Super Hero Word Puzzle

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us on the line from New York City is John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hey, buddy.

What’s up?

It seems that in Gotham City, anyone with an at the end of their name can be a Batman villain.

Right?

Okay.

The Joker, the Riddler, the Mad Hatter.

At least those guys had good gimmicks.

Now, suppose you had an at the end of your name, but your evil villain style wasn’t quite up to snuff.

I imagine Batman would get pretty tired of dealing with your issues.

So we’re going to find some guys like this.

I want to warn you that when I playtested this, some of my playtesters had two answers, gave other answers, alternate answers, which I found perfectly wonderful.

So if you got either one of those, that’ll be fine.

Now, these are going to be words that end in usually K-E-R or L-E-R.

Oh, really?

For example.

Now, this woman is mostly annoying, but she could be dangerous.

She has the power to make very tiny, loud explosions, but she can make a whole bunch of them in a row very quickly.

Watch your fingers around…

The firecracker?

The firecracker, yes.

And her other name is The Ladyfinger.

Oh, very nice, The Ladyfinger.

Here’s another lame villain.

This villain constantly annoys Batman by trying to set him up with her niece.

Oy vey.

Matchmaker.

A matchmaker, yes.

Most of these villains are just annoying, basically.

This one villain plans elaborate heists, theme after the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.

The Trekker?

The Trekker, yes.

The name for people who are obsessed with Star Trek.

The Trekker.

This one dude is a pretty serious crime lord.

It’s just that for some reason, all of his crimes have something to do with fishing.

The Angler?

The Angler, yes.

Now, one of Batman’s most vexing villains is not really a villain herself.

She just makes excuses for other villains and gives them no reason to stop their nefarious crimes.

The enabler.

Yes, the enabler.

Fear the enabler.

This one has two possible answers.

Let’s see what we get.

A member of several crime syndicates, this villain stays behind the scenes and uses his amazing accounting powers to take care of the financial aspects of several evil organizations.

The bookkeeper.

I like the bookkeeper, yes.

No, but another answer.

Yeah, what else?

You got another one?

The comptroller.

Yes, the Comptroller.

I think it’s actually pronounced controller, even though there was an MP in there.

Yeah, I just love that word, so that’s why I wanted to use it as a Batman villain.

Now, finally, Batman has never been able to capture this one villain whose power is the ability to force everyone to follow every single little rule to the letter.

He always gets off on a technicality.

The nitpicker.

Nitpicker’s good.

I have another one for that.

The quibbler.

Quibbler, I know.

Maybe there’s a bunch.

I like the stickler.

Oh, good.

Stinkler.

Now, Batman Arkham Asylum is not going to play itself, so I’ve got to get home to my Xbox.

Thank you guys very much.

Give the Xbox our love.

I will.

It sends it right back to you.

We want to keep you away from it.

Thanks, John.

Thanks, John.

We’ll talk to you next week.

It’s always a pleasure.

Talk to you next week.

All right.

And if you want to talk with us about language, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Send those emails to words@waywordradio.org, and we are all over Facebook and Twitter.