Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s presents a “take-off” puzzle, in which a clue suggests two words, one of which is a letter shorter because its first letter is taken off. For example, what two words are clued by the following sentence? The...
Fans of The Great British Bake Off (known in the U.S. as The Great British Baking Show because of a trademark issue) know that you don’t want your baked goods to be stodgy or claggy. The verb to stodge, meaning “to stuff,” goes...
A new book about how animals perceive their environment reveals immense worlds beyond our own. A bee can see ultraviolet light, catfish have taste buds all over their bodies, and manatees use highly sensitive lips to examine nearby objects. Also...
Having a hard time with writer’s block? So did Gustave Flaubert while trying to get his great novel Madame Bovary (Bookshop|Amazon) underway, telling a correspondent: I am finding it hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic...
Clint from Dallas, Texas, recalls a peculiar family tradition for giving birthday presents to a child. A giver would hold a gift over the child’s head and recite: Heavy heavy hangover / Thy poor head / What do you wish this donor? The child...
Particularly in the Southern United States, there are lots of fanciful terms for “a sudden, heavy rain” that involve the downpour’s after-effects. For starters, there’s gully-washer, frog-strangler, toad-strangler, toadfrog...