Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game featuring “Tom Swifties,” those sentences that include a self-referentially funny adverb, such this one: “’Ow! You guys really know how to hurt a vampire,’ Tom said _____________.” This is part of a...
split bit n.— Note: “Bit” is well-established slang meaning “prison term.” «Under the state laws that govern sentencing, grand larceny is considered a non-violent crime, and it carries no mandatory minimum prison...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski conducts a word puzzle involving musical instruments hidden in various sentences. Try this one: “My cousin is a Santa Monica zookeeper whose specialty is hummingbirds.” (Keep saying it over and over until you hear...
Ahoy, mateys! You've received another newsletter from "A Way with Words," which, like a walk around the promenade deck, is known to relieve uncomfortable internal distress. What do children call their grandparents? What is a...
A recent article in The New Yorker magazine about the late writer David Foster Wallace has Martha musing about Wallace’s stem-winding sentences, and the word stem-winder.
ghost box n.— «I know it sounds crazy, and I know the ghost box is radio based and all sorts of sounds can come through, so it’s only logical to say that people are making words and sentences out of bits and pieces of radio transmission...