Whippoorwills, bob whites, and chickadees. How do we decide the names of birds and what to call their calls? Plus, the last syllables of Arkansas and Kansas are pronounced differently, but they come from the same etymological root. And: What’s the...
Annie from Omaha, Nebraska, and her partner have been using the Merlin Bird ID app to study and identify birds. This makes them wonder how birds get their names and about the shorthand used to describe their calls. Bird-call mnemonics often use an...
After a look at the Harvey House restaurant chain’s secret cup code, Rachel in Minnesota points to Waffle House’s plate-marking code, used by servers and cooks to track orders without written tickets. In the system shown in a Waffle House training...
“Mnemonic,” a poem by Brian Bilston, cleverly sums up what many of us feel about the month of January. It’s included in his latest book, Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems (Bookshop|Amazon), and shared here with...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s head-scratcher involves pairs of words that both start with the same letter, but not the same sound. For example, what do you call a seat with vertical spindles in the back, often used by the person in charge of a ship? This...
Need a mnemonic to remember difference between the spelling of the palate in your mouth and an artist’s palette? Associate the one in your mouth with the past tense of the verb to eat. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Palate vs...