Tend to the Rat-Killin' - 6 June 2011

<p>SUMMARY<br /><br />Anagrams, rebuses, cryptograms, Jumble -- Martha and Grant swap stories about the games that first made them realize that playing with words and letters can be fun. Also this week, what's a jitney supper and where do you eat graveyard stew? The hosts explain the origin of the term “hang fire” and why Alaskans sound like they're from the Midwest, and take on a debate about whether an egregious falsehood is a bald-faced lie or a bold-faced lie.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />What games first made you realize that words and letters make great playthings? Martha describes puzzling, as a child, over the odd combination of letters, F-U-N-E-X, until she finally figured out the joke. Grant talks about discovering anagrams as a youngster, and how word puzzles in the newspaper became a daily ritual.<br /><br />An office worker in Indianapolis is mystified when a British colleague sends an email telling her to "hang fire." The hosts explain the expression has to do with faulty firearms.<br /> <br />"Call up to 24 hours in advance to make a reservation." Do those instructions mean you can call until 24 hours before the deadline, or that you should call within 24 hours of it. When a San Diego listener assumed it was the former, she had an unpleasant surprise. <br /><br />Did you know the POTUS (President of the United States) has a BOTUS? Grant explains what a BOTUS is.<br /><br />Quiz Guy Greg Pliska's game this week is "Name Dropping."  The answer for each set of clues will be a word that has a common first name hidden somewhere in it; when that name's removed, the remaining letters spell a new word. For example, the first clue is "one of the seven deadly sins," the second is "the grain consumed by one-fifth of the world's inhabitants." Subtract the latter from the former, and you get a woman's name.<br /><br />A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller says that when she was a child and recovering from an illness, her mother fed her a kind of milk toast she called graveyard stew. Is that strange name uni