What games first made you realize that words and letters make great playthings? Martha describes puzzling, as a child, over the odd combination of letters, F-U-N-E-X, until she finally figured out the joke. Grant talks about discovering anagrams as...
If a restaurant menu states, “We cook off our potatoes,” what in the heck does that mean? A truck driver who encountered such an announcement at a roadside cafe is still puzzling over what it means to “cook off” a tuber. He...
A California caller is puzzling over the expression “have your cake and eat it, too.” Shouldn’t it be “eat your cake and have it, too”? This is part of a complete episode.
A caller asks a delicate question about the phrase “blue bark shipment,” a term involving the transport of deceased members of the military. Martha and Grant discuss this puzzling expression and the challenge of tracking down its...
AQIz n.— «Top U.S. commanders are closely watching the moves of al-Qaida in Iraq, puzzling about what seems to be a counterproductive strategy of massive bombings. Spectacular attacks across the country are deepening the rifts within the...
millennial n.— «The group spent seven hours Thursday at the Minneapolis Convention Center puzzling over the habits of the so-called millennial generation.…They confirmed much of Sweeney’s description of millennials. As a group...
