Ribbon fall. Gallery forest. You won’t find terms like these in most dictionaries, but they and hundreds like them are discussed by famous writers in the book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book is an intriguing collection...
When you had sleepovers as a child, what did you call the makeshift beds you made on the floor? In some places, you call those bedclothes and blankets a pallet. This word comes from an old term for “straw.” And: What’s the story...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle requires finding proper names hidden inside phrases. For example, find the masculine moniker is camouflaged within this phrase: the pool I’ve recently drained. This is part of a complete episode.
Greg in New York, New York, says that when he looked a bit disheveled, his mother would say You look like Willie off the pickle boat. The phrase goes at least as far back as the 1890s, and the proper name has varied. The person on the pickle boat...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski is puzzling over words containing hidden proper names. For example, John just ordered a piece of jewelry for his wife to wear around her neck. What three-letter dude is hiding inside that word? This is part of a complete...
News reports that the makers of Scrabble were changing the rules to allow proper names left some purists fuming. The rumors were false, but they got Grant thinking about idiosyncratic adaptations of the game’s rules. Also this week, the...