Jack Shepherd

This is very important work, but I need those jorts cut off above the knee

DO IT

When I Found Out This Positive Adjective Was Originally a Comparative, I Was SHOOK And you won’t BELIEVE what the superlative is!

Fun fact: The ne- in "nest" comes from a word meaning "down," and the -st comes from a word meaning "sit." Nest means "sit down."

That and more in this week's newsletter! open.substack.com/pub/onwords/...

I am! New York!

Very excited to dig into the new issue from @unchcrosswords.com!

The Definitive Ranking of Forgotten Microsoft Office Assistants (Excluding Clippy) Also, Clippy is not his name.

I wrote about Clippy’s ill-begotten siblings. open.substack.com/pub/onwords/...

Been out of the game for a bit, but Unch is looking so cool! Congrats! Will definitely subscribe if I can get it to the U.S.!

Thanks for sharing it!

Spooner Mixed Up More Than His Words On "spoonerisms," a 19th century viral phenomenon, and the curious life of Reverend William Archibald Spooner.

Got a new one up about Spooner, who DIDN'T commit very many spoonerisms, but DID mix up concepts in some really interesting ways. onwords.substack.com/p/spooner-mi...

Spooner Mixed Up More Than His Words On "spoonerisms," a 19th century viral phenomenon, and the curious life of Reverend William Archibald Spooner.

Fun post from (I think) @lovefromjack.bsky.social, and a companion puzzle on Big Dave:

substack.com/@onwords/p-1...

crypticcrosswords.net/puzzles/rook...

Seven Reasons Listicles Didn’t Suck, Actually (And One Of Them May Surprise You) “The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for...

Absolute delight to see this revisiting of the unfairly maligned "listicle" era on @talkingpointsmemo.com from @jonallsop.bsky.social. talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/seven...

This is such an important question. Ferry solution definitely most practical, but falls short of the romantic intent of the song somehow. It's just unfortunate that you can't really walk that far in Scotland without ending up in the North Sea.

If the Proclaimers walked 1,000 miles due East from their home in Leith, they would fall down in Užventis, Lithuania, with a halfway stop in Denmark. The rest, unfortunately, is water.