Simul and Slug Line

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And it’s time again for Slang This, our weekly puzzle about slang.

Today’s contestant is Rich Stevens from East Hampton, Massachusetts. Welcome, Rich.

Hi.

What do you do in East Hampton?

I’m a cartoonist and I sell t-shirts on the internet.

Oh, that’s pretty cool.

What kind of t-shirts?

Hopefully witty ones, but sometimes slightly pandering ones.

Very good.

Okay. So please kill me.

Well, Rich, the first step in that process is that you have to give us an example of your favorite slang term.

I send a lot of files back and forth, and we do everything online.

So I’ve taken to using the word zap to replace every conceivable verb for giving somebody anything digitally, because I hate typing out IMing and stuff like that because everybody uses apostrophes.

It looks gross.

I’d be like, if my editor, Ted, was mad at me, he’d be like, you’re late on your cartoons.

And I’d be like, hang on 30 seconds.

I will zap you a week’s worth of stuff, and it will be in your inbox.

Okay, so it’s an all-purpose verb then.

If I send it to you in any way other than in an envelope, I zap it.

And other people have started using it on me.

We’re about to zap your brain with some slang words.

That’s right.

All right, well, Grant is going to present you with a slang term, and then he’s going to give you three possible examples of how it might be used in a sentence.

Rich, only one of those is real, and the other two are something that Grant made up.

So your task will be to choose which one of those really is a slang term.

You got it?

I have a one in three chance of looking smart, so let’s do this.

That’s right. Pressure’s on.

So Grant, go ahead. Zap him.

All right. Here we go.

The first word is simul, S-I-M-U-L, simul.

All right.

And the first clue is, Gary Kasparov took on 20 players in a simul match, beating all of them in under three minutes.

The second clue is, they’re all simuls. Fake tans, fake hair color, fake nails, fake interest in the conversation, and that’s just the men.

And the third clue, the simuls on these cars of the future look just like fins on old Fords, only when the car is in motion, these ornaments flex and bend like the wings on a fighter jet.

So is it A, a chess tournament in which one player takes on multiple opponents? Is it B, a phony person? Or is it C, a type of adjustable fin plan for the automobile of the future?

I have absolutely no clue about this one.

This is a wonderful one.

I’m hoping it’s the chess one because I’d rather hear about chess than those other things.

I’m going to go with the first one and throw myself to your mercies.

I don’t know mercy required because it is a, a simul is a.

All right.

Yes, it’s a chess match where usually one grandmaster will take on many other people.

There was something that happened in Cuba.

I think there was a person who took on something like 900 people at the same time.

I don’t know if they do that with a lot of monitors.

There’s a lot of running around the room.

I’m not sure how that works.

The second one was very convincing, though.

It just sounded like a Blade Runner word.

Yeah, or Los Angeles.

A replicant, right?

Yeah.

Or Los Angeles.

Here we go.

Okay.

The second slang term is slugline, S-L-U-G-L-I-N-E, slugline.

And the first clue, when lexicographer Samuel Johnson theorized that a word existed, but he couldn’t find evidence, he wrote the word slug in its place.

That’s why there are in his dictionary seven accidental entries called sluglines by lexicographers.

Ooh.

The second clue is, hawksters outside the ballpark worked the slug line of rubes waiting to get in, hawking t-shirts proclaiming last year’s losing World Series team as the winner.

And the third one, after I first picked up Ricardo in the expressway’s slug line on my way into the city, I started going out of my way every day, hoping he’d be there needing a ride for me again.

So is a slug line A, a placeholder word used by lexicographer Samuel Johnson? Is it B, a queue of people waiting to enter a sporting arena? Or is it C, a place where hitchhikers wait to be picked up by people who want to have enough passengers for the high-occupancy vehicle lane?

Oh, I’m going to go with the same strategy as last time.

I’m hoping it’s number one because then my education in typography will be useful.

I’m hoping it’s going to line the dictionary one.

No? Maybe?

Martha, what do you think?

Well, I do remember in my newspaper days we would slug a story.

Yeah, that’s what I mean.

Yeah.

But I’m willing to be wrong.

I’m glad because you are.

It’s funny that you should both say that because I was thinking of the slug sheet that I used when I worked in newspapers when I wrote that first clue.

It was intentionally a little misleading because I figured what people say, well, he makes dictionaries so he might know.

So he would write about it.

But you didn’t follow that logic.

Oh, you are so devious.

It’s actually C.

A slug line is a place to pick up an extra passenger so that you can go on the HOV lanes.

Interesting.

I wish, you know, if I was still commuting, I would probably know that.

Yeah, who knew?

Rich, you were one for two there.

That’s very good.

And for playing Slang This today, we’re going to zap you a copy of Grant’s book, The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang.

Sweet.

Sweet.

Thanks for playing today, Rich.

Hey, thanks.

Thanks for calling.

This was a blast, guys.

All right.

Well, thanks for playing, Rich.

Thanks so much.

We’ll talk to you later.

Okay.

And if you’d like to play our slang game on the air, call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can send us an email.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org.