open topic, open form, open answer.

Everybody wins.

Everybody gets a ribbon.

Well, no, all the answers are the names of presidents.

Specifically, I think the last names of presidents of the United States.

Okay.

But since there is a variety of wordplay at work here, rather than go through an example, we’re just going to jump right in.

Oh, my goodness.

Okay.

There are five presidents whose last names are also English verbs.

Now, one of them is an uncommon usage of the word bush to mark or plant with bushes.

So we’re not going to count that one.

How many of the other four can you name?

Okay.

Wow.

This is a big, tough monster of a question, right?

Yep.

I have one.

Okay, Martha.

Number 14.

Franklin Pierce, right?

Pierce.

Very good.

Yes.

To Pierce something.

Franklin Pierce.

And to Hoover is to vacuum.

Oh, good.

To Hoover.

Very good.

A little Britishism.

Yeah, mainly British usage.

Good, good.

Let’s see here.

One of them was said even before we started this quiz.

Really?

Yeah.

Really?

Well, it’s the last name of a president, but it’s also a first name.

The last name of a president?

It’s the last name of a president, but it’s also the first name of one of the three of us.

Oh.

Grant.

Grant.

To grant somebody something.

Grant and Ford.

Ford is another one.

And Ford is another one.

Those are the four I was looking for.

Is that all of them then?

That’s good.

That’s all of them, yes.

Okay.

The verb to Martha hasn’t made it into the dictionary yet.

I was like mentally running through all the presidents, which is why I was sad.

Me too.

Takes a while.

All right.

Here’s a tricky one.

One president’s last name becomes another president’s last name when you change the first vowel sound.

Who are the two presidents?

One president’s last name.

Well, it’s kind of a trick because many people know that Roosevelt and Roosevelt were two different pronunciations of that name.

That could be.

That’s not the one I’m looking for, however.

But you’ve got the right idea.

You’re changing the vowel sound.

It would be like changing grant to grunt.

You just change the vowel sound.

Did we have a President Cooter?

Carter Cooter?

No, we didn’t.

Oh, man.

Taylor and Tyler?

Taylor and Tyler.

Very good.

Thank you.

Let me give you this one.

If you count Y, there are seven presidents whose last names end with a vowel.

How many can you name?

Okay.

Obama.

Yep.

Obama.

Kennedy.

Kennedy.

Oh, good, good.

What are we going for, seven here?

Yep.

Well, there’s Monroe.

There’s Monroe.

That’s an E, yep.

Oh, McKinley, McKinley.

Sure, yeah.

If I had a list of presidents in front of me.

Well, that’s…

And there are three left.

They all end with E.

Oh, okay.

That’s easy.

All silent E’s.

That’s easy, she said.

Pierce.

Pierce.

Fillmore.

Fillmore.

And another 20th century president.

Another 20th century president.

Coolidge.

Coolidge.

Oh, very good.

Very good.

Take a presidential last name, which is also a noun.

Add an R and rearrange the letters to get a synonym for the original noun.

What is it?

Bush.

Shrub.

Bush and shrub.

Oh!

Look at that.

How did you do that?

That was supposed to be a hard one.

Oh, my gosh.

People called him the first President Bush shrub all the time.

Yeah, but were you anagramming his name?

No, I just wrote it down here.

Wow.

I just started with that one.

It was the first one that came to mind that was a noun.

That’s how it works.

There aren’t that many of them that are nouns.

Very good.

He’s very good.

No, no, I just got lucky.

You’re both very good.

All right. Well, I’m going to try this one. This one is totally unrelated to wordplay.

Oh.

Okay.

But it’s just a cool fact, so I felt like I had to include it.

Okay.

The shortest and longest-lived presidents so far, in other words, the people who had the shortest lifespan and the longest lifespan, who also happened to be presidents of the United States, were born roughly four years apart.

Who were they?

Oh, really?

Oh, interesting.

The shortest term was William Henry Harrison, right?

Kennedy and Reagan.

Oh, you’re very close, Grant.

Kennedy is the shortest lived president.

He died at the age of 46.

Ford?

And Ford, very good, died at the age of 93.

And they were born just four years apart.

That is a great fact.

That was a great quiz.

That was fantastic.

Yeah, I learned some stuff too.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Greg.

It’s always a pleasure to be with you guys.

And it’s a pleasure to have you on the show.

We’ll talk to you next time.

You bet.

All right. Bye-bye.

Well, if you’d like to talk with us about language history or grammar, slang, punctuation, words and how we use them, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.