&lt;p&gt;SUMMARY&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anagrams, rebuses, cryptograms, Jumble -- 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&#039;s a jitney supper and where do you eat graveyard stew? The hosts explain the origin of the term &amp;ldquo;hang fire&amp;rdquo; and why Alaskans sound like they&#039;re from the Midwest, and take on a debate about whether an egregious falsehood is a bald-faced lie or a bold-faced lie.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FULL DETAILS&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;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 a youngster, and how word puzzles in the newspaper became a daily ritual.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;An office worker in Indianapolis is mystified when a British colleague sends an email telling her to &quot;hang fire.&quot; The hosts explain the expression has to do with faulty firearms.&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&quot;Call up to 24 hours in advance to make a reservation.&quot; Do those instructions mean you can call until 24 hours before the deadline, or that you should call within 24 hours of it. When a San Diego listener assumed it was the former, she had an unpleasant surprise. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Did you know the POTUS (President of the United States) has a BOTUS? Grant explains what a BOTUS is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Quiz Guy Greg Pliska&#039;s game this week is &quot;Name Dropping.&quot;&amp;nbsp; The answer for each set of clues will be a word that has a common first name hidden somewhere in it; when that name&#039;s removed, the remaining letters spell a new word. For example, the first clue is &quot;one of the seven deadly sins,&quot; the second is &quot;the grain consumed by one-fifth of the world&#039;s inhabitants.&quot; Subtract the latter from the former, and you get a woman&#039;s name.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller says that when she was a child and recovering from an illness, her mother fed her a kind of milk toast she called graveyard stew. Is that strange name unique to her family?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;During the health care debate in Congress, there was lots of talk about an up-or-down vote. A Montana listener finds this expression annoying.&amp;nbsp; What&#039;s wrong with plain old &quot;vote&quot;?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In youth slang, &quot;totes&quot; is short for &quot;totally.&quot; Grant talks about new, lengthened version of this slang shortening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Carlsbad, California, couple has a running debate over whether an egregious whopper is correctly called a bold-faced lie or a bald-faced lie.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Library of Congress is archiving the entire content of Twitter. Grant explains why that&#039;s a gold mine for language researchers like David Bamman at Tufts University. You can see some of the results Bamman&#039;s compiled at Lexicalist.com.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;http://www.lexicalist.com/&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What do you eat at a jitney supper? Jitney?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why do people from Alaska sound like they&#039;re from the Midwest?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A caller who grew up in Arkansas says his mother used a colorful expression instead of &quot;mind your own business,&quot; which was &amp;ldquo;tend to your own rat-killing.&amp;rdquo; Grant talks about that and a similar phrase, go on with your rat-killing, meaning &quot;Finish what you were saying.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;--&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Email: words@waywordradio.org&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Phone: &lt;br /&gt;United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673&lt;br /&gt;London +44 20 7193 2113&lt;br /&gt;Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate&lt;br /&gt;Site: http://waywordradio.org/&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;feedflare&quot;&gt;
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