Will Shortz, crossword editor of the New York Times and puzzlemaster on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” shares a quiz about a whole menagerie of animals with names that are portmanteaus. For example, if you could cross a chipmunk and a...
Kavya from Des Moines, Iowa, grew up calling striped little chipmunks or ground squirrels squinnies, a word she hasn’t heard even in Iowa City. The term does seem to be mostly Iowan, with written evidence from the 1970s onward, though it’s probably...