You may have a favorite word in English, but what about your favorite in another language? The Spanish term ojalá is especially handy for expressing hopefulness and derives from Arabic for “God willing.” In Trinidad, if you want to ask...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a terminal deletion game popular among fellow members of The National Puzzlers’ League. A terminal deletion involves dropping the first and last letters of a word to form a new one. For example, the word ample is a...
Mitch in Miami works with video playback systems for theme parks and museums, where to ingest a file is to load outside video into the system. Taking it back out is more than simply deleting it, he says, because clients may assume that’s quick and...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle about subtracting letters from words. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Terminal Deletions” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it...
John Chaneski’s quiz adapts the National Puzzlers League puzzle type called a flat: a short verse with one or more blanks, an enumeration, and a stated bit of wordplay that turns one answer into another. These two-line flats use The Wizard of Oz...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s latest puzzle requires players to guess the last word in a two-line verse. For example: “He’s seven feet tall and big as a tank, The meanest Marine that you’ve ever BLANK.” (Stumped? Take a...