Beware of false friends, those words that don’t translate the way you’d expect. For example, the word “gift” in German means “poison,” and the Spanish word “tuna” means “the fruit of the prickly...
There’s a frisson you get when you meet a word for the first time—feeling pleasantly stumped in between wondering, “What the heck does that mean?” and hurrying off to find out. Martha and Grant talk about some terms that had just...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski tries to stump the hosts with a puzzle called Cryptic Crosswords. How about this one: “Do-re-mi-fa follower + sneaker feature = comfort.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Cryptic Clues...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a puzzle about homophones, in this case, words that sound just like participles that have lost their final “g,” like button and buttin’. The first clue: “Picture Vladimir Putin trying to catch...