Coming as a surprise to probably no one is the fact that the writers who work for the popular game show “Jeopardy!” are — like us — genuine lovers of words. This time we’ll be looking at some of their more interesting selections, but first a little information about the words that are used on the program itself.

The answer-and-question show’s cues are written in the uppercase of a font called ITC Korinna and have been since its start in 1982. If the font seems familiar, according to Office-watch.com, “it’s because the same font was used on ‘Mork and Mindy,’ ‘Fraser’ and many other TV shows, plus some newspapers.” The clues also retain the use of straight quotation marks and apostrophes even though modern technology would easily allow the use of curly ones.

One thing that has changed out of necessity is the format in which the show’s clues are presented. Back in the days when television sets had cathode ray picture tubes, the viewing area was a ratio of 4 wide by 3 high, which is written as 4:3 (for example, the picture would have been 16 inches wide by 12 inches high). Today’s wider-screen TVs have a ratio of 16:9, so out of necessity the clues are wider too.

In May of last year “Jeopardy!” had a category dedicated to different styles of letters, called A Real Font of Knowledge. The following, according to Creativebloq.com, are the correct responses to the clues along with some pertinent information for each.

Stanley Morrison co-designed Times New Roman font for a London newspaper in 1932. An Italian printer designed the eponymous font Bodini. Helvetica was developed in Switzerland in 1975. Courier, which looks like it was typewritten, is the industry standard for screenplays. And Comic Sans was developed by Vincent Connare for use in speech balloons and kids’ apps.

The Five-Syllable Words category pointed out that if we’re using similes and metaphors when talking, then we are speaking metaphorically. Its clues also reminded us that Carrie Nation was a prohibitionist, and (to save space on my part) that a pulchritudinous etymologist might be a kleptomaniac.

One “Jeopardy!”category that our beautiful, light-fingered, word lover would likely be interested in was Place-Name Etymologies, which explained that the name of the South Korean city of Pusan comes from the words “pu” (kettle) and “san (mountain). Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, means “cool water,” while Nicaragua refers to the local people along and the Spanish word for water. The West Bank city of Bethlehem translates to “house of bread,” while closer to home, Detroit got its name by way of a French word for “strait” referring to the waterway there linking Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie.

An exciting story could be told based on the answers in the recent “Jeopardy!” category Unusual Words, featuring a “bacchanal” (a party with drunken revelry) where things go “widdershins” (wrong) when a “kaiju” (a strange Japanese beast) is spotted nearby, causing an ensuing kerfuffle (Scottish for “disorderly confusion”). The fact that all this debauchery took place near a fumarole (a volcanic vent through which hot gasses emerge) isn’t surprising at all.

The Antonymic Pairs category that game started off with President Garfield’s quote about how “The best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard to sink or swim.” Other pairs of opposites in the category touched on sweet and sour sauce, the lost and found department, peaks and valleys on a graph, and how the good old U.S. dollar is legal tender for all debts public and private.

Finally, the Thirteen-Letter Words category helped me verify my spellings of baccalaureate, cybersquatter and ventriloquist, while the clue for cryptozoology included a mention of the international museum right in Portland, Maine. And finally, if you tend to be a person who frequently engages in soliloquizing (talking to oneself), then you know exactly what I’m doing while I’m writing this.

Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.

Copy the Story Link