Quiz Guy John Chaneski has crafted a quiz involving a polysyllabic word followed by another word that repeats the last of those syllables twice. For example, suppose the clue is: “When playing a simple game with a toddler, it’s a real...
Ian in Jacksonville, Florida, wonders about why musicians use the word clam to mean “a mistake” or “an egregious musical error,” as in There are a lot of clams in there or We need to practice where the clams are regarding a...
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Stacy from Denver, Colorado, is accustomed to using the idiomatic expression let alone in a particular way, mentioning two possibilities within a range and placing the more extreme possibility at the end of the statement, as in I can’t even...
What do you call a guy with a bald pate? A chrome dome? Maybe the lucky fellow is sporting a solar panel for a sex machine. Also, which would you rather open: a can of worms or Pandora’s box? Plus, ordinary vs. ornery, versing vs. versus...
The saying “act in haste, repent at leisure” is typically a warning that means “if you make a hasty decision, you’ll have plenty of time to mull over your mistake later.” It’s likely a variation of an older...