Quiz Guy John Chaneski insists that the names of modern Olympic sports resulted from changing one letter in the original names for each activity. For example, he says, the pole vault must have originated from an earlier sport in which participants...
What’s so special about the phrase Sit on a pan, Otis? It’s an example of a palindrome — a word or phrase that’s spelled the same backwards as it is forwards. This year’s contest known as the Oscars of the palindrome...
Listeners have been sharing some of their personal Scrabble rules, including new uses for the blank tile. For example, one variation allows for the tile to be removed and reused, so if Grant were to play the blank tile as an “E” and...
Anagrams, rebuses, cryptograms — Martha and Grant swap stories about the games that first made them realize that playing with words and letters can be fun. Also this week, what’s a jitney supper and where do you eat graveyard stew? The hosts...
Hi! Last week, we discussed “jabronies,” “winklehawks,” “motherwit,” “purfling,” and a handy new way to say “not my problem.” We also pondered why people call their biceps...
Need a Scrabble word with q or z? Grant shares some of his favorite legal Scrabble words: qi (the circulating life force in Chinese philosophy), qat (a leaf chewed in some cultures for stimulating effects), and za (a shortening of the word...
