Why, when writing out an abbreviated name like NATO for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, don’t we use periods between the letters to form the acronym or initialism? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Periods in...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s “coffee cup” quiz requires the addition of the letters M (as in milk) or S (as in sugar) to a word to form another word that fits a clue. For example, if the original word is cap, but what he’s...
Our discussion about grammagrams prompts listeners to send in several more stories from their workplaces. A high-school drama teacher in Arlington, Texas, reports that in the theater world, the letter Q is scribbled in scripts to mean cue. A...
Brand names, children’s games, and the etiquette of phone conversations. Those clever plastic PEZ dispensers come in all shapes and sizes—but where did the word PEZ come from? The popular candy’s name is the product of wordplay involving...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a quiz about four-letter anagrams. For example, what letters can anagram into words meaning either “cruel” or “designation”? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Four-Letter...
A historian in Indianapolis, Indiana, says a World War II-era letter from her father to her mother refers to running a sandy. It’s a phrase that derives from poker and the act of sandbagging, a kind of bluffing of an opponent. This is part of...