Language isn’t just for communication — it’s fun. For over a hundred years, crosswords have served as entertainment, and even been blamed for society’s ills. Turns out crosswords are serious business.
Author and illustrator of Letters to Margaret and crossword enthusiast Hayley Gold takes us into the history and the discussions happening in the world of crosswords — the Crossworld.
You can buy Hayley’s book at this link:
https://shop.lonesharkgames.com/collections/letters-to-margaret
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Become a Patron!Show notes
Cursed Startup Using AI to Remove Call Center Workers’ Accents
https://futurism.com/startup-ai-remove-call-center-accents
Hear the Magic | sanas.ai
https://www.sanas.ai/demo
Start-up denies using tech to turn call centre accents ‘white’
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62633188
Littlelight – Written by Kelly Canby | Fremantle Press
https://fremantlepress.com.au/books/littlelight/
Why ‘use it or lose it’ saying about foreign languages may not be true
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/2022/08/24/why-use-it-or-lose-it-saying-about-foreign-languages-may-not-be-true/
Schmid – The final frontier? Why we have been ignoring second language attrition, and why it is time we stopped
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-teaching/article/final-frontier-why-we-have-been-ignoring-second-language-attrition-and-why-it-is-time-we-stopped/B7065D862C3B5E039757FA7C90C2C4F4
Newport: less-is-more hypothesis
https://dictionary.apa.org/less-is-more-hypothesis
Tired Adults May Learn Language like Children Do
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tired-adults-may-learn-language-like-children-do/
Smalle – Less is more: Depleting cognitive resources enhances language learning abilities in adults.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-36702-001
Marshmallow challenge with debriefing
https://www.sessionlab.com/methods/marshmallow-challenge-with-debriefing
Belief in Learning Styles Myth May Be Detrimental
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-styles-myth
The Myth of ‘Learning Styles’ | The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth-of-learning-styles/557687/
Letters to Margaret by Hayley Gold
https://shop.lonesharkgames.com/collections/letters-to-margaret
Can you solve the very first published crossword puzzle? | The Hub
https://lithub.com/can-you-solve-the-very-first-published-crossword-puzzle/
Dinosaur Comics “Life is hard!! Language is just how we talk about it”
https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=3215
bewilderingly – Crosswords by Will Nediger
http://blog.bewilderinglypuzzles.com
bewilderingly | Twitch
https://www.twitch.tv/bewilderingly
Dark Brandon | Know Your Meme
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dark-brandon
The “Dark Brandon” meme — and why it’s so confusing — explained
https://www.vox.com/culture/23300286/biden-dark-brandon-meme-maga-why-confusing-explained
Posting Through It podcast (formerly Sh!tposting): More like Mar-a-Lame-o if you ask me — Emmi Conley (8/15/22)
https://www.postingthroughit.com/more-like-mar-a-lame-o-if-you-ask/
Why Is Dr. Oz So Bad at Twitter? | The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/dr-oz-social-media-pennsylvania-senate-race/671301/
Could ‘quiet quitting’ your job be the answer to burnout?
https://metro.co.uk/2022/07/29/could-the-quiet-quitting-trend-be-the-answer-to-burnout-what-you-need-to-know-17085827/
More or Less: Can we use maths to beat the robots?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0cy2fnr
Does “splooting” have an etymology?
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=55687
What Is Splooting? Does Your Cat Sploot? – CatTime
https://cattime.com/trending/24735-what-is-splooting-does-your-cat-sploot
Transcript
[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]
Hedvig: I have a French Polynesia crossword in front of me. I’m going to try and do it later. What do you think my chances successes?
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: Oh, it sounds rough. How much domain knowledge do you think it’s going to need?
Hedvig: I think it’s actually very similar to what would be in a French newspaper.
Daniel: Ah, okay. Mainstream French. Yeah, maybe.
Hedvig: Ooh, ooh.
Ben: He doesn’t sound confident.
Hedvig: What do you think on [unintelligible 00:00:32] for three letters? Like [unintelligible 00:00:28] No, okay, never mind.
[Because Language theme]
Daniel: Hello and welcome to Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language. I’m Daniel Midgley. Let’s meet the team. We’ve got Ben Ainslie and Hedvig Skirgård. And today, I thought I would get to know you a little bit by asking you a question. One question in the hopes that it would somehow be revealing. So, Ben, you first.
Ben: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: Favorite apple variety?
Ben: I feel very strongly about this.
Daniel: I thought you might.
Ben: There is only one good apple in the world and there is one apple that is acceptable in times of extreme scarcity of the first variety. The only viable apple that is delicious to eat as a snack is the Pink Lady.
Daniel: Oh, interesting.
Ben: All other apples are horrendous pretenders. If you want to come at me with like Sundowner’s or Fuji’s, quite frankly, just step the fuck off, because there is nothing about those apples that is delicious.
Daniel: Okay.
Ben: The stand-in that I will accept in times of extreme scarcity is the Granny Smith.
Daniel: Interesting.
Ben: I do like a good tight apple. Also, noteworthy for its versatility on the cooking side of the [crosstalk].
Daniel: Yes.
Ben: Other than that, all those apples need to get directly in the bin.
Daniel: Granny Smith, unbeatable in pies.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. Though I will say, the Pink Lady, as my favorite of the ladies-
Hedvig: God.
Ben: -holds her own in cooking as well. Because she’s got good solid tartness to her.
Daniel: Okay, okay.
Ben: Being half a Granny Smith herself.
[laughter]
Daniel: Hedvig, same question. Favorite apple variety?
Hedvig: I’m also a fan of pink lady, but I’m not as particular.
Ben: Fervent? Not as jihadistic.
Hedvig: I like a Swedish variety as well called Ingrid Marie that some Swedish people will know about that you get into shops sometime.
Ben: I would like to try the Ingrid Marie for I have never heard of it, nor have I ever tried it.
Daniel: I too would like to try the Ingrid Marie.
Hedvig: Well, apple varieties are funny, right? Because you can graft apple varieties very quickly.
Ben: Yes, that is– [crosstalk]
Hedvig: And [crosstalk] you get exactly the same apple variety. You need to do a bunch of stuff, because they’re insanely mutating, I think.
Daniel: I thought that we would have more kind words for the Bravo variety.
Hedvig: I don’t know the Bravo. I was going to say nice thing about Gala, but– [crosstalk]
Ben: Oh, don’t even. Don’t even.
Daniel: Bravo.
Hedvig: Okay.
Daniel: Doesn’t oxidize?
Ben: The Gala does not deserve a Gala and the Bravo is anything but.
Hedvig: Okay. And also–
Daniel: It’s delicious?
Hedvig: I googled Ingrid Marie, and I did find out that it originates from Denmark.
Ben: [chuckles] Has your affection for the apple completely disappeared?
Hedvig: No. But I now– [crosstalk]
Ben: But substantially lessened?
Hedvig: I know. I’m trying to be nice.
Ben: [laughs] My life was a lie.
Daniel: I think you are coming at us from Tahiti. What’s going on there?
Hedvig: Well, I’m here on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia for business reasons. I’m attending a linguistics conference and enjoying wonderful Tahiti. I’ve never been here before. It’s very fun. I am getting to exercise my French and also trying to guess at Tahitian words from someone, which is going–[crosstalk]
Ben: Isn’t working. For those of us completely removed from such a linguistic environment, give us a roughshod similarity comparison, Tahitian someone?
Hedvig: Well, I was talking to a lady on the bus stop today, like tituno, titino, it’s like head in both languages. But ‘thank you’ in Soman is fa’afetai and it’s māuruuru in Tahitian. So, those are completely different. But someone Tahitian have both Polynesian languages, and they are related and they have lots of words in common.
Ben: Are we thinking like Spanish and Italian? Is that a fair comparison?
Hedvig: Spanish and Italian? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yes, it’s not about comparison.
Ben: You can muddle your way through?
Hedvig: Well, I can’t, because I’m not fluent as someone.
Ben: A fluent someone when speaking to.
Hedvig: And you still have to like, “No, ah, all of these things turn into those things.” You have to like–
Daniel: Right. That’s good.
Ben: But yeah, it’s fun. Everyone’s very patient with me. Of course, I’m speaking more French than someone more Tahitian. And today, I asked for bouteille de verre, which means a bottle of glass, because I meant a bottle of water-
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: -and they just looked at me very kindly and said, “Well, excuse me, madame? “
[laughter]
Ben: Excusez-moi?
Hedvig: And then, they figured it out. So, everyone’s very nice.
Daniel: Oh. Well, thank you both for being here. Let me ask a question. Do either of you like crosswords?
Hedvig: I like them, but I’m not terribly good at them. And Steve is, my husband.
Ben: I am squarely in the same zone as Hed is on this one. I have affection for crosswords. I would like to be better at, what do you call it, standard crosswords for just flexi reasons, because it makes me feel like a little smart dude. And I would like to be better at cryptic crosswords, because I feel anyone who is good at cryptic crosswords, inherently is just a bit closer to being a wizard.
Hedvig: Steve is so good crosswords that one time when we were in Sweden and we were at a pub having a beer and I was trying to solve a Swedish crossword, he managed to help me.
Ben: Get the fuck out of here. Oh, my God.
Daniel: [laughs] Oh, my.
Hedvig: I was like, “Oh, this many–“
Daniel: Jesus.
Daniel: That’s odd. That’s odd, because crosswordese is a separate language of its own– [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Yeah. I think it was an international word like radio or something. But it was still–
Daniel: Ah, here they come.
Hedvig: Maybe it was something else. He was like, “Oh, isn’t that this thing in Swedish?” and it was that.
Daniel: Impressive.
Ben: And I also for later in the show, and you can put this wherever you want, Daniel, when we say the word crossword? There are two very different games that get played on a very similar board, essentially. And I feel we need to clear up what we mean when we say ‘crossword’. Now, are we talking about definitional transitions or are we talking cryptic crosswords?
Daniel: We’re talking about the first kind.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: Although later on in this episode, I’m going to be talking to artist and crossword enthusiast, Hayley Gold. And she mentions the difference. She goes into detail on cryptic crosswords versus regular crosswords. And so, we will be sure to go there.
Ben: Excellent.
Daniel: But you know how we often go sociopolitical on our linguistics sometimes on the show?
Ben: I have no idea what you mean. I find that we are apolitical.
Daniel: Yeah. I thought this was not going to be one of those episodes. I thought, “Oh, crosswords. Nothing controversial going on here.” But the world of crosswords or the Crossworld as it is known-
Ben: Of course, it is.
Daniel: -has been going through what everybody’s going through. We’ve all been debating, how are we going to respond to our global push for a more just, equitable, diverse, inclusive society? And this is an issue for institutions, for people, for everyone who does language which crosswords definitely do. So, Hayley has written a graphic novel called Letters to Margaret. It’s in two parts from the perspective of two characters and the clash of their views. But it also weaves in how the language of crosswords is changing, some of the puzzle makers and editors who literally made the Crossworld. And there’s even crosswords woven throughout.
Hedvig: Wow.
Daniel: So, I’m going to talk to her about that. Yeah, it’s massive. I felt I was standing on the precipice gazing into a subculture that I had no idea existed, but which some people spend their lives in.
Ben: Always fun when that happens. Some people find it really intimidating, or really unnerving, or they just see people like who had that deep into something. I don’t know about you guys, but I myself, am not that deep on any one thing that I love, right?
Daniel: All right.
Ben: I love videogames, but I don’t fall– I’ve never cosplayed as anything. I would not call myself a stan of any particular thing. And so, I have just this outsider’s affection for people who just fall all the way to the bottom of the rabbit hole in some of these things.
Daniel: [laughs] Yeah.
Ben: It’s just the best. I love seeing it, because there is no one– I saw it in a still image the other day like a meme, which was just like, “I love it when you ask someone about something,” and it turns out it is their secret pocket fandom. And they start out the answer by saying, “So, what you need to know is,” and then–
[laughter]
Ben: –Everything that follows that is phenomenal.
Daniel: Buckle up, because you’re in for a ride, right?
Ben: Ready, ready?
Daniel: That is Hayley Gold, because now it’s like, “Oh, good. I don’t have to go there. I can talk to you about it.” And she serves as the Virgil to my Dante, all right?
Hedvig: That’s cool.
Ben: Oh, that was a very literary reference. Well done.
Daniel: Thank you very much. Our last episode was a Mailbag episode. We had a great time answering our listener questions like, “Why do we capitalize the letter I when it’s a pronoun?” What else was there?
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: And everyone should join me in not doing that.
Daniel: Oh, I’ll go one better. Lowercase, but no dot. That’s what I’m doing.
Hedvig: Oh.
Daniel: [crosstalk]
Hedvig: That’s very cool. But that’s hard to pull up on most keyboards.
Daniel: Yeah.
Ben: Ah, whoa.
Daniel: It’s all a matter of training.
Ben: Yeah. Daniel’s going through in Photoshop afterwards on JPEGs just being like, “Not you full of pixels, not you full of pixels.”
Daniel: Liquid paper on the printout.
Ben: [laughs] On the screen.
Daniel: Or, why can we have potatoes but not broccolis, and why did we sometimes say eww. So, if you become a patron at the listener level, you can listen to that bonus episode and a bunch of other bonus episodes right now. And there are rewards of other levels too. Like patrons at all levels are hanging out with us on Discord chatting up a storm. We’re really grateful to every patron for supporting the show helping us bring solid linguistic science to the world. So, join us at patreon.com/becauselangpod.
Hedvig: And also, in our most recent episode, The Mailbag patron episode, we recorded a little video that’s up on Twitter, where I accidentally invented a hand gesture that can symbolize the unity of Gen Z and millennials. I’m still continuing my campaign to be loved or at least accepted by Gen Z.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: It was beautiful.
Ben: That’s so sad.
Hedvig: No, it’s not sad.
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: I just want them to like me.
Daniel: It’s sad and beautiful.
Hedvig: I want them to like me. I want to be the cool-
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: -and Ben can be the annoying– [crosstalk]
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: Yeah. I’m cool.
Ben: Look, all I’ll say is, I’m happy to be the grunkle, the grumpy uncle, but I will never be the creepy/racist uncle. That’s where I draw the line.
Daniel: Ah, you’ll be the grunkle, but you’ll never be the crunkle.
Ben: [laughs] Yeah, exactly.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: Yes, yes. Perfect.
Daniel: Thank you.
Hedvig: I’ll be the one who’s like forever trying to research whatever young people are wearing and desperately trying.
Ben: You will be Steve Buscemi, “Hello, fellow kids.”
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Hello, fellow kids.
Ben: That’s who you’d be. Just quickly, on the Discord server, this is just a little bit of a plug for people who might want to become patrons. I’m thinking we should start a subchannel. This is like, “What are you watching?” or “Recommended watching/playing”. Because I’ve got all this stuff that I’m watching that I want to talk to people about, but I have no friends. And so, if we create this space, then I’ve got a captive audience.
Daniel: Consider it done. What do you want to name this channel?
Ben: I don’t know if that ended up being as much of an ad as I thought it would be.
Hedvig: Oh, my God, I love it.
Daniel: Oh, my– That’ true. What– [crosstalk]
Ben: Come, be my obligatory friends where I talk about the things that I’m watching.
Daniel: Should we call it What Are You Watching? Now Watching?
Hedvig: Ben, I meant–
Ben: Yes. Viewing? Now Viewing?
Hedvig: Yeah, call it whatever you want, but I just wanted to let you know, Ben, that I met a listener, and they asked me, if you were as cute as you sound. Yay.
Daniel: Cuter.
Ben: Oh, that makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
Hedvig: [laughs]
Ben: For several reasons, that statement fucks me several different ways. One, it first of all suggests that I am profoundly misrepresenting myself on the internet. Second of all, everyone who meets me then must just be completely disappointed, because I’m horrendous.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: I am not cute at all. So, I just want to disabuse anybody who might have entertained even as scary– and I bet there’s a bunch of listeners who are like, “That person’s fucking crazy.”
Hedvig: I think you are cute. Oh, just as by the way, it clearly intended as like, “Is he single?”
Daniel: Yeah.
Ben: Oh, my. Okay. Daniel, please don’t leave this in.
Hedvig: [laughs]
Ben: Please, please, please–
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: –don’t leave this. This is making me [crosstalk] uncomfortable.
Daniel: Ben, you think you’re hideous, but you’re still the only guy that does it for me. All right, I just want that to be known.
Hedvig: Hmm.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: Well, now that we’ve said all of those– [crosstalk]
Daniel: We haven’t got to news yet, have we?
Ben: [laughs] No, we haven’t.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: Okay. Just to button that section and delete all the things that came before, I thought we would add a “What Are You Watching” section because it can be so hard to know what we’ll– [crosstalk]
Daniel: You can go back and do this again.
Ben: Yeah, no, we’re doing it. I’m just giving you a really clean take so you can get rid of everything else. It can be really hard to know. There’s so much choice out there. [crosstalk] So, it would be really great bunch of smart awesome people just gave their recommendations are really interesting shows that they’re watching right now. And also, pro tip, stuff to avoid. Tried to like House of the Dragon. Turns out it sucks just as hard as the last season of Game of Thrones. That sort of.
Hedvig: I have a recommendation if anyone’s interested. Because I’ve been on a bunch of long-haul flights and desperately browsing-
Daniel: Oh, yeah.
Hedvig: -the entertainment interface. And I found this Australian series that I think is that of Western Australia called Firebite.
Ben: Firebite.
Hedvig: Yeah? Do you know about it?
Ben: I have not heard of it.
Hedvig: It’s a fantastical TV show about that there are vampires in Australia.
Ben: Oh, yes. And it’s indigenous vampire hunters?
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: Yes, I’ve heard about it. I haven’t seen, it’s on my list though.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: I watched the first episode, and I liked it. The vampires are all living down in the Opal mines and stuff, which makes perfect sense.
Ben: Yeah, awesome [crosstalk]
Daniel: As you would.
Ben: Yeah.
Hedvig: And for some reason, they really, really prefer Indigenous Australian people blood to white people.
Ben: I like that as a– See, this is why we need this section of the Discord, Daniel, because we will just do this for ages.
Hedvig: Okay.
Ben: But basically, really quickly, just quickly.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: I really liked that idea as an exploration, because that is the lived experience of Indigenous Australians, right? Just sitting in a park or going to the shops is substantially more fucking dangerous for you than it is for white Australians. So, I feel that’s a really interesting way to explore that lived experience.
Hedvig: Yeah, and it was also cool. It’s very rare to have a TV show set in a mining town in Western Australia.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: There’s reasons.
Hedvig: That doesn’t have to. I thought that was– Yeah.
Ben: Okay. Hey, Daniel, what’s been going on in the world of linguistics in the last week?
Hedvig: [laughs] Thank you, Ben.
Daniel: This one was suggested to us by Aristemo. Do you remember, a long time ago, Ben, when we did a story about call centers, the voice of the agent seemed a little bit canned, and we wondered if it was an AI. And there was someone asking the agent, “Please say, I am not a robot,” and the agent couldn’t. Do you remember that story?
Ben: Vaguely, very vaguely.
Daniel: What happened was, there really was a real human on the phone, but they only had access to pre-recordings that they could play.
Ben: Oh.
Daniel: So, here was somebody desperately trying to push buttons to give the right answer.
Ben: Right.
Daniel: And the reason, you can guess why they made prerecorded bits, right?
Ben: Because people are racist, and they don’t like accents that don’t sound like their.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: That’s it.
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: They want people to think, I don’t know, why people are on the call or something?
Ben: What do we call these? Is it a Turkish box? What’s that idea that it looks like a machine doing a thing, but it’s actually a person doing?
Daniel: The Mechanical Turk.
Ben: The Mechanical Turk. There we go.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: How problematic is that expression, by the way?
Hedvig: I don’t know.
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: It was the– [crosstalk]
Daniel: We’re having a dialogue. It really was a Turkish chess player inside the box, right?
Hedvig: Well, or I thought that this thing, the box was made in Turkey.
Daniel: Oh, no way. It was the thing.
Ben: I don’t know.
Daniel: No, it was this turban-like character who had moved pieces– [crosstalk]
Ben: Oh, okay. So, it probably was engaging in early Orientalism — [crosstalk]
Daniel: It’s weird. Yeah, that’s right. Hey, what’s a better term for Mechanical Turk? Let’s find one.
Ben: Yes.
Daniel: Anyway, Aristemo has pointed us to this article in futurism.com by Noor Al-Sibai about a company called Sanas that offers what’s known as accent translation. What’s happening is, a person with an accent that doesn’t sound like mine starts talking and AI converts their voice on the fly into an accent that sounds a bit more like a mainstream accent.
Ben: Yucky. This is yucky. I don’t like this.
Daniel: Do you want to hear it?
Ben: Yes.
Daniel: Okay. So, this is the website, sanas.ai. And it lets you turn the software on and off. We’re going to listen to someone with an Indian accent, and I’m going to flip back and forth between the speaker’s real accent and then the modified accent.
Alex: Hi, this is Alex from the customer service aide.
Software: How are you today? Great to hear.
Alex: I’m doing very well. Thank you very much for asking.
Software: So, how can I help you today? I’m so sorry about that.
Alex: I’ll be glad to help you.
Software: Can I get your full name, phone number, and address to check in on that order?
Daniel: It isn’t that bad, but it is a little bit, I don’t know, unnerving to see it actually done.
Ben: I feel quite conflicted about this.
Daniel: Yeah?
Hedvig: I’m not sure if I feel conflicted, because we’ve talked about this before, which is, we live in a shitty world and is giving people tools to deal with that shitty world acceptable, if what you should be doing is focusing on making the world less shitty, I guess.
Ben: Yes.
Daniel: Mm-hmm.
Ben: So, that’s where I’m sitting on it as well. It’s like should we be doing this or should we just, A, being paying call center people more? B, teaching people to just listen to other varieties of English?
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: Because it’s not voice A was indecipherable. Like you would have to be a pretty deeply ignorant human to not be able to understand that first instance of someone speaking. Because it’s still perfectly decipherable English.
Hedvig: And the other factor is also that if we think about the people who are likely to call call centers, I don’t know about you, guys, but I suspect you’re similar to me and that, if I need help with something, I don’t want to talk to a person. I want to look at a website and maybe chat to someone.
Ben: Yeah, or google it.
Hedvig: I actually don’t want to speak on a phone. I hate that. So, maybe the only ones who still want to do that are boomers and maybe they have a harder time with this.
Ben: I’m sure they do, but everyone can learn. That’s the other thing.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: And we’ve been doing the whole offshoring call centers for a long time. There’s been plenty of– Look, my first of all– oh, not first of all, because we’ve been speaking for a while. Third of all, I would also really like to hear from an employee– from, oh, several employees from call center, say, in India, or the Philippines, or any of the other places where this is at work. I know some of those places are just horrendous places to work. I know other instances where those places are perfectly decent, middle-class jobs with relatively good labor protections and that sort of thing. So, if this is a tool that will make a bunch of people in non-English-as-a-first language places, not cop as much racist bullshit in their day, that to me inherently is a good thing, I think.
Daniel: This is the view promoted by one of the cofounders, Sharath Keshava Narayana.
Ben: I’m sure it is. [laughs] I have no doubt– [crosstalk]
Daniel: Who says that– Oh, yeah. But there’s a lot of people with different accents in the company. But he says, “Should the world be a better place? Absolutely yes. Should the world be more accepting of diversity and accent? Absolutely yes. But call centers have been around for 45 years. And every day, an agent goes through this discrimination on every single call.”
Ben: Yeah, fair enough. You know what? Maybe if it is a thing that people could have a little button on their computer that they get the choice of whether they want to use it or not. And if people would like to use it, fantastic. If people would prefer to just go through the world being themselves and having those conversations on their terms, how they want to have them, then I think that’s– have the ability to do it, I think, is my sense is what this will do is, whole call center will just install it, so that they can get the “competitive edge.” And then, everyone has to do it and then it’s just like this weird performative thing. Like Hedvig started off by saying, let’s fix the world rather than make tools for people who live in shitty circumstance.
Hedvig: Yeah. But then also, like you were saying, if these people are copping racist people screaming at them every day, how much their suffering is not negotiable?
Ben: Oh, and that’s what I mean.
Hedvig: That’s like shit, but– [crosstalk]
Ben: If anyone wanted it, they should have it, for sure. I don’t know about you, but I rankle at the idea of an entire company being like, “Everyone must do this. Your voice is a bad voice, and we want to cover it–” [crosstalk]
Hedvig: But the thing is also about customer service and support from call centers like this and all kinds of customer-related work is that like, “Okay, customers are racist about accents.” They’re also shouting at waitresses for all kinds of reasons. The sense of an entitlement people have towards customer service and customer-facing work is just so shit in itself, it doesn’t matter even if they speak exactly the same accent as you. People still tell them off for bullshit.
Ben: I can treat you like a piece of garbage. Yeah.
Hedvig: Yeah. I don’t know. Get really depressed about it.
Daniel: This is only partly about language really, isn’t that? I really bristle at the idea of any accent erasure. And this really is about whose voice has the right to be represented in public. Are we okay with a lot of accents or are we going to pretend that they don’t exist? The fact that we’re using AI to push other voices to the background is extremely worrying.
Ben: Yeah. So, that’s where I’m at on it. I’m like, “This really gets my hackles up.” But if it protects some people and they want to use it, I’m for that.
Hedvig: I also wonder if they’re going to launch this, because we talked about accents here. But there are many places in South Asia where people speak English as a native language, and this is actually their English dialect. I think there’s a tendency for people to only think about like British and American English and maybe Canadian. But there are plenty of native speakers in India, in South Africa, all over the world.
Hedvig and Ben: Singapore.
Hedvig: Australia, New Zealand. [laughs] long-haul.
Ben: It’s barely English here. Yeah, let’s be — [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Or Hong Kong and many places. And sometimes, we write them off as like, “Oh, these people have an Indian accent.” But it’s like, “Do they speak a native dialect of English?” There are some Scottish people I can barely understand. Are we going to put this tool on them too now? I suspect nae?
Daniel: [chuckles]
Ben: Yeah. I feel what gets lost or– If I was the fascist dictator of the world, if I was the despot, they’ve got to say exactly how I want things to go.
Daniel: And control spelling. [laughs]
Ben: I’m going to looking at you, C, fuck off. No, no, no. If I was, one of my things on this issue would be, you gain things from figuring out how other varieties are spoken.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: Especially other varieties that are really quite different. Not as much as learning another language certainly but spending a lot of time with people with Big Island Scottish accents, you learn more than just what they’re saying. You learn about where they’ve come from, about the stories behind certain turns of phrase, and all that stuff. And that’s true for every variety of English and other languages as well, like other varieties of certain languages.
So yeah, if I was the grand purveyor of all existence, I would say, “Fuckin’ learn other varieties, dickheads, because it’s really cool and you learn cool shit, and it’s nice, and it makes you a cooler, better person.”
Hedvig: It’s probably good for your brain. I don’t know if it is, but I want to– [crosstalk]
Ben: Neuroplasticity. If crosswords are, then surely this is.
Hedvig: I feel dealing with variation is good for your brain. I don’t know.
Ben: Yeah. Who?
Daniel: Yeah, but not everyone likes it. This is a such a hard area. We’ve talked so many times about code switching and how we need to teach students to be good switchers so that other people will feel comfortable with their language, so that other people can pretend that language diversity doesn’t exist and so that they can avoid discrimination and abuse. I hate that approach, because I want to attack discrimination head on. But I know it’s a problem that’s never going to be solved and I won’t cop it.
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: I won’t.
Ben: Yeah. It’s really easy to be like, “No, we should do better.” But I’ve not had people look at me like a complete idiot because of how I speak.
Hedvig: Yeah, exactly.
Daniel: You know what, in my science communication, I’m still going to attack discrimination as much as I can.
Ben: Fight the good fight.
Daniel: And you know what, Aristemo, commented this out of Discord and said it was okay if I share it. “As someone who has worked call center jobs before and been harassed for my accent, I get that they mean well. However, this is basically the same as having customers put on AR goggles when they enter a store so that every employee looks white and they never have to acknowledge that minorities exist. Maybe stop serving customers who insist on treating employees like shit.”
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. Well–
Hedvig: Exactly. That’s the problem, that customers treat people like shit for all kinds of reasons for– Yeah. Oh, I can’t really express what I think about it.
Daniel: This is tough.
Ben: We should probably get to story two at some stage.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Okay.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: Can I just share something? I’m reading a kid’s book with my kids. It’s called Littlelight. I loved it so much, I ordered a copy. And it’s about the city with walls around it. But somebody is taking some of the bricks away. And through the empty bricks, they can see the people on the other side and, “Oh, they have different food. Oh, they have different languages. They listen to interesting music, oh.” But the mayor is like, “Somebody is removing the bricks that protect us from people on the other side of the wall.”
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: And they actually find that they quite like the people. And so, what they do is, they take the leftover bricks, and they build the mayor a little house, so that he can feel comfortable until he’s ready to accept that there are people out there. And I just liked it. It’s called Littlelight by Kelly Canby. It’s from Fremantle Press. I’ll drop a link on the episode page about how to deal with demagogues. I think it’s really good. You live in the house. You stay in your community.
Hedvig: Yeah. And then, he makes all the laws and– [crosstalk]
Ben: I like it.
Hedvig: Anyway.
Ben: No.
Daniel: You know. I know.
Hedvig: Anyway.
Daniel: Okay. This story is suggested by Diego. Let me ask a question. “What’s the language besides English that you’ve suffered the most attrition on?” The one that you’ve forgotten the most about?
Hedvig: Oh.
Ben: Well, that question doesn’t apply to me, unfortunately.
Daniel: Oh, right. Not even at school?
Ben: Indonesian.
Daniel: Yeah. Okay.
Hedvig: Hindi. I only took one semester of Hindi.
Daniel: Oh, well, okay.
Hedvig: Yeah. Wait, how much–[laughs]
Daniel: What even is attrition?
Hedvig: Yeah. How much do you have?
Daniel: The one that you attain the highest level and then you forgotten the most about. That’d be Russian for me.
Hedvig: Latin.
Daniel: Oh, right.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Do you think it would bounce back if you try it or do you think you’d be starting over?
Hedvig: I think it would bounce back. Yeah?
Ben: Yeah? I’d be starting over with Indonesian, for sure.
Daniel: Okay.
Ben: I remember selamat pagi and that’s it. Oh, and bagus sekali. That was the thing that was said to everyone other than me.
Hedvig: [laughs]
Daniel: Why? What does that mean?
Hedvig: [laughs]
Ben: Very good.
Daniel: [laughs] Oh, dear. Well, this is a study by Professor Monika Schmid of the University of York published in Language Teaching. Professor Schmid got 500 people who took French GCSE or A levels between the 1970s and 2020 and never had anything to do with French again.
Ben: That’s our equivalent of studying French all the way to the end of high school, right?
Daniel: That’s right. That’s right.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: Now, Professor Schmid gave them a test to see if they could distinguish between real words and non-words in the language. They also had a French placement test with some grammar and vocabulary. And what they wanted to see was if there was any correlation between how they did on these tests and how long it had been since they’d studied.
Hedvig: Oh, yeah.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: So, you’d expect people who studied longer ago to have forgotten more. What would you expect that they actually found?
Ben: I’m guessing a bathtub curve?
Daniel: All right. So, recent people forgot.
Ben: See, there’s a really precipitous drop-off really early on. But then you hit whatever the opposite of a glass ceiling is, like a floor. And then, independent of how long it’s been, you’ve got the same mediocre level of vague knowledge about the language. And then if you were to start learning again, it would uptick very rapidly much faster than a person who was coming at it.
Hedvig: Yeah. I was going to ask, did they also include people who had never studied French?
Daniel: That’s an interesting– I don’t think they did study that. I don’t remember that that was part of it. Okay. So, the funny thing that I found was that the length of time that’s passed didn’t seem to have any effect. People who studied a long time ago did about as well as people who stopped studying recently.
Ben: Okay. It is like you hit some sort of uniform floor for your level of knowledge about that language and then that stays the same for a really long time.
Daniel: Yeah, Professor Schmid says, “Vocabulary knowledge exists at a densely connected network, which means that we only need to be reminded of a word that sounds similar to a foreign language word for our brain to recall it. A slight nudge in the right part of the brain and it comes flooding back.”
Ben: Hmm. There we go.
Daniel: Now, this is a pilot study. So, they admit it’s a bit quick and dirty. But Professor Schmid says, “Knowledge of languages is astonishingly resilient.”
Hedvig: Yeah, I feel that way now. I don’t speak French very often and I’ve spoken French a lot in the past few days. I’m also very grateful to– People who have learned French know that Paris is not the best place to practice it-
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: -and I can tell you that Tahiti is probably one of the best places to practice it and everyone is extremely patient with me.
Ben: Aww, that’s so sweet.
Daniel: Aww. [laughs]
Hedvig: I know that I’m making tons of mistakes, but I can form sentences that I can get around and understand what people are saying to me. It’s not 100% by far, but annoying. And I very rarely get to speak French. So, it looks same.
Ben: Can I ask you, Hedvig, is your knowledge of French enough for you to be able to say what Tahitian French sounds like? Classically, Quebecois like how farmers would speak French. Is there a version of that for Tahitian French?
Hedvig: Well, Quebecois sounds like English Canadians speaking French.
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: Obviously, it sounds really Anglo, but Tahitian French sounds, and lack of a better word, a bit Polynesian. And it sounds to me more similar to like– [crosstalk]
Ben: Okay. I suppose it attracts.
Hedvig: It sounds more similar to me to like Swiss or Belgian French.
Ben: Oh, okay.
Hedvig: It’s more enunciated. It’s not the same, but also, I was saying West African French in my experience is also clearer. Everyone is clearer than Paris. [laughs]
Ben: Interesting.
[laughter]
Hedvig: I think maybe that’s the actual division, Paris versus everyone else. [laughs]
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: Classic. Okay. Keeping going on our language learning beat, we’ve often noticed that children seem to learn language fairly quickly and effortlessly, seemingly, although I think it’s harder for them than they let on.
Ben: Yeah. Certainly, not effortlessly, but they do okay.
Daniel: They do okay. Well, let me put it this way. If you have worked, and studied, and stayed up late studying vocabulary charts and anything to struggle to learn language, I think you envy children– [crosstalk] But why would they be so good at learning languages even with less cognitive skills?
Hedvig: We’ve discussed this before, right? There’s the Ben Ainslie and also maybe I can elbow in Hedvig theory of language acquisition, which is they’ve got nothing better to do.
Daniel: Please.
Ben: [laughs] Every conceivable need is taken care of. So, it’s just like, learning language and playing with blocks.
Hedvig: They got nothing better to do and they’re highly motivated, because if they managed to convey information, they get very positive feedback.
Daniel: Yeah, and they get stuff, right? You need adults to help you in the world.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: But there’s another thing cognitively that might be helping, and I’ve long been aware of Dr. Elissa Newport’s Less is More hypothesis that actually having less cognitive ability might be easier. If you throw someone five balls and say, “Catch,” if someone’s focused on just getting one, they might get it. But if somebody tries to get them all, they might miss them all. And in this view, children are laser focused on what is this about, what are the entities. But adults like to analytically figure out the whole sentence– [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Oh, [crosstalk] I think in my German classes, I am very childish in that case, because- [crosstalk]
Daniel: All right. Okay.
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: -I start sentences.
Ben: I believe you.
Hedvig: And I’m like, “This is my communicative intent. I’m going to try and do this thing.” And then, halfway through the sentence, I’m like, “Fuck, I don’t know the word for this in German. I’m just going to make some shit up, and point at things.”
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: And everyone else in class makes fully formed sentences that are grammatically correct.
Daniel: Nice. But at least you get the idea, “This utterance is about this thing,” right?
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: If we could test this hypothesis by reducing the cognitive capacity of adults temporarily– [laughs]
Hedvig: Yeah. Oh, I see.
Ben: Drunk? Are we going drunk?
Daniel: Nope, we’re going tired.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: This is work from Dr. Eleonore Smalle of Ghent University and the team. They gave Dutch speakers two different tests. One was, they gave them a made-up language, but the words had definite patterns of consonants and vowels, subjects had to read them quickly, and that was to see if they had figured out the patterns. And in another test, there were these made-up words that have three syllables and they had to say which of the three choices they’d seen before and which one was new. This is just a proxy for language learning and how well you do it.
But some of the subjects had a test designed to wear them out a little bit cognitively. They had to press letters and numbers depending on what they saw on the screen. And some had a regular version of this test, and some had a very demanding version of the test so that they got more cognitively tired. And it turns out that the ones who were cognitively more drained did better on the language test.
Ben: So, they would be drained first and then do the language tests, is that right?
Daniel: That’s right. Their brains were all tuckered out and they actually did okay. Their language, their cognitive skills were much more in a suggestible childlike state, and it actually seems to have helped language wise.
Hedvig: Right. That’s very interesting.
Ben: You know what this reminds me of?
Daniel: Hmm?
Ben: Have you guys ever been shown the make a structure with marshmallows and spaghetti thing?
Hedvig: No.
Daniel: No, but I like it.
Hedvig: I understand– [crosstalk]
Ben: Yeah. This is a very old, very long running little exercise, where you give a group of students a certain number of marshmallows, a certain number of pieces of spaghetti, and I think a certain amount of sticky tape. And you get them to build the tallest structure they can manage in a certain time and it’s something like that. The best-performing group of humans at this task is engineers, which I think we can all say is pretty good news, because they provide bridges and all that stuff. The second highest performing group of people is preschoolers.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: And the reason for it is because and I think that a similar thing’s at work here, similar to what you said about your attempts at German, Hedvig, is they kind of just iterate, right? Little kids will go, “Okay, I’m going to see if I can build something that’s, I don’t know, 10 cm tall.” And that’s really easy. So, they do it. Then, they see if they can improve on that and build it up and build it up. Whereas adult people will formulate a plan, and they’ll give out jobs to everyone in the team, and they’d have this whole scheme, and they’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, the triangles are the most strong shape in nature. That will be the backbone of this.”
And so, invariably, 80% of their structures just go [blows a raspberry] right before the time’s up. And so, the average height is zero. Whereas little kids just slowly build higher and higher and higher and they’ve always got a fair bit of height going. I think that’s probably how language works. If you tucker a person out instead of getting all inside their own head and forming a plan and doing all that stuff, they just like, “Twe, for, dah,” I don’t know, they just do better, probably.
Hedvig: Is this another instance of that we’re really sad apes, because we’re too good at pattern recognition?
Ben: Definitely.
Daniel: Yeah.
Ben: Yeah.
Hedvig: We’re just like, “Oh, I should analyze this. I should think more about this. I should ruminate on this.”
Ben: Yeah.
Hedvig: And then– [crosstalk]
Daniel: Which is not to say that analytical skills in language will hamper you. That’s one aspect of language and that’s great.
Hedvig: I don’t know if it’s true, but recently in my language learning classes, they talked about analytical learners and visual learners. I’ve heard some pedagogic people saying that that’s not how it works.
Ben: It has been very in vogue for a very long time. When I say very long time, like 25, 30 years. The idea of, “You’ll be a kinesthetic learner, you’ll be a lingual learner, you’ll be an auditory learner.” And more and more data is suggesting that that’s actually bunk. But you try and fucking tell teachers that, let me give you– [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Oh, yeah. No, it’s in my textbook.
Daniel: It’s the thing anybody knows, and it’s wrong.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: Far off.
Hedvig: No, but everyone expects me to be an analytical learner, because I literally work on comparing grammars of languages and I am so not.
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: Anyone who’s listened to the show is already laughing, I’m sure.
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: No, no.
Ben: A little bit more reform. You’re a bit more [crosstalk], man.
Hedvig: I don’t want [crosstalk] Yeah.
Daniel: Well, I think this study is interesting, because it gives us a little bit of support for that. I’m not saying go be tired before you’re learning language.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: I’m not sure this is applied like that. But I do think it’s an interesting window on what’s going on cognitively that maybe we’re just too cognitively advanced for our own good and it’s not that hard. Don’t overthink it.
Ben: That’s the best one, I think. When you’re trying to learn stuff, don’t overthink. I’m trying to learn piano at the moment. And 100% of the time, when I do the worst, I can do it piano. When I’m actively sitting there going, “Okay, I want to do a thing with timing in my head,” and all of a sudden, it’s just like [imitates mad piano noises]
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: You want the flow state if you can achieve it. You want just a smooth little place where you’re just kind of, “Doing a thing, doing a thing. Oh, I fucked up again. Doing a thing, doing a thing.”
Hedvig: Yeah, exactly.
Daniel: Okay, well, that’s the end of the news. Are you ready for the Oxford game?
Ben: Yeah, no. Nah, yeah.
Daniel: Or, else, we’d like to call it Related to Not.
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: No, that’s not what we like to call it. We’d like to call it, Yeah, No, Nah, Yea.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: Oh, man, it’s the OED game.
Ben: Yes, it is, the OED game.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: The thinking person’s dictionary.
Daniel: In which I give you two words in English, and you have to tell me whether these words are related or if the resemblance between them is merely coincidental.
Ben: Let’s do it.
Daniel: The information from this game is coming from our sponsors, the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language.
Ben: And so handsomely bound.
Daniel: Bound?
Hedvig: The book.
Ben: The book, Daniel. Jesus. It’s a dictionary. I’m not like– [crosstalk]
Daniel: Or the online version, that’s very nice as well.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: All right. Here are the words. As always, these are words that I have wondered about in my day and have looked up in the OED. Newfangled. You know, those newfangled gizmos?
Hedvig: Uh-huh.
Ben: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: And actual fangs.
Ben: Ooh, okay. Okay.
Daniel: I just looked at that fangled and I thought it’s got ‘fang’ in it. Are those fangs? What’s your impression to start with?
Hedvig: I have a question.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: How is newfangled actually spelled?
Daniel: N-E-W, new. F-A-N-G, fang. L-E-D, led. Newfangled.
Ben: My immediate take is, yeah, nah.
Daniel: Nah.
Ben: Nah.
Daniel: Dan thinks they’re unrelated. How come?
Ben: Age. My thinking here is fang is we are using it is one of those things that we would have had to think about and use words for a really fucking long time, like, really, really before English was English long time. Whereas newfangled sounds like the thing that has just popped around in the last hundred years post-industrial revolution era. And so, I think just timeframe alone has just separated them two.
Hedvig: The timeframe concept principle might deceive you, Ben, because I think that Anglo-Saxon groups probably had dogs for a really long time.
Ben: Yeah.
Hedvig: But you made the word ‘dog’ really recently, and no one knows where it comes from.
Ben: Get the fuck out of here.
Daniel: No– [crosstalk]
Ben: Really? Really?
Daniel: We need to talk about dog. The great English canine shift is real.
Ben: Okay. We’re putting a pin in that bad boy and coming back to it. If not in this show, in another show, because I have questions.
Hedvig: Same I think with donkey. Anyway, yeah.
Daniel: All right. Yes.
Ben: Okay.
Daniel: So, what do you think, Hedvig?
Hedvig: Yeah, I’m going to say Yes, nah, yea.
Daniel: Nah, yeah.
Hedvig: I think that, yeah, putting new fangs on something is to be chic.
Ben: Oh, like replacement teeth, like dentures and stuff.
Hedvig: Also, I want to be opposite to you, but also, I somehow believe that.
Ben: Oh, fair enough.
Hedvig: Also, the positions.
Ben: It’s a good stance to be whatever position mine is–
Hedvig: [laughs]
Ben: –Take the other one. That’s smart. You’re doing smart things.
Daniel: Okay. Well, so, Ben says, “Nah, not related” and Hedvig says, “Yeah, I think they are related.” Ben, first, I’m going to say, you nailed the timeframe on fang.
Ben: Did I really?
Daniel: You did.
Ben: Yay. Oh, I feel so clever.
Daniel: Fang goes all the way back to proto-Germanic thousands of years ago, but it was a verb.
Ben: Tend to bite like, [makes biting noises]?
Daniel: Yeah, that’s right. So, this verb ‘to fang’ meant to grab on to. That’s why we have the word ‘fang’ for teeth, because that’s what they do. They grab.
Hedvig: [gasps].
Ben: But do you know what? That makes the Australian ‘fang it’ saying so much more relevant, because when you fang it, you’ve got to hold on. I love it.
Daniel: The real story of fang it is different, but we’ll do that next time.
Hedvig: Also, in Swedish, the word for catch is fånga.
Daniel: Yes, that’s right.
Ben: Oh.
Daniel: There are some Old Norse reflexes there too. Okay.
Ben: See? This is what I mean. When something goes far enough back, it’s everywhere. It’s a real beast of a thing.
Daniel: And then, people also used ‘fang’ in the word ‘newfangled’. Yes, they are related.
Ben: Damn it.
Daniel: Because when something is newfangled, people like to grab onto it.
Ben: Oh, so hang on. We were using ‘fang’ as a stand in for grab that recently like hundred years ago?
Daniel: Well, the surprising thing is that ‘newfangled’ isn’t that new. The OED has ‘newfangled’ going back to 1496.
Ben: Wow.
Daniel: But back then it meant somebody who liked to grab on to new things. It wouldn’t mean the things themselves until quite a bit later.
Ben: That is genuinely fascinating.
Daniel: And so, the answer is they are related about. How about that? Congratulations, Hedvig.
Ben: Nah, yeah wins out.
Daniel: Thanks to our sponsors, the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language. And I just want to say, you may already have access to the OED through your university, your local library, or your institution. So, it’s worth asking.
If you don’t have access, it’s worth subscribing. And this is a personal story. When I left the academy and stopped teaching, I immediately became a subscriber to the Oxford English Dictionary on my own even before they got in touch. I subscribed off my own bat, because the OED is so vital to what I do here on the show. It really is worth it.
Ben: They do really good work and we love them.
Daniel: You can subscribe by going to the web page for this episode on our website, becauselanguage.com. That way they know it’s from us. Or, head on over to oed.com and thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary for sponsoring the show.
Ben: Wicked. Oh, oh, time for our descent into Crossworld.
[music]
[interview begins]
Daniel: I’m talking with Hayley Gold, who is an artist, crossword enthusiast, and the author illustrator of Letters to Margaret, which is a graphic novel about crosswords, and it contains crosswords in two parts. So, Hayley, hello, thanks for getting in touch with me today.
Hayley: Thanks. Hi.
Daniel: It’s quite a read. It’s quite fun. Have you been working on this thing for a long time? How long did it take to get this going?
Hayley: Well, it took me a few years to make, but that is not because of the conception of it. It took me probably less than a month to write the entire thing.
Daniel: Wow.
Hayley: It just takes a very long time to create a graphic novel and draw each panel.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: Yeah. So, that’s why the length of creation is so long.
Daniel: And it’s got two parts. It’s got the part from a character named Derry’s perspective and then the part from Margaret’s perspective. But then there’s clever asides all the way through. It’s about crosswords. It features crosswords. There’s just a lot going on here and it’s really fun to read.
Hayley: I would describe it as a flipbook. I don’t think you got the physical version. So, it’s probably different to you.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: But if you have the physical version of the book, you flip it over and it’s the other side backwards.
Daniel: That’s it.
Hayley: And the two sides meet in the middle.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: There are many different types of flip books. But what I did here is, I told the same story from two different characters’ perspectives depending on which side of it you read. So, yeah, that’s how I would describe it.
Daniel: Right. On Because Language, we talk about the functions of language. We talk about using it to communicate, using it to show our identity, using it to form and maintain social relationships. But we don’t often deal with another extremely important function of language and that is to have fun to play with it. And that’s, I think, what crosswords are all about.
Hayley: Well, me personally, how I got into crosswords?
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: This is going to be breaking news publicly. Because I’ve disclosed this before to other people off the record. But seeing as how I have a book called Nervosa coming out in April. And that really tells you how I got into crosswords. It’s an autobiography, that book. But I’ll give a little summary now. I have an eating disorder. I have anorexia. And I got into crosswords while in the hospital as a distraction and continued with them as a distraction when dealing with food.
Because for me, I have OCD, I have an obsessive brain. And thinking about words is something that I can clutch on to. Even while I’m doing a puzzle, I get distracted. But even when I’m not doing a puzzle, I will think about the words. The words will play in my mind. I’ll be anagramming. I’ll be thinking about a clue. I can escape whatever terror is plaguing me at the moment and go into little word land. So, that is actually how I got into crosswords. I’ll say straight up.
Daniel: Well, a Because Language exclusive. Thank you for sharing that about yourself.
Hayley: Yeah.
Daniel: It’s deeply personal, isn’t it? I don’t have the same story of my crossword love. But it started for me with Games magazine in the 80s when I was a kid. I’m a bit older. And that’s where I first heard about Will Shortz, because he was doing the editing for the crosswords in there. That’s where I got into cryptic crosswords. And I guess, it was a way of playing with words and that’s really fun. But it also helped me to establish a part of my self-identity that was about being a wordy sort of person and that was the point that I like to be. I think that’s what it did for me.
Hayley: That’s a funny convergence, because there’s a lot of things I have to say when you say that. One is that I am a freelance writer for Games magazine, currently.
Daniel: Wait, wait, wait, Games magazine is still a thing?
Hayley: That’s what everybody says when I say–
Daniel: [laughs]
Hayley: I keep telling my editor at Games magazine, like, “We got to make things more contemporary, because the Crossworld right now does not appreciate what you’re doing.” And they’re pretty much like, “Well, we’re happy with our 60 plus audience.” But yeah, Games magazine very much still exists. They just actually have new management and I think they might be trying to make some changes. I don’t know where it goes. I’m trying to actually get a cartooning gig there.
Daniel: Cool.
Hayley: Well, I’m working on the sequel to Letters to Margaret, which is the other convergence I want to bring up, which teaches you how to solve cryptic crosswords.
Daniel: Oh.
Hayley: [crosstalk] I am way more into cryptics than I am into– I no longer even do personally American-style crosswords. I only do cryptics and I only do variety cryptics.
Daniel: Yeah, okay.
Hayley: Those are the only type they’re worth doing. The sequel contains, I think, four of them. In the story, the graphic novel, it teaches you how to do them. So, it’s a palatable way to get into them.
Daniel: For anybody who doesn’t know, I know that many people are familiar with crosswords. I know that not everyone’s familiar with cryptic crosswords. Can you help us out in case there’s anybody who doesn’t understand what this is?
Hayley: Sure. Now, I don’t know what the main type of crossword is in Australia. But in an American-style crossword, which is the crosswords that are featured in Letters to Margaret, the first book, there is a clue, and you just answered the clue. It’s a straight definition. In a cryptic crossword, each clue has two parts. The definition, the type you see in the American style and then also a wordplay component. And the wordplay component uses some form, something like a device like homophones or anagrams. It could be two definitions of the same word or some kind of breakdown of the letters, the components of the word itself that is not related to the meaning of the word. So, it gives you two avenues to derive the actual entry that goes into the grid.
Daniel: And it doesn’t signpost what those two bits are. You just have to figure that out.
Ben: Right. Now, both pieces, each one has to appear at the beginning of the end. They can’t be sandwiched inside each other. So, that makes things a little simpler. However, a good critic constructor or setter, as I think you Aussies says or at least that’s what they how they frame it in Britain.
Daniel: Okay.
Hayley: It will make it, so that it reads smoothly but confusingly.
Daniel: Yes, yes, yes.
Hayley: What they call the surface reading, so that you do not really know where the definition ends and the wordplay begins. Also, in variety, because of the double clueing that is permitted in a cryptic, you’re permitted a lot more freedom in making it more difficult. So, you’ll find that in cryptic puzzles that have themes, what they call variety cryptics. It’ll be like, “Oh, there’s an extra word somewhere in the clue.” Or, you have to remove all the first letters. There’ll be a letter missing somewhere. Because you have the second check for what it is.
When you just have a straight definition in an American-style crossword, there’s so many synonyms that could possibly fit in there. But there’s only one possible truly right answer to a cryptic clue because of the wordplay double double-checking you, so things can get a lot more devilish in a cryptic crossword that goes variety style.
Daniel: This isn’t going to be about cryptics, but I wonder if I could just hit you with one of my favorite clues of all time. That’d be okay?
Hayley: Okay, sure.
Daniel: Okay. I loved this one. I solved it in a big group of people and got acclaim for it. I just loved it so much that I’ve just memorized it. The cryptic clue was, “Don’t go without a pen.” Don’t go without a pen. If you read that and the surface reading is, well, that’s just a sentence. I don’t see how I can break that into two clues at all. “Don’t go without a pen.” Oh, and three letters.
Hayley: Oh, I got it right away. It’s die.
Daniel: Ah.
Hayley: Stay.
Daniel: Don’t go.
Hayley: Tay minus A.
Daniel: Without aa.
Hayley: A stye where– a pigpen.
Daniel: [laughs] I knew you’d get it.
Hayley: That’s another thing. Cryptic puzzles often contain– I say often, because when they go variety style, sometimes they don’t. But plain Jane cryptic crosswords have an enumeration after the clue, which actually is unnecessary if it’s a plain cryptic crossword, because you’ll see the amount of slots. But I guess, it is a shortcut if you don’t feel like counting the boxes.
Daniel: Yeah.
Ben: But also, sometimes they tell you if it’s multiple words in the answer, if it’s a phrase, how much each one is, or if it’s hyphenated, stuff like that.
Daniel: Let’s go back to regular crosswords and not cryptics this time. I’m curious about the history of crosswords and you delve a bit into this in Letters to Margaret. How did these things get started? What’s the history behind them?
Hayley: Okay, that is very interesting, because it’s a little bit surprising. It started with Wynne, Arthur Wynne. That’s it. Arthur Wynne wrote the first crossword puzzle. He was actually from England, but he wrote it for an American outlet, the New York World.
Daniel: When was this?
Hayley: This was 1913, I believe.
Daniel: Wow. Okay.
Hayley: That’s when that first puzzle– Now, though, honestly, if you look at it, it doesn’t really look like a regular crossword puzzle.
Daniel: [laughs]
Hayley: What we associate with being a regular crossword puzzle, not a cryptic, an American-style crossword, was really created by Margaret Farrar. What happened was after Arthur started doing, he did it in, I believe, the Christmas– It was a holiday season, Sunday edition of the World. And it was popular. So, he brought it back. And then eventually, what happened was, readers are like, “We want you printing our puzzle.” And it got to the point where, “Well, wait a second, we need someone to edit this. We needed a department for this.” Arthur didn’t want to do it. No one else at the World wanted to do it.
There was this new upstart basically, intern secretary, just graduated from school, Margaret Farrar. A woman, of course will give her something unimportant to do, to give her editing the crossword. And she in doing so– Well, first of all, she wants to be a reporter. She wanted to do newsy stuff. She wanted nothing to do with this. This was an insult. And she wasn’t even looking at the puzzles she was submitted. She was just publishing them. Turns out they were completely unsolvable. And people were complaining including her officemate. And so, she decided, “Okay, I’ll look at them.”
When she started looking at them, she started caring about them. She ended up falling in love with puzzles. Not only did she put all her efforts into editing them and refining them, she set the standards for what we have now, where all entries need to be checked. Each box needs to be checked at each point, which is not the case in cryptics. And also, the symmetric reality across the diagonal, that was all her– [crosstalk]
Daniel: Was that her?
Hayley: Yes. That was all her.
Daniel: Wow. Okay. My gosh.
Hayley: The fact that each entry has to be at least three letters. The fact that it can’t be over a certain percentage of black squares in the grid. Now, a lot of the times, modern crosswords violate these rules to make things more interesting. But this is how crosswords grew up, because of her standards. She also did a lot of things that are done at all such as, there couldn’t be any brand names. So, you could not have Oreo in the grid.
Daniel: How do we have a crossword without Oreos? Oh, my gosh. [laughs]
Hayley: Well, they did have Oreo in the grid. Only it was clued as mountain prefix. Because it is an abbreviation from, I believe, Greek.
Daniel: Yes. In geography, I learned about orographic lifting, which is air that cools over a mountain. Yeah.
Hayley: Also, she wouldn’t want anything vulgar possibly. For example, Merl Reagle, a famous American crossword constructor submitted something that contained rale in it. Rale pertaining to the disease, the cough. Yeah, the death rattle rale.
Daniel: Oh, rale. Yes. Okay.
Hayley: She would not publish that. She was also very sensitive about things that had to do with religion. She didn’t want anything disrespectful about religion, referred to it jokingly, she said, “No,” I believe, “Death, taxes, or war.”
Daniel: Right.
Hayley: Now, oddly, most of the early puzzles did cover newsy topics. That’s how they legitimized it, by making it a review of what’s going on with the news. At the same time she was saying that she didn’t want what was going on the rest of the paper that troubled people in the crossword. I feel there was a lot of hypocritical stuff going on in terms of the content. But anyway, crossroads retain a craze in the 20s especially, and were seen as something the delinquents were into and seen as a pox upon society.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: Crosswords were the cause of divorce, and laziness, and all the ills of the youth. That and jazz music were bringing the country down.
Daniel: And bicycles. Bicycles, at some point were blamed for just about everything.
Hayley: Well, I can see that, because I think they’re ruining the city right now.
Daniel: Ah. [laughs]
Hayley: I live in New York City. And Citi Bike, my God, they’re taking away all the parking spaces and these hoodlums riding the bikes, they’ll go right into you.
Daniel: That’s right.
Hayley: They’ll hit your car. It’s awful.
Daniel: Oh, my God. Okay. So, they were seen as a corruptive menace.
Hayley: Yes. And the papers kept on lowering themselves to contain a crossword, because they were so wildly popular. The only paper that would not deign to publish a crossword was New York Times, they went way above this. They would not lower themselves to do that.
Daniel: Can I just dig into this a little bit, because I’m really curious? What reasons were given? Because it was taking time away from the milking or because–?
Hayley: The milking? I think it was more of an urbanite thing.
Daniel: Okay. Maybe it’s just anything popular, people will shit on, because it’s the people.
Hayley: Well, there was also pickpockets would take away from– They would do their pickpocketing while people were distracted from a crossword.
Daniel: [crosstalk]
Hayley: Couples would get into quarrels over the content of a crossword. There were several instances of people getting shot over crossword feuds. Then also, people would be so lazy as to doing a crossword instead of doing their job, because they were doing a crossword for recreation.
Daniel: Yeah, okay.
Hayley: It wasn’t real. But now, people will blame videogame violence for things. The rap musics were corrupting the kids. It’s all the same bullshit where people blame non-corruptive things for problems because they don’t want to face the actual problems in society. It’s not like there was any legitimacy to it. So, I can’t give you any substantiated evidence here. It wasn’t until World War II broke out and the New York Times was like, “Maybe we do need to do something to distract the people from all the problems in the world.”
I believe there was a new editor also the New York Times who actually happened to be a fan of crosswords. So, guess who they hired to be the editor? Margaret Farrar, who had– I believe the World had gone out of business, but also, she had retired from the World prior to them going out of business to have babies, because you can’t have a job and have babies at once. It’s the 1920s.
Daniel: Right.
Hayley: Decades later, 1945 hit, they had her become the editor.
Daniel: What a legend.
Hayley: It started out only Sundays, but eventually, they gave into doing weekdays. And that is how it all started. It became a hallmark of the times. It became something and probably their biggest source of revenue these days. Could you imagine them–? And now, we see crosswords as an academic pursuit, as something hoity-toity a little bit, which is a totally off-color characteristic. Many crosswords go raunchy all the time.
Daniel: [chuckles]
Hayley: But that’s the origin story.
Daniel: Fantastic. And now, here we are today. It’s a very elite club. There’ve only been a few people who have been really significant. Who else have we seen in the crossword world? Of course, everyone knows Will Shortz. Who else?
Hayley: Oh, you mean a league club in terms of the editors? Because there’s a lot of people in Crossworld. It’s a pretty open community today. And that’s a big change, I guess, as crosswords have gone more indie, whereas pretty much anybody who has a crossword tickle in their mind can really get on board, start their own blog, start putting out crosswords, and rise high in the ranks really quickly in terms of popularity. In terms of editorship at the time specifically that has a limited crew of individuals who have taken up that position, but there are lots of editor positions for different crosswords across the country. And so, it’s not a limited elite at all even at actual major outlets. So, that is not an accurate description, I have to say.
Daniel: Sure.
Hayley: Of course, most of these people– The people who are editors at actual outlets, yes, they don’t have day jobs. But most people who are crossword constructors do have to have some other kind of occupation. I really need to have a second occupation as a cartoonist, God knows. But I don’t have enough time to. So, I’m still mooching off of my parents.
Daniel: [laughs]
Hayley: But in terms of who have been the editors at the New York Times, after Margaret Farrar was Willa Wang. And he had a pretty brief stint and was replaced by Eugene Maleska.
Daniel: Now, we’re in the 70s now, aren’t we?
Hayley: Okay. Margaret Farrar didn’t retire till I believe the late 60s.
Daniel: Oh, shit. Okay.
Hayley: It was ’68 or ’69. She went long.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: Then was Will Wang. Then in the 80s, we had Maleska. Then there was a very short period, where there was an interim editor, Mel Taub. He actually worked as a ghost editor for a long time during Maleska’s reign. So, he doesn’t get credited enough. He is big in the puns and anagrams. One of the Sunday variety puzzles, the puns and anagrams variation, he does a lot of those. He’s historically done a lot of those. He’s still within and still does it even though he’s thousand years old. Maleska died while in office. And so, that’s why his help was so much needed. Because Maleska was not in good health and couldn’t really do a lot. But officially after Maleska was Will Shortz, who is still the editor. And actually, just this past weekend had his 70th birthday.
Daniel: Wow.
Hayley: Which by the way, I believe that Margaret Farrar left her position kicking and screaming, because the New York Times had a max on the age someone could be before they retire. And I think Will Shortz has surpassed that. So, they must have taken out that stipulation at some point-
Daniel: Oh, interesting.
Hayley: -since it is ageist and not really fair.
Daniel: I want to talk about crosswordese. There are a lot of words that are disproportionately popular in crosswords compared to regular vocabulary. It’s almost like you’ve got to speak a certain language to be able to do crosswords.
Hayley: Yes and no. That is becoming less and less the case. Because as constructors become better and constructors also rely upon better software in building crosswords, you see the disappearance of crosswordese. Or, at least, the modernization of crosswordese. The words that you would normally associate with crosswordese as being like outside in the language terms, you’re not going to see. There’ll be crosswordese, but crosswordese will be more things like Oreo, which we do use all the time. And you’re not going to see crosswordese for stuff that you don’t know. Or, it will be crosswordese for things that you want to bring into the crossword. Like, you’ll see a lot of non-bread now.
Daniel: Oh, yeah. Lots of non. Oh, yeah. [chuckles]
Hayley: But of course, puzzles are trying to get more inclusive and trying to bring in stuff from not just the old white man’s perspective.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: And from various cultures and demographics. And the book gets into this a lot. It’s like who is controlling what we consider to be common knowledge. Because there are a lot of demographics, lots of people who would consider certain terms to be everyday terms. And who is the gatekeeper of what is common knowledge and what is cross-worthy knowledge? So, that also enters into this conversation. But yes, if you’re doing an older crossword, you need to know your crosswordese to get through it.
Daniel: Yeah. It’s going to be lots of ‘alo’, lots of ‘olio’.
Hayley: Now, it’s a very different game. And also, with indies being so big, a lot of crosswords only cover the interest of the constructor, and there is no need to make it for the everyman. So, things are going in lots of different directions right now and the whole “this is standard crosswordese” conversation has totally changed.
Daniel: Wow. Okay. And I’ve noticed also, since you mentioned about inclusion and diversity, a lot of words and definitions have become problematic. I feel the language of crosswords is shifting as some words become no longer acceptable, and you point to a few of these in the book. You mentioned aunt.
Hayley: Well, that’s totally gone. That is as bad as using the F word. You’re not going to find that in the New York Times crossword at all. We’re talking about Aunt Jemima here.
Daniel: Yeah. So, the word that they want is ‘aunt’ and they clue it with Jemima, and that’s just not going to happen anymore.
Hayley: Yeah, that clue is not going to happen at all and it’s not even relevant since Aunt Jemima pancake– the brand is no longer existent.
Daniel: That’s right.
Hayley: Not that crosswords don’t talk about old brands, there are so many times like airlines or–
Daniel: TWA.
Hayley: Yeah. Or, gas stations and stuff like that.
Daniel: Exxo.
Hayley: Yeah.
Daniel: [laughs] [crosstalk]
Hayley: You might still see those, because they’re not horribly racist. And well, I don’t know that. They could but who knows.
Daniel: Not everybody.
Hayley: Everybody has a sordid past coming out.
Daniel: [laughs] True.
Hayley: Because this is not even a product on shelves anymore– The idea is, we can talk about Aunt Jemima and the racism behind Aunt Jemima. But in a crossword, when you’re only seeing these things out of context, like in a grid, what you can and can’t say becomes a lot more tricky, because you’re not providing context. You could be triggering people. But then, there’s also the question of any word could trigger somebody. I just mentioned I have an eating disorder. Seeing food in a puzzle could be triggering to me. You can’t cover everyone’s triggers. But obviously, there are some words that are much more likely to trigger or much more likely to be insulting.
Daniel: Slurs in general, yeah?
Hayley: Yeah. I think the word ‘N-I-P’, which I cover in the auxiliary comic, the mini comic that goes along with the book is a very interesting case. Because to be like, ‘Nip something in the bud,” it’s fine. It’s a fine word. That’s how most people see it. And maybe as a white Jewish girl like me, that’s how I would think about it if I see it in a crossword. But if you are a Japanese person and someone’s used that word against you somewhere, I didn’t even know it was a slur until this conversation came up. So, if someone’s used that word against you in a hurtful way and then you see it in a crossword, no matter how its clued, you just see it floating in the grid. It could be hurtful to you.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: Even Oreo, as we go back to the word ‘Oreo’– [crosstalk]
Daniel: Oh, no, I just realized.
Hayley: Oreo can be a slur.
Daniel: Yep, that’s right.
Hayley: And it might have been used against you. However, we’re still going to use it all the time, because the percentage here, it’s like you don’t really hear Oreo being used as a slur very often as compared as like the cookie is such a common thing. But still, it is a thought there, because where are you going to draw the line with everything. Words are so powerful.
Daniel: Mm-hmm. They are. And that’s where the job of the editor becomes so very important.
Hayley: Yeah, and that’s also become very controversial. There are some people who have hitmen going after Will Shortz.
Daniel: What?
Hayley: It’s true.
Daniel: Actual putting Will Shortz’s life in danger.
Hayley: No, more like they’re saying that Will Shortz shouldn’t be editor anymore. Very upset about– [crosstalk]
Daniel: Oh, okay. [laughs]
Ben: I didn’t mean it, literally.
Daniel: [laughs] It’s not literally.
Hayley: I meant it more like they’re calling for Will Shortz to be to step down. Very upset with his leadership.
Daniel: It’s so interesting. We’ve seen this in lots and lots of areas. We’re seeing it in linguistics. We’ve seen it in other areas of interest that every domain, every area of endeavor is having to come to terms with, how do we react to diversity? How do we react to social justice? A lot of people just want to lock it out and pretend it doesn’t exist, and some people are trying to engage with it. And crosswords are having this discussion too. How do we engage with social justice? How do we make the world a more inclusive and diverse place?
Hayley: Well, that’s the real problem, and the reason why I wrote my book, is because you say crosswords are having this conversation but they’re not.
Daniel: Oh.
Hayley: Everybody is only listening to the echo chamber they belong to. And instead of having a discussion, there’s just really anger about the other side, how much the other side is wrong, how much you can’t listen to the other side, just shutting them out, and believing you are 100% right. And that’s why I made this book, because I tried to present two different views and I wanted to force the reader to have to read both sides and try to sympathize with both sides of the issue. Because if you look at people on both sides of the debate of sensitivity versus free speech, you realize neither side is insane, that both have reasonable arguments in different areas. You should try listening to other people, because your views might change, your views might soften, you guys might influence each other, and you should always be open-minded. That’s the main message I’m trying to send.
Daniel: Hmm. I worry about both sides in things, because I know that there are people that I can have interesting disagreements with on the, for example, free speech absolutist side. But I also find a lot of people on that side to be trying to use good things like free speech as a cover for their bad behavior. And maybe we’re getting away from crosswords here. But are there people we should just ignore because they’ve made wrong moral decisions?
Hayley: Someone goes around killing people.
Daniel: White nationalists, obviously.
Hayley: You have to use your judgment here.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: Yeah. You have to obviously use your sense here that everything’s within reason. But I feel people don’t even want to just talk to people and listen to what they have to say. If someone says something that is so off putting to you, then stop listening to them if it seems to be off the charts and they don’t seem to be open to what you’re saying either. But I feel that’s not a reasonable excuse to say– Obviously, there’s some people that are off the charts here. You have to use your common sense here.
Daniel: Okay.
Hayley: But if you read my book, both characters are on the Democratic side of the spectrum here. It’s not one of them is alt right or anything like that.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hayley: But people are still even writing off people like that. It’s come to the point where a lot of people in the Crossworld are afraid to express their opinions, because they feel so concerned about being rejected by the crowd that is the ruling party right now.
Daniel: Uh-huh. Okay. All right. Thanks for that reminder because that’s something that I need every once in a while. How do you think we make this conversation happen? How do we get people–? I suppose I’m abstracting away from crosswords now. How do we recognize people who are worth listening to and how do we have better conversations? What do you see is the way forward in the Crossworld and in the regular world?
Hayley: I don’t have a solution because it is obviously such a big problem not just in the microcosm of crosswords, but in America in general, and I suppose the world. I don’t know. I’m an insular American. I don’t know what’s happening elsewhere.
Daniel: [chuckles] Okay.
Hayley: That it’s endangering our democracy. Yeah, it’s not a new–. It’s getting worse and worse and worse, I feel. But it’s a long-term thing where the Congress won’t compromise and instead will totally block out the other side instead of doing something that’s for the better of the country to get actual changes passed and stuff like that. If the country can’t figure out how to do it, unlikely I will. I try to make an effort by making this book.
I think it starts at a grassroots basis, where you have to check yourself and force yourself to do those things. That each individual has to take a stand in order to do it. But when I’ve gotten feedback from my book, people will be like, “Oh, I hated this character. This character is so wrong. This character is–” Everyone had the wrong reaction, where it’s like, “Both these people are reasonable. Why do you hate them so much?” They had the exact opposite, where they just doubled down on whatever they already believe in. Or, were so upset that I even had a book that showed two sides of the argument when they believe that there’s one side that’s so right that they wouldn’t even look at it. So, I’m disgusted with humanity right now.
Daniel: Understandable. And yet, it’s so great that you were able to put this all together and really challenge readers as well, which is funny to say for a book that’s so much fun. But it’s not really about crosswords, is it? It’s really about language and language is hard. Or, as T. Rex said in Dinosaur Comics, “Life is hard and language is how we talk about it.” Yeah. Letters to Margaret is a really fun read. How can people get a hold of it?
Hayley: They can go to lonesharkgames.com. That’s L-O-N-E. So, like one shark. Not someone who’s providing loans. lonesharkgames.com. You can probably put the link in the show notes.
Daniel: We will do that.
Hayley: And that will get you to where you can buy the book. I’m hoping on bringing it to a broader audience though, because we are looking for a new publisher for that book and the sequel. Anybody out there anywhere in the world, if you’re interested in publishing this style book, let me know. Contact me.
Daniel: Publishers, get in touch.
Hayley: Also, we have the sequel coming, where we have a star-studded lineup of constructors. And also, my puzzle editor is one of the biggest crossword constructors in the game right now, Will Nediger.
Daniel: All right. Well, that’s a ripping read and I’m really looking forward to the sequel. So, we’ve got Letters to Margaret, which is available now. Is there a working title for the sequel?
Hayley: I think I’m going to call it Letters to Derry.
Daniel: All right. Well, we’ll be looking forward to that as well as your upcoming book, Nervosa. I’m talking to Hayley Gold, artist, crossword enthusiast, and author illustrator of Letters to Margaret. Hayley, thanks so much for hanging out with me and talking today.
Hayley: Thank you for having me on. This was a lot of fun.
[interview ends]
[music]
Daniel: Hey, it’s time for Words of the Week. Has it not been nice ignoring American politics for a little while?
Ben: It really has. Although having said that, for whatever reason, I’ve decided to drop down a bit of a rabbit hole on American politics. So, I’m listening to Pod Save America several times a week.
Daniel: Oh, really? Okay.
Ben: I am just awash in what’s going on in America, which is weird, because I should be doing that here in the country that I actually live in and have some measure of political agency in. But I’m a stupid millennial. [crosstalk]
Hedvig: I’m not listening to too much American politics at all, except for QAnon Anonymous, which has been about Canada recently.
Daniel: This is an email from Ozzie at hello@becauselanguage.com. Hi, folks, I have a word of the week submission for you, although perhaps a bit of a US-centric one.”
Hedvig: Oh, I know.
Daniel: “Dark Brandon.”
Ben: Ah, yep. I’ve heard of this. Yep.
Daniel: For context, Brandon has been code for US President Joe Biden on the right for more than a year due to a NASCAR reporter mishearing a rude chant as, “Let’s go, Brandon.” Just a thing. So, the crowd was chanting “Fuck Joe Biden.” Did the NASCAR reporter misreport that or did they know that that’s what they were saying, but it was obscene, so they were trying to save the situation?
Hedvig: I don’t know. Was there any driver on the field called Brandon at the time?
Daniel: Yeah, it was. It was during an interview with racecar driver, Brandon Brown. So, if that mishearing was purposeful, it was actually rather deft.
Ben: It does sound like such a NASCAR driver name, doesn’t it?
Hedvig: [laughs]
Ben: Brandon McGee comes around the final turn.
Hedvig: Oh, God, I don’t know.
Daniel: Ozzie continues. “Dark Brandon started out as an alt right meme originating from a Chinese political cartoon showing Biden sitting on a throne atop a mound of guns. Examples of Dark Brandon images show Biden with lasers coming out of his eyes,” Oh that.” By the way, anyone on Twitter who’s avatar has lasers coming out of their eyes, just watch out. Just stay away.
Ben: I remember that from the days of like, “I can has cheeseburger.” Cats with laser beam eyes, that’s how boomer I am. [laughs]
Daniel: That’s true, but this is a crypto thing or–
Ben: Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: “Or, lightning coming out of his fingers, or picture with cinematic back or underlighting, and portray him as a supervillain. This is meant as irony, because the poster considers him pitifully weak. However–” [crosstalk]
Ben: Oh, this is so deep.
Daniel: I know.
Ben: There’s so many layers of knowledge you need to have to understand this.
Daniel: “However, the US government is coming off a stunning two-week stretch of back-to-back accomplishments, which has been very rare since the Republican Party realized that they could just obstruct all good things and their voters would reward them for it.” Hey, Ozzie editorializing. I’m going to allow it.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: Ozzie continues. “And the online left of center has been exalting in reclaiming the meme from the right as a celebration of Biden’s success in spite of the opponents of progress. Responding to announcements with Dark Brandon intensifies, Dark Brandon rises, and Dark Brandon cannot be stopped. And even Democratic US senators and White House officials have tweeted Dark Brandon images. It’s even become productive. US Attorney General Merrick Garland now gets referred to as Dark Merrick when announcing FBI operations concerning criminal activity by the previous president. And the face of the US COVID response, Anthony Fauci, is Dark Fauci when announcing the upcoming Omicron boosters. Keep up the good work, Ozzie.”
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: What’s the deal with dark?
Hedvig: Well, also, can I just say that there’s a great episode on this by Jared Holt on the SH!TPOST Podcast?
Daniel: Oh, we talked to him before, didn’t we?
Hedvig: Yeah. Jared Holt, former guest of the show that I missed the top two, which I feel really bad about, because he’s really cool, but–
Daniel: I’m sorry.
Hedvig: No, I think that was my bad.
Daniel: It was cool.
Hedvig: Anyway, him and a guest in the recent episode, we’re talking about Dark Brandon and how the White House Twitter account has tweeted about it and that they said that, and I think that’s probably true that it is now dead, because it became so cringy, because the Democrats embraced it.
Ben: That’s always the way, right?
Daniel: That’s how you kill it.
Hedvig: That’s how you kill it. Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. It works on two fronts. You look like you’ve won.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: You’ve taken the bully’s thing, and you’ve turned it against them, and now, they don’t use it anymore. So, you win. And bonus, they don’t use it anymore.
Hedvig: Yeah, exactly.
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: Exactly. That’s the idea.
Daniel: Is the dark idea, the idea of vengeance? Like some kind of punishment, like a Batman thing?
Hedvig: Well, do you know about Dark Phoenix?
Daniel: I do not.
Ben: I do.
Daniel: Of course, any pop culture reference, Ben, “Yeah, I got that.” Me, “No, no idea.”
Ben: Just to be clear, as I said before, I don’t roll deep on anything, but I am the absolute epitome of the jack of all trades master of none kind of thing. So, Dark Phoenix, I’m assuming you’re referring to Jean Grey?
Hedvig: Yeah, exactly. So, it’s an X-Men thing originally in the comics and I think they’re developing some of it into the movie universes as well. But basically, she’s a very powerful mutant and she sometimes gets possessed by a part of her psyche that is malevolent. It also happens in Avatar: The Last Airbender. There are scenes when you could describe him as a Dark Avatar. There’s also a thing called Dark Avatar.
Ben: Yeah.
Hedvig: This idea that you have good and bad sides within you and if you let the bad ones shine but for a good purpose. Actually, on the flight over, I watched Turning Red and they– [crosstalk]
Ben: Oh, yeah, that’s heaps of fun.
Hedvig: Yeah, and they frame it as you have turmoil and aggressive, dark emotions within you, but they can serve a good purpose. I think that’s the kind of darkness, right, maybe?
Daniel: Okay.
Ben: I think, yeah, certainly, initially, it seemed it was a dark is bad a la Senator Palpatine turning into Emperor Palpatine. And then these guys are now, yeah, positioning it as the antihero trope rather than the antagonist.
Hedvig: Yeah. So, it’s for a good cause, but it is powerful.
Daniel: And there’s this idea that the Democrats are weak because they refuse to be bad. And now, we’re getting down in the dirt and we’re fighting along with them, we’re using their rules. We’re not staying above it. We’re fighting and we’re winning. And that has enormous appeal to Democrats who are sick of-
Ben: Losing.
Daniel: -losing all the time.
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: But they’re also not really fighting dark. All they’re doing is making deep fried memes with laser eyes.
Ben: No. This is what’s really interesting. They’re not actually resorting to the tactics of the Republican Party. Certainly, not from what I’m seeing. The wins that are being put on the scoreboard, and I would point listeners right now to the race between Dr. Oz and his Democratic opponent, Steve something.
Daniel: Four syllables. Sorry.
Ben: Yeah, it’s escaped me temporarily. But this guy is running a train on Dr. Oz and the dude had a stroke and can’t actually campaign. Not Dr. Oz, the Democrat. He had a stroke, he couldn’t campaign, and Gen Z social media team are just fucking going to town on this guy.
Daniel: Yes.
Ben: It absolutely destroying Dr. Oz. And you would have thought a dude with Dr. Oz’s money and media familiarity would mean that he would have that a game, at least be able to play, but he’s getting fucking destroyed. It’s great.
Daniel: He knows how to do one thing.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: So, Dark Brandon. The second one, this is just in passing. Ben, you’ve mentioned before that you’re sick of ‘-gate’ as a scandal suffix.
Ben: Yeah, I feel it’s a bit clapped out, personally.
Daniel: So, people on Twitter are saying that maybe the new gate should be a-Lago.
Ben: Ooh, where does that come from?
Daniel: Well, Mar-a-Lago, which is Trump’s residence, the scandal-plagued former President. And so, you’ve got a scandal involving submarines, Sub-a-Lago or as involving whipped Cream-a-Lago. I don’t know.
Hedvig: Do we have any example of this that you didn’t just make up?
Daniel: No.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: But what I have seen is people making a joke. “Hey, maybe the new gate should be a-Lago.” The joke was new on me when I saw it this week, but people have been tweeting about this joke as early as 2017.
Ben: Look, I like their luck. But the reality is if you’re joking about making it a thing instead of just using it as a thing, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: [laughs] Good one.
Hedvig: Exactly. Thank you, Ben.
Daniel: The next one, quiet quitting.
Hedvig: Yeah, I’ve seen this one.
Ben: Oh, okay. Can someone explain, I’m having a full Parks and Rec moment here, where I’ve seen that over and over and over again, but I don’t know what it means and I’m too afraid to ask? Can someone– [laughs] [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Well, [crosstalk] context where it occurs. It occurs as a bit of a strawman argument. The idea is that millennials, and Gen Z, and other people are working jobs where they are expected to go over and beyond what it actually says in the work contracts so that they have employers who expect them to work more hours, or put in more effort, or sacrifice more of their personal time in life. And during the pandemic, a lot of people who have been working from home and gone down in time have realized that working and money isn’t all that they want in life. And now that they’re returning to the workplace, they’re actually only putting in, what, is this on a work contract that they should?
Daniel: What they’re supposed to.
Ben: Yeah, they are fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility, but no more.
Daniel and Hedvig: They’re doing their job.
Hedvig: They’re doing their job. And it shouldn’t be called quiet quit obviously, because they’re not quitting. But the idea is that the employers are upset by this and thereby they’re like, “Oh, it’s as if you are trying to quit this job.”
Daniel: The term comes from a TikToker, ZedK Chillin, and Ellen Scott in the metro.com.uk with an article called, “Could quiet quitting your job be the answer to burnout?” I think no one’s objecting to the idea that we need to take a step back from work and realize that we got to have time and headspace for other things. What people are objecting to is the name, that doing your job constitute some kind of quitting.
Ben: It’s the inverse of social justice warrior. Remember when that was a big thing and one of the things that we said was like, “Well, good job branding us really well, dickheads.” The name you came up with isn’t a bad name. You’ve done a really good job at making a thing sound actually not terrible. You think it’s terrible, but that’s fine. You can think whatever you want. Whereas this seems like the opposite of that, like the name that’s been come up with is a really bad branding exercise for what it actually is.
Hedvig: Yeah, it’s not a good word. But also, the only time I’ve seen it used is people saying, “This is a bad word.” So, I’m wondering how many employers are using it. I’ve also seen term, ‘quite firing’.
Daniel: Yes, the flip side, isn’t?
Hedvig: Which is when an employer doesn’t want to fire someone because they find it awkward. So, they make their life miserable so that they quit.
Ben: This is the thing that’s been in place in a lot– Certainly, in a country like Australia, where you actually have fairly, I’m going to say, strong labor rights and policies. It’s not a simple or an easy thing to fire someone at all. A lot of employers, rather than going through the difficult and procedurally complicated steps of actually doing that and having uncomfortable conversations, where they’re like, “Hey, we want a performance manager and stuff.” Just, yeah, manage people out of a job by making their job shit, which is just– fuck. You are a boss. Surely, you could manage to be an adult and have an uncomfortable conversation.
Daniel: So, is that what quiet firing is? Actually, making somebody miserable so that– pushing someone to walk?
Hedvig: Yeah. I think that’s the idea. We’re still maybe overestimating how much employers– I feel someone who would do quiet firing maybe sometimes believe the employees care more about their job than maybe they do. [laughs] I don’t know.
Daniel: Maybe.
Hedvig: But I think that as we’re entering an age where we have AI doing a lot of work that humans can do, we’re seeing all kinds of the image and AI can write plots and do lots of things. You think that humans can do that, we’re still really good at our problem solving and being creative. I was listening to this recent episode of More or Less, a BBC Podcast, where they were talking about mathematics and that computers are really good at calculation and they’re very fast at it. But they’re not very good at a lot of other things that are important in maths. And humans are good at it. And in order to solve those problems, sometimes, you need to think slow, and you need to sleep on it. And you need to step away, and you need to have another hobby, and you need to talk to humans, and you need to eat and go away, and go to a rock concert-
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: And come back on Monday.
Daniel: It’s true.
Hedvig: And I think a lot of the tasks that are left for us when the robots take over more of our tasks are more of the kind that we would perform better, if we were resting well and had a good life.
Daniel: Let’s finish up with splooting. I found this one from Adam Spencer on Twitter. “There’s been days I could do with a good splooting.” Any guesses?
Ben: Well, that sounds sexual.
Daniel: He meant it that way, I’m sure.
Hedvig: Isn’t that what pets do? When cats and dogs–
Daniel: It is. Tell me more.
Hedvig: It’s when they are belly down on the floor, and their legs flop down and behind them, and they’re just lying.
Daniel: That is correct. Spencer was referencing a tweet by NYC Parks. It had a photo of a squirrel doing exactly that, laying down flat. And the tweet says, “If you see a squirrel lying down like this, don’t worry, it’s just fine. On hot days, squirrels keep cool by splooting, stretching out on cool surfaces to reduce body heat. It is sometimes referred to as heat dumping.” There you go.
Ben: Splooting.
Daniel: Splooting. Yep.
Ben: Is that a genuine term from animal husbandry?
Daniel: It’s been used for quite a while. The OED is tracking it. Wiktionary says it’s imitative. Dictionary.com says it’s part of doggo-lingo like hecken and blep and snek. But it’s not just for animals. You can sploot after a hectic day. You could say, “Man, I got to go home and sploot.” It doesn’t mean you’re trying to get cool. It just means you’re trying to dump everything out of your brain after a hectic day.
Ben: Okay, that’s fair enough.
Hedvig: When I was little, when I came home from school, I’d just be so overwhelmed and tired from everything in the world, I just lie down on the floor-
Daniel: Aww, sploot.
Hedvig: -with all my outdoor clothes on, and shoes, and everything, and just lie until my mom came and took off my shoes.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: [laughs]
Ben: You are painting a really tragic picture.
Hedvig: I don’t know. Is that tragic? Okay.
Ben: I just have this idea of a small, [crosstalk] totally frazzled Hedvig just like floonk.
Daniel: School is hard for certain kinds of kids. They take it very seriously. I’m trying to encourage a young one of mine not to take it so seriously and make it easy. Just float. Let it go. Let it go.
Ben: oh, my goodness, you and I have very different genomes. [laughs]
Daniel: I know. I know. I know.
Ben: Oh, my God.
Daniel: Some kids do it and some kids don’t.
Ben: Never in my life have I had to worry about any progeny of mine trying to– [crosstalk]
Daniel: [laughs] I’ve got my own little Hermione here.
Hedvig: Aww.
Ben: [laughs]
Daniel: Anyway–
Hedvig: I recommend backwards splooting when you get home from work. I haven’t tried it for a long time, but I used to do it up until I was a teenager. I think if I did it, my husband would take off my shoes. So, I’ve got– [crosstalk]
Daniel: He would, and he’d bring you tea.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: This sounds like a question that is answerable by science.
Hedvig: My mom used to just get so annoyed with me. She would just let me lie there for 30 minutes, which I just– [crosstalk]
Ben: Maybe 30 minutes was exactly what you needed.
Hedvig: Yeah, very good.
Daniel: Mm-hmm. So, Dark Brandon, a-Lago, quiet quitting and splooting are Words of the Week. Here is a comment from Dr. Emily Bender on Twitter who says, “Listening to Mailbag of you on the Because Lang Pod’s Patreon and I’ve got to say it warms my Gen X heart to hear Millennials complaining about being made fun of Gen-Zers.”
[laughter]
Ben: I bet it does, mate. I bet it does.
Daniel: Dr. Bender continues, “Also, the same episode involves some discussion of count versus mass nouns, specifically for vegetables in English,” and that was the bit about you can have potatoes, but you cannot broccolis. “The answer I believe based on what Tom Waso and Ivan Sag wrote in our coauthored textbook–” Ooh, didn’t read it. Sorry, Dr. Bender.
Ben: I’ll tell you what though. What a great plug.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm. That’s good.
Daniel: Yeah, there’s a link there as well. We’ll slap up on our website for this episode. “There’s an aspect of grammaticalization/arbitrariness there. That is, while there are some semantic generalizations about individuatability, there are also just some morphosyntactic facts to memorize. Example, cutlery and furniture are mass nouns, but eminently individuatable. Succotash is also an interesting case.” So, I was arguing hard for indivisibility or divisibility, but also some morphology and Dr. Bender reminds us, maybe it’s just because. Just arbitrary.
Ben: As is often the case with English. Not a rule doesn’t work, sucked in–
Daniel: Dah, sucked in linguist.
Ben: [laughs] Right.
Daniel: Thanks as always to everybody who gave us ideas and feedback for the show. Thanks to Hayley Gold. Thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary for being our sponsors. And thanks to our great patrons for making the show available for everybody.
[music]
Ben: Hey, if you liked the show, here’s what you can do. You can send us ideas and feedback. You can follow us @becauselangpod in all of the places except Spotify, because fuck Joe Rogan.
Daniel: [chuckles]
Ben: Leave us message with SpeakPipe. Please do that. We’ve been plugging that for a while. I really want some people to start doing it, so we can just start dropping some of your voices in the show. It’d be so good. You can find the place to do that on our website, becauselanguage.com. You can send us a good old-fashioned email. You can sit yourself by the fire, get yourself a big warm cup of tea, put one of those bubble pipes in your mouth and a smoking jacket, and just compose a really heartfelt missive in the nature of a person riding back home from wherever. Or, you could always do what Dustin of Sandman Stories does and you can recommend us. You can tell people to listen to us. It works really, really well.
Daniel: Another thing you can do to help the show is become a patron. You’ll get bonus episodes, you can hang out with us on Discord, have a good time there. And you’ll be making it possible for us to make transcripts so that people can read our shows and search our shows. Hey, by the way, SpeechDocs, y’all rule. They’re doing a great job on our transcripts. Big shoutout to our top patrons, Dustin, Termy, Elías, Matt, Whitney, Chris L, Helen, Udo, Jack, PharaohKatt, Lord Mortis. By the way. Lord Mortis is doing amazing work getting our transcripts searchable on Discord.
Ben: Oh, what a lord. See what I did there?
Daniel: I would say so. gramaryen, Larry, Kristofer, AndyB, James, Nigel, Meredith, Kate, Nasrin, Ayesha, Moe, Steele, Manú, Rodger, Rhian, Colleen, Ignacio, Sonic Snejhog, Kevin, Jeff, Andy from Logophilius, Stan, Kathy, Rach, Cheyenne, Felicity, Amir, Canny Archer, O Tim, Alyssa, Chris W, and Kate B, who not just lightly tapped, not just caressed, but obliterated forever, the one-time donation button on our website, becauselanguage.com.
Ben: Just note. It hasn’t actually been destroyed forever. You can also still use the button.
Daniel: It regenerates. You just have to reload the page. It’s okay. Also, our newest patrons at the Listener level, Kara and Rangel. Thanks to all of our amazing patrons.
Hedvig: And finally, our theme music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, who’s a member of Ryan Beano and of Didion’s Bible. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you next time. Because Language.
Ben: Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Daniel: Womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp.
Ben: Daniel, you’ll love this. I’ve just watched Under the Banner of Heaven with Aish. And God, that left just such a fuckin’ sour taste in my mouth.
Daniel: Yeah.
Ben: Watching how some people choose to exist– Oh–
Daniel: Do you know what happens when you watch it with me? It takes 45 minutes to watch the episode and then an hour of Daniel agonizing over his religious past.
Ben: I would have imagined you would just ride that pause button like nobody’s business, where you are just like, “This is real. This is a real thing. And the thing that they’re not saying is all of this other contextual information that you need to know about.”
Daniel: Okay. Get out of my house when we’re watching the show, okay?
Ben: [laughs]
Hedvig: So, I was flying to here, and it was just one of those one and a half hour stops in Adelaide. You have to get off the plane, then you get on the same plane again. And I was like, “Oh, we’ll go through all the controls and everything and God, in middle of the night, fuck it is.” And then there was a small kiosk and there was a beautiful Australian man there, who was so cheerful, and nice, and smiling to everyone, and asking us all how our day was, and how our trip was, and what are we doing here. And I told him, I work on languages. And he was like, “Oh, that’s so interesting.” I was just– [crosstalk]
Ben: You got [unintelligible 01:48:19] a little bit, didn’t you? [laughs]
Hedvig: It was so nice.
Ben: [laughs] Was it __ interesting you’ve been separated from us for quite a while–
Hedvig: Yeah.
Ben: So it was just like you just had that nostalgic wash?
Hedvig: Yeah. And he really– [crosstalk] talk to me and wasn’t just saying formulaic phrases. He was actually paying attention to what I said.
Daniel: So attractive.
Ben: [laughs] I’m loving how much you just found this really– [laughs]
Hedvig: It was–
Ben: Oh, my, Australian man. Come on.
Hedvig: Australian man, that was the highlight of my trip so far.
Ben: [laughs] You are a literal fucking tidy, and you would just like the rando at Adelaide International highlighted– [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Honestly, shoutout to him, if this makes it onto any recording ever. Whoever that might– he was a redhead. He had a red beard as well and he was just smiling to everyone.
Ben: There you go.
Hedvig: It’s just glorious.
Daniel: We’ll let him know.
[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]