Scronsonants Quiz

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And joining us once again is our quiz guy, John Chaneski. John, what’s up?

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. How you doing?

Doing great.

Nice to talk to you.

I want to give a shout out to the people in Madison, Wisconsin, by the way, because my wife and I were out at the University of Wisconsin-Madison a couple of weeks ago, and they were very, very nice to us out there.

She was giving a lecture at a conference called What is Human?

Oh.

Yeah.

And she brought you along as…

So you brought me along as sort of an example.

Actually, the name tag said on top. It said, what is human? And then it said, John Chaneski.

So there you go.

I asked and answered right there.

But what was cool is that somebody was giving a lecture on genetics, and the word previvor came up.

And I thought of you guys.

Previvor.

Just because it’s a great word, previvor.

This is somebody who is the relative of somebody who’s at high risk for dying from a disease such as breast cancer.

Right, or who has discovered through their genome that they are at risk for disease.

Sort of avoid the disease.

They call themselves previvors.

So that’s a great word.

Okay.

Let’s do a cool puzzle.

Here we go.

I call this scronsonance.

I don’t know exactly why, but you’ll find out.

The number of common words in English that begin with three consonants are relatively few.

Now, I’ll give you a clue to a pair of words, each of which begins with the same trio of consonants, okay?

For example, many people purchase poinsettias for the Yuletide holidays, but my mom prefers to import the official flower of the Emperor of Japan.

She calls these her…

Christmas chrysanthemums?

Exactly.

Christmas chrysanthemums.

That’s the C-H-R.

We call it trigram in the NPL.

So Christmas chrysanthemums.

Nice work.

Shall we try a few more?

Yeah, sure.

I gain a particular joy from the pain of others, but I had to learn how to do it.

So I attended…

Particular joy from the pain of others.

Schadenfreude school?

Schadenfreude school, yes.

Very good.

Just as an aside, I’ll mention that there are several words that are borrowed from Yiddish that begin with several trigrams, constant trigrams.

Here’s a clue.

At Passover Seder, my Uncle Max always trots out his tired old clown routine about life in a small Eastern European village.

What’s it called?

Clown routine.

I want to say Shettlespiel, but that’s not right.

Close. It’s close.

Stettleshtick?

Stettleshtick. Correct.

Very good.

Here’s the next.

I love to eat a delectable, delicious food which is made of ground pork and cornmeal fried and sliced.

I call it.

Oh, Lord.

Grant, this is your department.

Fried pork and corn.

Spam something.

I don’t know.

No, it’s not spam.

Remember, three consonants.

Oh, I don’t know.

Let’s work with the adjective first.

Delectable, delicious.

Scrumptious.

Scrumptious.

Scrapple.

Scrabble.

Exactly.

Nice work.

Scrumptious scrapple.

Every year my dad gives up shellfish for Lent, but just before Lent, he indulges in a feast of crustacean eating.

He calls the prawns that he devours during this time his…

Shrimp?

Yeah.

Shrove, I don’t know.

Yeah, you’re close.

Shrove shrimp?

Shrove-tide shrimp.

Shrove-tide shrimp, okay.

Yes.

Shrove-tide is the time just before Lent.

Very good.

Now, my cousin owns a factory that makes bicycle parts.

Specifically, he makes the thin-toothed wheels that engage the chain.

Now, to keep track of his financial data, he uses Microsoft Excel to create a grid-like ledger layout.

He calls this his…

Sprocket spreadsheet.

Sprocket spreadsheet, Grant, right on it.

Nice work.

Here’s the last one.

The town we visited harbored exactly 60 commercial businesses that sell used goods at reduced prices.

Collectively, they are known as?

So these are thrift stores.

I’ll take that.

Thrift shops.

Thrift.

Threescore.

Threescore.

Yeah, the Threescore thrifts or something.

The Threescore thrift shops.

Very good.

Three-score thrift store, then you get the rhyme.

Oh, nice.

Very good.

Okay, good.

Three-score thrift store.

It’s harder to say.

Say that three times.

It’s always hard to say.

But it’s good.

That was great.

You guys were fantastic.

Congratulations on giving scronsonance.

Well, John, thanks a lot.

Thanks, John.

My pleasure.

See you next time.

All right, bye-bye.

Well, if you want to talk trigrams or letters or words or grammar, slang, any aspect of language, call us 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.