Kolin in Los Angeles, California, says his friend Helen is known for writing witty tweets that go viral, such as one about the difference between men’s and women’s midlife crises. He says she credits her success in part to her use of...
Sidney in Boston, Massachusetts, is curious about the diaeresis, that pair of dots that occasionally appear over a vowel in words such as naïve and coöperate. In ancient Greek diairesis, meaning “division,” applied to those dots in...
How do you pronounce Missouri? Is it /miz-URR-ee/ or /miz-URR-uh/? There are actually four distinct pronunciations of this word. Linguist Donald Lance of the University of Missouri-Columbia studied the history of this name extensively and found that...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has crafted this puzzle with eeeeeeeease. In fact, all the answers are combinations of words that include only one vowel sound — a long E. For example, suppose the clue is It’s what some people say the moon is made of...
All the answers to this puzzle from Quiz Guy John Chaneski are two-word phrases, and the only vowel they contain is the letter A. For example, suppose John is lounging in a shaded spot where only one variety of fruit is allowed. Where is he? This is...
Jerrell in San Antonio, Texas, is curious about the term helter-skelter, meaning “haphazardly.” English is full of such reduplicatives, also called rhyming jingles, flip-flop words, or echo words. They fall into three categories: one...