If you’re in a book club, how do you decide what books to read? There are lots of different ways, depending on your group’s goals. And is it ever wise to correct someone who mispronounces a word? Sometimes you have to decide if...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been reading the novels of author Stephen King’s annoying doppelganger, Stephen Kong, whose titles are like those of King’s, with the exception of one letter. For example, Kong’s first novel recalls the...
What do you call a segment of an orange? These juicy pieces of fruit go by lots of different names, including section, wedge, and carpel. But they’re also called pegs or even pigs! The stringy parts of a banana also have a surprising name...
Rearranging letters as anagrams can be an entertaining aged worm (or word game). For example, you can switch around the letters in listen to make the word silent. Dormitory can be rearranged to form dirty room, and Morse code makes here come dots...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s presents a “take-off” puzzle, in which a clue suggests two words, one of which is a letter shorter because its first letter is taken off. For example, what two words are clued by the following sentence? The...
The autocomplete function on your phone comes in handy, of course. But is it changing the way we write and how linguists study language? Also, suppose you could invite any two authors, living or dead, to dinner. Who’s on your guest list and...