Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s Writer’s Math hides written-out numbers across word breaks in quotations and sentences. The solver hunts consecutive letters spanning two or more words, as in the prompt Launch yourself on every wave, drawn from Thoreau’s...
Daniel in Omaha wonders how cartoonists showed a sudden idea before the light bulb over the head became a familiar convention. No clear predecessor is known, but the incandescent bulb as a sign of inspiration was popularized by Felix the Cat in the...
What do you say when you answer the telephone? On the NPR science blog, “Krulwich Wonders,” Robert Krulwich notes that hello did not become a standard greeting until the Edison Company recommended the word as a proper phone greeting...
chuck-and-duck n.— «The Edison Sault power plant is an imposing, quarter-mile-long, turn-of-the-last-century stone structure built along the river that features nearly 40 turbine outflow chutes where salmon congregate on their upstream...
boat n.— «Edison Senat learned how to speak English in five months. The 26-year-old Haiti native didn’t want to be tagged as “boat,” a derogatory term referring to immigrants. So he made it a point to speak it as often as he...
dipstick survey n.— «In a dipstick survey conducted by BT, English came out tops with 80 per cent non-English speakers listening to English and 20 per cent non-Hindi speakers listening to Hindi.» —“What’s our lingo?” by...