Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a take-off puzzle involving the letters V and W. Each sentence clues two words, one of which has lost either a V or a W. For example, what two words does the following sentence suggest? He plugged his guitar into the...
Martha recently found a 1938 letter that her grandfather sent to the local police chief in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It concerns a suspected thief who her grandfather thought might be persuaded to confess because, he wrote,, the young man surely...
The terms upper-case and lower-case to designate the size of letters stem from printer’s slang from the days of typesetting. Since they used small letters most of the time, so they were kept in a case that was lower, and therefore more easily...
National Book Award winner Barry Lopez had wise advice for young writers. First, read widely and follow your curiosity. Second, travel or learn a foreign language. And third, find out what you truly believe, because if you’re not writing from...
Twice a day the River Thames recedes, revealing a muddy shoreline. Hobbyists known as mudlarks stroll the surface searching for objects that have found their way into the river over the centuries, everything from ancient Roman jewelry to modern...