We recommend Internet Explorer set to 1024x768.

© 2002 Brian F. Schreurs
Even we have a disclaimer.

The local rock station’s morning show is typical small-market morning fare: a barely-funny host with a not-at-all-funny sidekick making weak jokes, sharing heavily editorialized news, and playing juvenile games. I seldom bother to listen. This day, however, I was tired of my CDs and tuned in just in time to catch “Master’s Degree in Stupid and Useless Information”.

The game’s name should have told me I was better off just listening to the sound of my car’s engine, but it was early in the morning and my reflexes were slow. Apparently, the game’s intent is that they ask a very trivial question, which their listeners answer. The first one with the correct answer gets some little certificate and a very trivial freebie from a local merchant. The stakes are not high.

Preceded by a digital drumroll, the not-funny sidekick asked: What is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the same three letters?

How could I not laugh? There are hundreds of thousands of English words, making it far and away the most diverse European language and possibly the most diverse language on the planet. Claiming that there is only one word that begins and ends with the same three letters is simply daft. They probably got the question from the internet -- perhaps the same endlessly forwarded e-mail that shares trivia such as the 30-minute pig orgasm. I stayed tuned in to listen to the beating these hosts were about to receive, and wondered whether they would concede their idiocy or weasel out of it until they got the answer they wanted.

The first call came in: “kayak”. I was thinking “radar” myself, knowing it wasn’t the answer they wanted even though it met their rules.

“No, that’s a palindrome,” the barely-funny host ruled, without explaining how palindromes did not meet the same-three-letters criterion.

“The three letters have to be in the same order at the beginning and end,” the not-funny sidekick added. She presented this information as though it were a hint, when in fact she and the host had changed the question in the middle of the game. Now the question read: What is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the same three letters, in exactly the same order?

The next call came in: “mom”. Nicely done: forwards, backwards, first three letters, last three letters, it’s all the same. And it also works with “wow”, “did”, “bub”, and a host of other words. Clearly they weren’t going to allow this; let the weaseling begin!

“Um, no,” the host declared indignantly, as though it was perfectly obvious that “mom” didn’t meet the rules. I eagerly awaited the more technical explanation from the sidekick.

“It can’t be the same three letters at the beginning and end,” she unhelpfully explained. On the face of it, this rule completely contradicts the original question, but I knew what she really meant: that the three letters had to appear twice in the word. The new question was: What is the only word in the English language that is at least six letters long and begins and ends with the same three letters, in exactly the same order?

I figured this new version of the question would weed out the peanuts in the audience, and sure enough the station broke for commercials.

When they returned, they went through a couple of callers who seemed unclear about the palindrome ruling before hitting a zinger: “ingratiating”. The word met their rules perfectly! How could they turn it away?

There was a pregnant pause on the air. I knew it wasn’t the word they were after, and they were desperately trying to find a reason to invalidate it, short of just hanging up on the caller.

“Well, it does have the same three letters at the beginning and end…” conceded the sidekick.

“It’s a verb tense!” the host eagerly pointed out. “It needs to be a root word.” Weasel 1, integrity 0. Eliminating every possible verb tense, prefix, and suffix trimmed the English vocabulary by, oh, 800,000 words or so. Goodbye “antidepressant” and “ionization”. The new trivia question: What is the only root word in the English language that is at least six letters long and begins and ends with the same three letters, in exactly the same order?

At this point the trivia contest was starting to sound more like a bizarre spelling bee. They may as well have asked the question, “What is the only word in the English language that begins with ‘mor’, ends with ‘nic’, and has an ‘o’ in the middle?”

The next caller rang in with trepidation in her voice -- probaby wondering how they’d weasel out of her answer. “Is it ‘underground’?” she asked.

Ding ding ding! That was the answer they’d been looking for. But wait, isn’t under- a prefix for-- well, never mind, evidently it’s allowable. The lady got her freebie and I had a good laugh at the dinks in charge of the morning show.

But, I suppose that’s what happens when you underfund a radio station.