For much of this year we have been jubilantly celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. We particularly rejoice at the feat of the feet of astronauts (Latin astro, “star” + naut, “space sailor”) Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first human beings to walk on the face of […]
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the World Series of Poker, a succession of high-stakes poker tournaments played in Lost Wages, Nevada. As luck would have it, you’re reading a column written by the most successful breeder of world-class poker professionals in history. My son, Howard “The Professor” Lederer, and daughter, Annie “The […]
Dear Readers: Your over and above and far and away enthusiastic response to last month’s column about redundancies has inspired me to write another one. Here ’tis: My fellow colleagues and classmates, I am here to tell you the honest truth, not to be confused with the dishonest truth, about the basic fundamentals of […]
RIDDLER REACHER at your service. That’s a full anagram of my name, Richard Lederer. Riddles have riddled humanity for millennia. Even 4,000 years ago, people tested one another’s critical thinking skills with riddles and logic puzzles. This ancient Sumer civilization, located in what is today Iraq, left us with one of the earliest known […]
We usually think of rhyme as a musical device found only in poems. But, in fact, rhyme is the name of the game. Rhyme appeals so powerfully to the human ear that, if we listen carefully, we can discover a surprising number of common, everyday words and phrases that rhyme. Let’s take a sneak […]
DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: In reading a short biography of Noah Webster, I was impressed by the number of languages he learned (27?) in order to trace the etymology of the words in his dictionaries. Surely with that sort of dedication and passion for the cataloging of words, we who speak American English owe him […]
Time spent solving a crossword or arranging Sudoku numbers could spell better health for aging brains, researchers say. In a study of more than 19,000 British adults age 50 and over who were tracked for 25 years, the habit of solving word or number puzzles seemed to help keep minds active and nimble over […]
Friday, June 21, is World Giraffe Day, which celebrates the towering wonders that share our planet. Giraffe Day is an initiative of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, and zoos, schools, governments, institutions and conservation organizations around the world join in by hosting events to raise awareness and support for giraffes in the wild. Giraffes are […]
Please write down all the adjectives you can think of to describe someone who is very intelligent. Chances are that among your answers are words like: bright, brilliant, dazzling, lucid, scintillating acute, clever, incisive, keen, sharp Examine these two lists, and you will notice that each clusters around a single basic concept. All the […]
Recently, I wrote a column about bilingual redundancies, such as “the La Mesa Library.” In the billowy mail bag of responses, this analysis gleamed out: “In your recent column regarding the double the problem for places with names of Spanish origin you failed to mention, that these names are not thought of in their […]