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Monday, November 2, 2026
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Yesterday's puzzle: CRAPULENCE is a real English noun, from the Latin crapula. Despite how it sounds, it has nothing to do with the bathroom, and plenty of guys have felt it on a Sunday morning. What does it mean? A. A sick, run-down feeling from eating or drinking too much · B. The urge to reorganize a buddy's garage · C. A fear of public restrooms · D. Bragging about a fish you didn't catch Answer: CRAPULENCE is A: the sick, run-down feeling from eating or drinking too much. |
| Word of the day | | bankrupt | (BANK-rupt)
Means: Legally unable to pay your debts. Broke, officially.
Etymology: From the Italian banca rotta, "broken bench." Moneylenders in Italian towns did business at benches, and the story goes that when one went bust, his bench was broken. English later swapped in the Latin ruptus, "broken," so the rupt in bankrupt is the same one in rupture.
"Between the boat, the bigger boat, and the boat insurance, Rick is one more good deal away from bankrupt." |
| | Design of the day | | Coke bottle styling | In the 1960s, American car designers pinched their cars in at the doors and swelled them out over the wheels. Everybody called it "Coke bottle" styling, but the real inspiration was fighter jets: engineers had found that a pinched, wasp-waisted fuselage cut drag near the speed of sound. On a car it does basically nothing, but it sure looks fast. Raymond Loewy, who'd been on the team that reworked the actual Coke bottle in 1955, put it on the 1962 Studebaker Avanti. By 1968 it was all over muscle cars like the Dodge Charger. |  | | 1968 Dodge Charger R/T. Photo: 1968 Dodge Charger R T by Calreyn88, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |  | | 1963 Studebaker Avanti, designed by Raymond Loewy's team. Photo: 1963 Studebaker Avanti, front right, 06-13-2023 by MercurySable99, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
| | Smart bit | | The thing you didn't know had a name | The little wire cage over a champagne cork is called a muselet (MYOOZ-uh-lay). Adolphe Jacquesson came up with the wire version in 1844, because the pressure inside a bottle of champagne is about 90 psi, close to three times what's in your car tires. Before that, corks were held in with string, oil-cloth, and wax. The twisted loop at the bottom traditionally takes six half-turns to open. Count them at the next wedding and look like a sommelier. |  | | A champagne cork with its wire cage, the muselet. Photo: Muselet 01 by Peter Burka, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons |  | | Muselet wire cage and its metal cap. Photo: Muselet capsule wire-cap by Joriola, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
| | Joke | A guy at the bar says, "Fifty bucks says I can bite my own eye." The bartender takes the bet. The guy pops out his glass eye and bites it.
"Double or nothing," he says. "A hundred says I can bite my other eye." The bartender figures nobody has two glass eyes. The guy pulls out his false teeth and bites his good eye.
The bartender's out $150 and steaming. "One more," the guy says. "Two hundred says I can stand on this stool and pee into that shot glass at the end of the bar without spilling a drop." He climbs up and pees all over the bar, the stools, and the bartender. Misses the glass completely.
The bartender's laughing his head off. "Pay up!"
The guy hands him $200, grinning. "Worth it. I bet the guy in the corner a thousand I could piss all over your bar and you'd laugh." |
| | Puzzle | | Anagram | Rearrange the letters of SLOT MACHINES into a four-word phrase that's an honest description of what a slot machine does to you.
Answer in tomorrow's issue. |
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Know a guy who'd use one of these at the bar? Forward this to him. |
The smartest guy at the bar wasn't always. He cheats. Two minutes a day.
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