Podcasts about american crossword puzzle tournament

Plus: Canadian Will Nediger writes his name in the history books -- in pen -- by taking second-place at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.Also: Nil talks to Paul Wells about what the veteran political journalist thinks of the campaign so far, and what he's looking for in the weeks ahead.

This week, Ryan and Brian recap the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (even though only one of them was there), perpetuate rumors of traveling to Japan (even though only one of them is traveling), and get the down and dirty about some of the New York Times games (even though one of the stories is completely made up). Check out Ryan's new podcast, Adventures Assemble, available here, and anywhere else you find podcasts. If you get bored (how could you?!), write something for the Fill Me In wiki. And if you're feeling philanthropic, donate to our Patreon. Do you enjoy our show? Actually, it doesn't matter! Please consider leaving us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. This will help new listeners find our show, and you'll be inducted into the Quintuple Decker Turkey Club. Drop us a note or a Tweet or a postcard or a phone call — we'd love to hear from you. Helpful links: Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fill-me-in/id1364379980 Google Play link: https://player.fm/series/fill-me-in-2151002 Amazon/Audible link: https://www.amazon.com/item_name/dp/B08JJRM927 RSS feed: http://bemoresmarter.libsyn.com/rss Contact us: Email (fmi@bemoresmarter.com) / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram We're putting these words here to help with search engine optimization. We don't think it will work, but you probably haven't read this far, so it doesn't matter: baseball, crossword, crosswords, etymology, game, hunt, kealoa, movies, musicals, mystery, oscar, pizza, puzzle, puzzles, sandwiches, soup, trivia, words

Welcome back! Dan (@DanSecatore) and Bryan (@BryanJoiner) talk the last three weeks of baseball in addition to, in no particular order, Mike Boddicker Baseball Camp, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Greg Gagne and dogg knows what else before getting to Jarren Duran's scorching triples pace and how far he remains off the all-time record pace. Plus, Dan's recommendation could change late-inning baseball forever, if Mike Pence has the courage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Fun, bite sized, and entertaining.” In the final episode of season 6, we're back with author and now podcaster A.J. Jacobs, along with his Chief Puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska. We first interviewed A.J. about his book, The Puzzler, in S3E11. The idea for the podcast originated in part while recording the audio book version of The Puzzler. A.J. realized many of the puzzles in the book were visual and wouldn't work for an audio book. He created a bunch of audio puzzles that only worked in the audio form. But when it came to a podcast, he knew he couldn't do it alone, and so he pulled in puzzle guru Greg Pliska, who collaborated with A.J. on The Puzzler book. Greg Pliska has created puzzles for the Ask Me Another podcast and the Mohonk Mountain House's Wonderful World of Words. This is a fun-filled weekend in a mountain resort with puzzle-hunts for people who love language. He's also a commentator for Will Shortz's annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the YouTube recordings of which, to David's surprise, “really sucked [him] into it.” Between A.J. and Greg, they possess a powerful pile of podcast puzzling prowess, so I was thrilled to pick their brains about crafting audio puzzles. At the end of the episode, I turned the tables, surprising them with my own game segment called Tilted Titles. Play along, and see if you can beat the puzzle gurus! If you're looking for pint-sized puzzles for your listening pleasure, make sure to check out The Puzzler Podcast.   Timestamps & Full Show Notes   Episode Sponsors Thank you to our sponsors Morty, Buzzshot, and COGS:  Morty Morty is a free app for discovering, planning, tracking, and reviewing your escape rooms and other immersive social outings.  Morty News: Morty now features haunt attractions Morty for Android is here Special Badge for REPOD listeners: You can learn more at morty.app/REPOD to sign up and get a special badge for our listeners (works for existing users also).   Buzzshot Buzzshot is Escape Room Software, Powering Business Growth, Player Marketing, and improving the Customer Experience. They offer an assortment of pre and post game features including robust waiver management, branded team photos, and streamlined review management for Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, and Morty. Buzzshot now has integration with the other REPOD sponsors: Morty and COGS. Special Offer for REPOD Listeners: REPOD listeners get an extended 21-day free trial plus 20% off your first 3 months, with no set-up fees or hidden charges. Visit buzzshot.com/repod to learn more about this exclusive offer.   COGS COGS by Clockwork Dog is an easy to use software/ hardware platform for running interactive events, including escape rooms, and other immersive experiences. They have plug & play hardware that seamlessly integrates with their software so you can create a show with lighting and sound cues without having to write a single line of code. Map all kinds of inputs to outputs by building up simple logic steps which determine what you want to happen and when. Special Offer for REPOD Listeners: REPOD listeners can get the COGS Starter Set for only $130 + free shipping to the USA. This bundle is usually valued at $257. You can learn more and purchase your Starter Set at cogs.show. Use code REPOD at checkout.   Production Credits Hosted by David Spira & Peih-Gee Law Produced by Theresa Piazza Supported by Lisa Spira & Richard Burns Edited by Steve Ewing of Stand Inside Media  Music by Ryan Elder Logo by Janine Pracht

Robyn Weintraub is a leading crossword designer who writes clues and fills in cells for the New York Times, famous for its challenging daily puzzles. She also creates for the New Yorker, People Magazine and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Robyn is known for her distinct style, and keen readers recognise a “Robyn Puzzle” from the quotes and sayings she uses as hints. Tara Gadomski follows Robyn over three intense days as she constructs a new crossword puzzle from blank page to completed grid. We get a glimpse of her long word lists and her daily puzzle-writing routine, and experience Robyn's final verification - by pencil and paper - to make sure the puzzle is satisfying for the millions of people who will try to solve it then we discover whether Robyn's puzzle has been accepted for publication by the New York Times

Thursday's "Connecticut Today" with Paul Pacelli looked at the status of some key state zoning bills with Alexis Harrison and Maria Weingarten from CT169Strong (0:35). Michael Smith, tournament coordinator for the 45th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, talked about running such a large event (14:12). Paul also had some thoughts on the continuing silence from so-called "women's groups" regarding transgender athletes in women's sports (26:35). Image Credit: Getty Images

Discussed! NYT crossword puzzles from Weds 2/22/23 (Adam Wagner), Thurs 2/23/23 (Joe Deeney), and Sun 2/28/23 (Will Nediger). Disgust! Black History Month did not seem to matter to the NYTXW. But racial representation in crosswords matters deeply to us. Find our ep with Kameron Austin Collins here. Also! OPPO: British 1960s bae? MS PAINT and Brooke's minicity masterpieces Tourney szn approacheth! The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Boswords, and  more TK. Reminisce with the original 'Nerds interviewing Erik Agard back in 2019, right before Erik won ACPT. Anigrams. Enjoying "Crossnerds"? Give us five ⭐️s in Spotify! Comment in Apple Podcasts! @ us on Twitter! Support us on Patreon! Or just keep listening. Or all. Ideally all. But we'll take any. Please and thank you!

This weekend is the 44th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, directed by New York Times crossword editor (and onetime Any Questions? guest) Will Shortz.

Following a long string of victories for computers in other games — chess in 1997, go in 2016 and Texas hold'em poker in 2019 — a GPU-powered AI has beaten some of the world's most competitive word nerds at the crossword puzzles that are a staple of every Sunday paper. Dr.Fill, the crossword puzzle-playing AI created by Matt Ginsberg — a serial entrepreneur, pioneering AI researcher and former research professor — scored higher than any humans earlier this year at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Ginsberg spoke with NVIDIA AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz about his decade-long journey creating Dr.Fill and where he envisions it going in the future. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/07/28/matt-ginsberg-ai-podcast/

Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including a new AI website from the White House at AI.gov, which provides a variety of resources on recent reports, news, key US agencies, and other information. The U.S. Navy destroys a surface vessel using a swarm of drones (in combination with other weapons) for the first time. The NYPD announces the retirement of its Boston Dynamics robot dog (Digidog) due to negative public reaction at its use. The French Defence Ministry releases a report on the Integration of Autonomy into Lethal Weapon Systems. A paper in Digital Medicine examines the use of decision-aids in clinical settings. Matt Ginsberg (along with the Berkeley NLP Group) develops Dr. Fill, an algorithm that won this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, with three total errors. And the University of Glasgow publishes research on using return echoes over time to render a 3D image of an environment. Researchers use MRI and machine learning to identify brain activation configurations for 12 different cognitive tasks. Facebook AI Research, Inria, and Sorbonne publish research on emerging properties of self-supervised vision transformers, which includes the ability to segment objects with no supervision or segmentation-targeted objectives. Florian Jaton publishes The Constitution of Algorithms: Ground-Truthing, Programming, Formulation, which examines how algorithms come to be. Melanie Mitchell publishes a paper on Why AI Is Harder Than We Think. And UneeQ creates a Digital Einstein for people to interact with. Click here to visit our website and explore the links mentioned in the episode.  

Weighing COVID-19 Vaccinations For Teens Federal officials are reporting that the Food and Drug Administration is poised to authorize Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12 to 15 by early next week—just as Canada became the first country to do so on Wednesday of this week. Pfizer has said they will seek out emergency authorization for even younger kids by the fall. But as most countries still lag far behind the United States in vaccine access for adults, public health officials are questioning the ethics of prioritizing American teens over adults from other countries. Science writer Maggie Koerth joins Ira with more on the accessibility of COVID-19 vaccines for children, new projections of rapid sea level rise under climate change, and other stories from the week. Is COVID-19 Herd Immunity Even Possible Anymore? Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve equated getting out of this mess with the concept of herd immunity—when a certain percentage of the population is immune to a disease, mostly through vaccination. With COVID-19, experts have said we need somewhere around 70 to 90% of the population to be immunized to meet this goal. Now that all adults in the U.S. are eligible for the vaccine, how far are we from that goal? And what is our trajectory? Some experts now say with variants and vaccine hesitancy, herd immunity may not be possible here in the U.S. Joining Ira to break down this and other coronavirus quandaries is Angela Rasmussen, research scientist at VIDO-InterVac, the University of Saskatchewan’s vaccine research institute in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. This Computer Won The 2021 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament In 2012, a computer program named Dr. Fill placed 141st out of some 660 entries in that year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, a competition for elite crossword puzzle solvers. This year, the algorithm beat the human competition, completing the final playoff puzzle in just 49 seconds.  The A.I. relies on a collection of different techniques to make sense of a puzzle. Sometimes, a simple fact is needed—who was the First Lady before Eleanor Roosevelt? (Lou Henry Hoover.) More often, however, crossword puzzle solutions rely not just on factual knowledge, but an ability to recognize themes that puzzle constructors have embedded in the crosswords, along with an understanding of puns, homonyms, and word play. (Think: Five letters, “dining table leaves”—SALAD!) The program makes a series of statistical calculations about likely answers, then tries to fit those possibilities into the puzzle squares.  This year, researchers from the Berkeley Natural Language Processing group added their expertise to Dr. Fill’s algorithms—a contribution that may have helped push Dr. Fill to its crowning victory.  But the program isn’t infallible. This year, it made three mistakes solving puzzles during the tournament, while some human solvers completed the puzzles perfectly. It can make these errors with any unique puzzle form it’s never seen before.  Matt Ginsberg, the computer programmer behind Dr. Fill, joins Ira to talk about the competition and the advances his program has made over the years. 

How an AI, after failing for a decade, finally won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The Olympics are going virtual, but not how you’re probably thinking. And remembering Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins.Links:Dr. Fill, an AI, won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Here's how. (Slate)Win a gold medal from your front room? IOC launches Olympic Virtual Series (The Guardian)Olympic Virtual Series gaming event launched by IOC (NBC Sports) Photos: Apollo 11: As They Shot It (NY Times)For Apollo 11 He Wasn’t on the Moon. But His Coffee Was Warm. (NY Times)Michael Collins, ‘Third Man’ of the Moon Landing, Dies at 90 (NY Times) Space community mourns the death of Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins (The Verge)What going to the moon taught Michael Collins about Earth (PBS)‘It’s time’: Blue Origin teases ticket sales for its New Shepard rocket (The Verge) Jeff Goldblum Jones Dungeons & Dragons Podcast Dark Dice (iO9)Kottke.OrgJackson Bird on Twitter

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel celebrate the first virtual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Rich sits down with editor of the New York Times Crossword puzzle and Crawfordsville-native Will Shortz, discussing his eighth-grade start to puzzlemaking, founding the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and avoiding obscurities and minimizing oddities (Episode 251).

This week’s episode of Slush Pile sees a newcomer to the table, but not a stranger to PBQ. John Wall Barger's poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Cincinnati Review, Subtropics, The Malahat Review, and he has published two collections, and most importantly, to us, he is now an editor for Painted Bride Quarterly! After John drops a quick bombshell about his new book coming out in the spring of next year, Jason laments about the supreme court striking an arduous blow to his union. When everyone is done grieving over the absence of beloved editor Marion Wrenn (where in the world is she now? Florence?) the gang dives right into three poems by two different authors starting with Karen Neuberg’s “Same House.”  Karen Neuberg’s poems and collages appear in numerous journals including 805, Canary, Epi-graph Magazine, and Verse Daily. She’s a multiple Pushcart and a Best-of-the-Net nominee, holds an MFA from The New School, is associate editor of the online journal First Literary Re-view East, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her latest chapbook is “the elephants are asking” (Glass Lyre Press, 2018)  “Same House” sparks an in-depth discussion about memories and nostalgia. Several of the editors comment on pieces of language that they admire as well as how their own nostalgic experiences can relate to the narrative. After a quick vote the board moves onto two poems written by Sadie Shorr Parks labeled “Lunacy” and “Good Sleep.”  Sadie Shorr-Parks grew up in Philadelphia but currently lives in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, where she teaches writing at Shepherd University. Outside of creative writing, Sadie dabbles in calligraphy, painting, stop animation, embroidery, and puppetry. She likes to start her day by doing the NYT Crossword and hopes to enter the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 2019. Sadie’s creative writing can be found in Witness Magazine, Sierra Nevada Review, Appalachian Heritage, and Blueline, among others. Her book reviews can be found with Los Angles Review of Books, Southern Literary Review, and Iowa Review. The gang begins to explore the pieces by Sadie Shorr-Parks discussing the risks and interesting qualities of her pieces. Kathleen and the gang do a great job at breaking down some of the intricacies of Sadie’s work. Will these pieces make the cut? Listen and find out! The group ended the episode in their usual manner: Tim Fitts challenged ANY LISTENER to challenge our co-op, Ali, to an MMA battle, while Kathleen and Jason happily discussed their last visit to The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop. (And don’t forget to celebrate 1970’s National Geographics and the French Revolution. Whaaaaa?)

The second installment of our interview series. Live from the floor of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament! (Apologies for the sound quality). 

Special eps! This weekend, the Crossnerds went to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, an incredible experience filled with amazing, brilliant, quirky constructors & solvers.  This first interview is with tournament CHAMP Erik Agard, conducted after puzzle 6.  We apologize for the sound quality. Our mics were packed up and we used a stereo room recorder :3 Still, you can hear Erik's wisdom on speed-solving!  Enjoy!    LINKS MENTIONED:  Puzzle Collaboration Directory: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1515117638602016/ Indy500: https://www.theindie500.com/

Tyler Hinman is a crossword puzzle solver and constructor. He's won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament 5 times and also holds the record for youngest champion ever. Here, he explains how and why.

This week on "A Way with Words": If everyone on the planet spoke a single language, wouldn't that make life a whole lot easier? For that matter, is a common world language even possible? Maybe for a minute or so--until new words and phrases start springing up. Also, did you ever wonder why the guy at your local coffee shop is a barista and not a baristo? There's a good grammatical reason. Finally, pass the gorp--we have the scoop on the name of this crunchy snack. Plus, gorp, double bubble, concertina wire, the story behind the movie title Winter's Bone, safe and sound, and a couple vs. a pair.FULL DETAILSThe finalists at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament wear giant headphones to block out the noise of the crowd and color commentary. As it happens, the white noise being pumped into them is the pre-recorded sound of a United Nations cocktail party.Male baristas aren't called baristos for the same reason that male Sandinistas aren't Sandinistos. There's a certain class of nouns in both Italian and Spanish where the definite article changes to indicate gender, but the noun stays the same.If you need a password that contains at least eight characters and one capital, there's always Mickey Minnie Pluto Huey Louie Dewey Donald Goofy Sacramento.Contrary to popular belief, gorp is not an acronym for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts. Earlier recipes for this crunchy snack contained all kinds of things, like soybeans, sunflower seeds, oats, pretzels, raisins, Wheat Chex and kelp, as in John McPhee's famous essay, "Travels in Georgia."Working double bubble is when you get paid double for working overtime or outside your normal work hours, and it's a classic bit of British rhyming slang.Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski invites his alter ego, Dr. Word, to present a quiz about Latin names for working stiffs.If someone's impatiently pounding on your front door, you might respond Keep your pants on! The origin of this phrase is unclear, though it may be related to keep your shirt on, and other expressions that refer to partially disrobing before a fistfight. To fill your boots means "to go after something with gusto." Similarly, the tableside injunction Fill your boots! is an invitation to chow down.The idiom safe and sound tells the story of the English language in three words: safe comes from French, and sound is a Germanic word with the same root as Gesundheit, meaning "health."Concertina wire, the coiled barbed wire that's compact and easy to move around, takes its name from the concertina, an accordion-like instrument. You wouldn't say the NASA launched a space shuttle, or you watched March Madness on the CBS. Similarly, initialisms like NSA and FBI are sometimes said without the article, especially by insiders.A quiddler is someone who wastes his energy on trifles. If we ever settled on one universal language that everyone spoke, it would last about a minute before variants of slang started popping up.The title Winter's Bone, an acclaimed film based on Daniel Woodrell's country noir novel, is an idiom the author created by personifying the season, which throws the main character a bone. Oxford University doesn't really have a mascot, so a listener asks on our Facebook page: Why not call them the Oxford Commas?A couple is not necessarily the same as a pair; it can certainly mean more than two, and it's always dependent on context.A hawk in its prime state of fitness is known as a yarak, a word that may derive from a Persian word meaning "strength, ability."To secrete means "to produce and discharge a fluid," a back-formation from secretion. But a similarly spelled verb means "to deposit in a hiding place." For both verbs, the pronunciation of the past tense, secreted, requires a long e in the middle.This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2015, Wayword LLC.

This week on "A Way with Words": If everyone on the planet spoke a single language, wouldn't that make life a whole lot easier? For that matter, is a common world language even possible? Maybe for a minute or so--until new words and phrases start springing up. Also, did you ever wonder why the guy at your local coffee shop is a barista and not a baristo? There's a good grammatical reason. Finally, pass the gorp--we have the scoop on the name of this crunchy snack. Plus, gorp, double bubble, concertina wire, the story behind the movie title Winter's Bone, safe and sound, and a couple vs. a pair.FULL DETAILSThe finalists at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament wear giant headphones to block out the noise of the crowd and color commentary. As it happens, the white noise being pumped into them is the pre-recorded sound of a United Nations cocktail party.Male baristas aren't called baristos for the same reason that male Sandinistas aren't Sandinistos. There's a certain class of nouns in both Italian and Spanish where the definite article changes to indicate gender, but the noun stays the same.If you need a password that contains at least eight characters and one capital, there's always Mickey Minnie Pluto Huey Louie Dewey Donald Goofy Sacramento.Contrary to popular belief, gorp is not an acronym for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts. Earlier recipes for this crunchy snack contained all kinds of things, like soybeans, sunflower seeds, oats, pretzels, raisins, Wheat Chex and kelp, as in John McPhee's famous essay, "Travels in Georgia."Working double bubble is when you get paid double for working overtime or outside your normal work hours, and it's a classic bit of British rhyming slang.Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski invites his alter ego, Dr. Word, to present a quiz about Latin names for working stiffs.If someone's impatiently pounding on your front door, you might respond Keep your pants on! The origin of this phrase is unclear, though it may be related to keep your shirt on, and other expressions that refer to partially disrobing before a fistfight. To fill your boots means "to go after something with gusto." Similarly, the tableside injunction Fill your boots! is an invitation to chow down.The idiom safe and sound tells the story of the English language in three words: safe comes from French, and sound is a Germanic word with the same root as Gesundheit, meaning "health."Concertina wire, the coiled barbed wire that's compact and easy to move around, takes its name from the concertina, an accordion-like instrument. You wouldn't say the NASA launched a space shuttle, or you watched March Madness on the CBS. Similarly, initialisms like NSA and FBI are sometimes said without the article, especially by insiders.A quiddler is someone who wastes his energy on trifles. If we ever settled on one universal language that everyone spoke, it would last about a minute before variants of slang started popping up.The title Winter's Bone, an acclaimed film based on Daniel Woodrell's country noir novel, is an idiom the author created by personifying the season, which throws the main character a bone. Oxford University doesn't really have a mascot, so a listener asks on our Facebook page: Why not call them the Oxford Commas?A couple is not necessarily the same as a pair; it can certainly mean more than two, and it's always dependent on context.A hawk in its prime state of fitness is known as a yarak, a word that may derive from a Persian word meaning "strength, ability."To secrete means "to produce and discharge a fluid," a back-formation from secretion. But a similarly spelled verb means "to deposit in a hiding place." For both verbs, the pronunciation of the past tense, secreted, requires a long e in the middle.This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.....Support for A Way with Words comes from The Ken Blanchard Companies, celebrating 35 years of making a leadership difference with Situational Leadership II, the leadership model designed to boost effectiveness, impact, and employee engagement. More about how Blanchard can help your executives and organizational leaders at kenblanchard.com/leadership.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2014, Wayword LLC.

[This episode first aired February 23, 2008.]Sharpen those pencils! Martha and Grant are doing crossword puzzles on the air again, preparing for their appearance with NPR Puzzlemaster Will Shortz at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in New York City.http://www.crosswordtournament.com/An Atlanta native wants to know why she and her fellow Southerners grew up using the word 'plum,' as in 'plum tuckered out.' Martha explains the connection between that kind of 'plum' and 'plumbers.'Which is the correct form: 'driver license,' 'drivers' license,' or 'driver's license'?An Austin teenager wants to know why we refer to a girl who behaves boyishly as a 'tomboy.'This week's 'Slang This!' contestant tries to guess the meaning of the terms 'beano' (no, not the anti-gas treatment) and 'macing' (no, not the stinging defensive spray).A teacher discusses whether the correct form is 'feel bad' or 'feel badly.' By the way, the Latin proverb Martha mentions here is, 'Qui docet, discet.'Why do we use a capital letter 'I' for the first person singular pronoun, but don't capitalize any other pronouns?A caller from Maine says she was taught to say 'bunny, bunny' at the first of each month for good luck. Then she met someone who says 'rabbit, rabbit' for the same reason. What's the superstition behind these lagomorphic locutions?In honor of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a puzzle about--what else?--crossed words.A caller wants to know why those deep-fried balls of cornmeal and spices are called 'hush puppies.' An ESL teacher puzzles over how to explain to his students the proper pronunciation of the word 'route.' He asks whether the pronunciation 'root' has been 'routed' by 'rowt.'A caller is curious about an expression her father liked to use 'off in the giggleweeds.' What's a giggleweed? And no, he didn't mean marijuana.More next week. Notice how we didn't say, 'Well, weed better be going'?----Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC.