Today's Daily Dispatch

NUTS TO YOU…

Posted February 04, 2012

The bluffing round just included an incorrect “correct” definition---the card defined “midden” as “a pile of nuts collected by a squirrel.” A midden is indeed a pile of nut-related material that a squirrel is responsible for accumulating, but it is neither collected by the squirrel nor, if the squirrel knows its business, are there any nutmeats in a midden. A midden is the pile of nutshells and other debris dropped by a squirrel as it eats. (Squirrels tend to sit on the same tree branch to eat, and the debris accumulates below.) It’s basically the squirrel’s garbage pile, which is how it relates to the archeological definition---a human midden is a trash pile of broken pottery, bones,

Odile, from Arlington, MA

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‘RAMP’ PARSE

Posted December 12, 2011

I listened to today’s show and the question about ‘ramp up.’ But the correct answer isn’t the one anyone gave: The word ‘ramp’ comes from the French verb ‘ramper’--to crawl. When you see a lion ‘rampant’, he is ‘crawling’ in the air with his feet. A ramp for someone who crawls rather than walks. A ramp rises gradually and gave us the word for raising or ‘stepping up’ an effort.

Deborah Warren of Andover, MA

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WE RUE OUR ANSWER

Posted November 15, 2011

I love “Says You,” so it pains me to say that you got an answer slightly wrong on the November 13 broadcast. The murderer in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is not a gorilla, as you would have it, but an orangutan, or “Ourang-Outang” Poe refers to the animal. The species of the offending creature is essential to the story, so I hope you will revisit and correct this question in a future show.

Thanks for your wonderful show!

Deborah Robbins of San Francisco, CA

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