Puzzle Dude John Chaneski has a quiz about the unofficial terms for familiar things that have less familiar official names. “The Academy Awards of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” for example, are unofficially called the...
Here’s a riddle: “Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.” Think you know the answer? You’ll find it in this week’s episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other brain-busters. Also: how did...
Those who commute coast-to-coast are bicoastals. But what do you call someone who commutes along the same coast—between, say, Miami and New York? A woman who now travels regularly between Northern and Southern California to visit the grandchildren...
In California, everybody gets a little crazy when those hot, dry winds called Santa Anas start blowing. A caller asks the origin of the name. Is it a translation of Spanish for “Satan’s wind”? By the way, here’s that list of names for winds around...
jingle mail n.— «In the great Southern California bust of the early 1990s, real estate legend holds, many defaulting homeowners mailed their keys back to the lenders, in effect washing their hands of the whole matter, and promptly left town. Thus...
go-around n.— «High winds at Los Angeles International Airport forced nine jets to make second approaches, a procedure known as a “go-around.”» —“Wind-driven wildfire damages homes in Southern California” by Ana Beatriz Cholo SignOnSanDiego...