#22 - The Letter C

[00:00:00] James Goodfellow, the Scotsman, he did file a patent 14 months before. And so he is technically the inventor of the cash machine. And yet he got no money out of it. They're bitter irony. Wah, wah, wah, wah. I still can't get over the on-the-buses reference. The Letter C.

[00:00:18] Good choice choosing the Thicktionary today. Thanks so much for giving us a listen. We do the funny side of the dictionary every single week. This week it is the Letter C. So, Paul Gannon, I called you car-coleptic. Yeah. Any ideas?

[00:00:39] Is it the horrible happenstance when you fall asleep at the wheel of a car? It's the correct answer. Is it? Or in fact anyone who falls asleep in a car. That's scary though, right?

[00:00:50] Easily done. Really easily done. I've done long drives in my past where you're begging. You drive? I had a license in America to drive. I didn't get that license updated or renewed to come to the UK and it fell by the wayside.

[00:01:01] You've got your first driving license in America. Yeah. I like in America that you can turn on a red light if there's no traffic coming. Actually, you get honked if you don't.

[00:01:08] In fact, there's an interesting fact as a result of that. UPS only make journeys with their trucks and use right hand turns only to do their deliveries. It saves petrol. Your parcel will be here in 12 days. So that's what it really means. Car-coleptic.

[00:01:22] Yeah, car-coleptic. Car-napping into the Oxford English Dictionary last year, June 2015. Have you been caught? I haven't had a moment of napping. No, I can't. Even as a passenger I feel guilty that I have to stay awake because my sleep will make the driver sleepy.

[00:01:37] So I was like permanently like matchstick. So yeah, there you go. Car-coleptic. Wow, so I called you cockamamie. Thank you very much. Apparently it's a North American word and formal, formally used and originally in the 1940s it comes from...

[00:01:51] This is interesting. What do you think? You look at the word cockamamie and you think it's a crazy kind of ye oldie American wordy from the old days. It feels a word that's so nonsensical that they just made up a word. That it doesn't mean anything.

[00:02:03] It comes from a word called decalcomania. It's the art of taking like paper imagery and adding them onto glassware or porcelain. Decals. Decals basically, so because they were crazy odd designs, they kind of became this word cockamamie.

[00:02:17] As fun as it is to say, it's not as fun as bollocks. Which is the standard for cockamamie things now. But then that would have to imply you pressing your bollocks against porcelain objects. And your point is... Okay, fair enough.

[00:02:32] And I call this the Croconole podcast. Croconole, a board game with multiple disciplines. Similar to pitch nut, carrom, marbles, shove hape knee. It's also got elements of shuffleboard and curling. If you know curling in the Olympics, imagine that on a disc and it's tabletop size.

[00:02:51] You all get together and you all play Croconole. There's controversy in the world of Croconole. What? I know powder is often used to ensure that pieces slide smoothly across the surface. That's despicable. But the use of any lubricating powder and Croconole is controversial.

[00:03:06] Some purists revile in the practice. Put your lube away! So is there like a kind of, you know, Lance Armstrong of the Croconole world? Someone that dopes. Yeah. Yeah, there must be cheats. Yeah. Interestingly, the word Croconole champion is from Canada.

[00:03:22] Well, that's good to know and hopefully he isn't juicing the game. You were saying the other way that you would love to live in Canada. I would. Which means you're going to have to brush up on your Croconole. For them, I will.

[00:03:31] I'll get a Zamboni, I'll brush it off my Croconole and I'll learn how to say A. If you're interested in Croconole, the world Croconole championship takes place each spring this year. Guess where it is? Yes, Canada. No, well at least it's consistent.

[00:03:44] They have hockey but this is the Croconole, the forgotten Canadian sports. If you're interested in spellcasting. Yeah. C-R-O-K-I-N-O-L-E. Croconole. This is the dictionary where we help you cheat at Scrabble and Words with Friends. In a feature we like to call, cheat, cheat, cheat, cheat letters. I like it.

[00:04:10] I still think it needs a bit of production. No, don't do silly at the end. Do not like silly. Cheat letters. So we look at the high-scoring words in Scrabble and Words with Friends relating to the letter. This week, Paul Gannon, Chazan. Dave. Spellcasting.

[00:04:24] I knew you were going to say that. I knew it. Chazan, spellcasting. C-H-A-Z-Z-E-N. It's a seven-letter word that will score you 80 points in Scrabble and 66 points in Words with Friends on its own. It's worth 30. Oh, OK.

[00:04:39] I was going to say, so this is if it hits all the money spots like a triple word score or whatever. Chazan. But what does it mean? What does it mean? You'll find out in a couple of minutes. Here we go.

[00:04:48] But first, this week's dictionary is dedicated to one man in particular focusing on a C word this week, cash. This week's dictionary dedicated to Scotsman James Goodfellow who in 1966 patented the Personal Identification Number Technology, PIN codes. Oh. And the automatic cash dispenser. Oh.

[00:05:09] He filed the patent for those the year that England won the World Cup. And he's Scottish, you say? Yes. And he's a great machine that gives money to people? Yes. It can happen. I know. A Scotsman and his money are occasionally parted.

[00:05:22] Although he told the Guardian money recently that he only got 10 pounds from the patent and has not made a single penny from it since. When it goes, do you want to see how much money you've got? No. Do you want to receipt? No. No, just look.

[00:05:35] I'm just going to get in and out before you realise I've got no money. Yeah. Trust the overdraft and off we go. His idea, his theory was that you would put in your PIN number. Yeah.

[00:05:42] And it would give you a cash token, which would then exchange for goods and services. A couple of months after he filed the patent, a guy called John Shepherd Barron sold his idea to Barclays while pissed on gin. Excellent.

[00:05:55] And his idea was that he would have a machine that would print an amount on checks. So you would type in 1000 Krona. Right. And then these kind of stamps would go ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. And then it would print out a check and which you'd have for 1000 Krona. Nice.

[00:06:10] And then you'd use that in the shops. Trouble is that, used slightly radioactive ink. Really? They didn't know it at the time. So anyway, a guy called Shepherd Barron sold his technology to Barclays. Barclays claimed they opened the first cash machine in the world

[00:06:23] with the help of Reg Varney from On The Buses on the 20th of June 1967. Excellent. So Barclays go first cash machine in the UK. It was ours. And while technically it was the first one to exist, Yeah. They never filed a patent.

[00:06:37] So the guy that filed it before, the James Goodford, the Scotsman, he did file a patent 14 months before. And so he is technically the inventor of the cash machine. And yet he got no money out of it. They're bitter irony. Wah wah wah wah.

[00:06:51] I still can't get over the On The Buses reference. Time for this week's Big Four Words. Oh yeah! First word. It is a creature. What do you think a camel apart is? Is it a camel and a leopard? Is it across between a camel and a leopard?

[00:07:12] Let me give you half a ding. A camel apart comes from the Greek, camel par dalis. It's half-darlak as well. Which derives from camelos meaning camel and par dalis meaning leopard. So it is a portmanteau of camel and leopard. It wasn't common until the late 19th century.

[00:07:31] But actually a camel apart is a giraffe. I guess that makes sense. Doesn't it? Yeah! Giraffe is a French word. So in the 16th century the French were calling giraffes giraffes. The rest of the world were calling giraffes camelopods. It's not the only combo animal out there.

[00:07:49] A grola bear is what do you think? Grola bear. Yeah. It's either half-bear, half- It's half-bear, half-bear but which halves? Ah it's half-grizzly bear and half-covala. No polar bear. What? It exists. Do you ever see the wuzzles? Do you know the wuzzles? It's a bumble lion.

[00:08:07] Oh that half-bumble be half lion. I like him. And Montgomery moose. Yeah, no that was Gellongang. Okay. Get it right. Oh God. Wuzzles had tycoon who was half tiger half raccoon. You've not been told off until you've been told off by a nerd. Yeah. What about a mullard?

[00:08:21] He's the one who sang I'm the one that you want. A mullard is a peaking duck and a mullard duck crossed. Oh okay. What about a wolfen? This is awesome. Half wolf, half dolphin. So you would think... Or how is it not?

[00:08:36] A wolfen is a male false killer whale crossed with a female bottle nose dolphin. A wolfen. Wow. So it's a whale dolphin. I still would rather see a half wolf, half dolphin beast. I would like to see how that happens.

[00:08:50] It just comes out of the water in a full moon. I think it was in an episode of Buffy Shore. Might have been. And finally you've had the growler bear, the mullard and the wolfen. What about the beefalo?

[00:09:00] Well, I went to that pole dancing club and I don't recommend it. Peter Stregfollow presents... Thank you ladies and gentlemen. ...Tuesday Night Beefalo. Oh God. Beefalo, crossed between a cow and an American buffalo. Fair enough. But yeah, your C word for today.

[00:09:17] A camelapod, the old ancient name for a giraffe. Right, come on, hit me with the C words. Right, my C word is the word conondrum. Because sometimes it's all very easy to... Spellcasting. Spellcasting. For the avoidance of doubt. C-O-N-U-N-D-R-U-M conondrum.

[00:09:37] This is a puzzle or something you can't solve, right? Well, here's the thing about conondrum. That's what I thought initially. I thought... Countdown. Yeah, you know, the countdown conundrum. But when you look into the origin and meaning of it,

[00:09:48] I mean obviously, I mean the word is what it is. We all recognise it as meaning, a confusing or difficult problem or question. The interesting part of it is the word where it originates. First of all, it originated in the late 16th century

[00:09:59] of unknown origin but it was first recorded in a work by Thomas Nash. And then it was used to describe someone who's a crank or a pedant. So, oh that guy's always taking the piss out of Barbara over the road. He's a conundrum, innit?

[00:10:12] Yeah, we can't quite work him out because he's not all there. There's something wrong with him. And then it became a meaning of whim or fancy or pun perhaps. And then I guess it all kind of got middle up in the 17th century

[00:10:24] and became the conundrum that we all know now. And there are different types of conundrums or riddles, his word play. That's often quite popular. Here's an example of a word play conundrum. You'll get this right. What can be swallowed or can swallow a person?

[00:10:37] A hush falls in the auditorium as Damien St John puts a pencil to his lip and thinks, I should put a time on this shouldn't I? Think outside the bar. Yeah, I'm thinking like shame or embarrassment. That's good. You're on the right track through that. Yeah.

[00:10:54] Give me a point. Yeah, ding done. Two of us want to get to one is a moral conundrum. So that's when you're presented with a story that doesn't really have a right or wrong answer. For instance, the one they give here is the trolley problem.

[00:11:06] You're standing on a signpost where there's a lever in front of you and when you pull that it switches the train tracks from one to the other, right? Yeah. You see a train bowling out of control down towards this switch in the road.

[00:11:18] I just get out of the way. No, no, no. Here's the thing. Don't go for it. Don't get yourself involved because they'll sue you. You're standing there and you see the train can't be stopped. If you set it down one direction, it's going to hit five

[00:11:28] people who are working on the track. Yeah. If you pull the lever and it moves elsewhere, it's going to hit one person. Mm-hmm. Is killing one person worth justifying killing five? Depends on that. Or saving five? Depends on that one is? TITLER. Who are the five? Five Hitlers.

[00:11:43] I don't know. Well, that's it. I would want more detail. So then you might go for the five Hitlers. You get more money and more satisfaction. Absolutely. And then five spots in heaven if I kill five Hitlers. And then finally there's a practical conundrum, for

[00:11:56] instance, where maybe someone offers you a dilemma about your own life. Like you're offered a job. Yeah. And then two jobs get given to you, right? One is well-paid but lots of work hard hours. Okay. The other one is not as much money, but it looks

[00:12:09] like a more fun place to work. Which one do you want to go for? You're going to go for the money. You're going to go for the hard work. You're going to go for a more relaxed environment that suits your, you know, vibe. See, yeah, you're right.

[00:12:18] There's no right or wrong answer because there's not enough options. That, I guess, makes sense. So there's kind of the conundrums you can get hold of. Somebody did this to me once. Yeah. In a barbeque, he said how much would I have to pay you

[00:12:26] to stand in a queue for eight hours? And you would get, if you stood in the queue for eight hours, you'd get the money. And I went 10 million pounds. Yeah. And he went, no, you're not understanding it. How much would I have to, I said... That's how much.

[00:12:37] Yeah, I'll wait for 10 million. Yeah. Of course you would. But what's the least? And I went, well, a million. I guess. Like changing my money. Yeah, a million because it makes a difference then. Yeah. They go, but you're not thinking on our way. That doesn't matter. I am.

[00:12:51] I'm out lateralising you. So anyway, conundrum. Love it. My next word for you is cakewalk. Oh. You know when someone says, oh, that was a cakewalk? Yeah. Right? Comes from 1863. It's an American English word. Cakewalking was one of the happier moments

[00:13:08] during slave life for black men and women on southern plantations. Wow. Now they had the chance to mock stiffen white lifestyles through the medium of dance. They would kind of do this Mickey taking ball. Yeah. And they would go up in couples and they would all

[00:13:23] do the dancing. Okay. The way that their owners would do the dancing. So they were mocking their bosses there? Yeah, it was a chance to have a bit of fun and they got to have a little disco. Did they do this in private away from...

[00:13:35] No, quite often done in the plantations. I mean, it's 1863 so it's fairly close to the end of things. Yeah, end of the slave. Occasionally you would get slave owners going down and awarding the prize, which was a cake. That's a strange bit of history. I did not know.

[00:13:49] Best impersonation won a cake. God, that's weird because it's hard to imagine after watching like 12 years of slave and even something like Django and Chain and then hearing the lovely story of the birth of the word Cakewalk. Well, of course there's the horrible side of

[00:14:02] you should never own a person. There's the horrible side of slavery where people are for a start emancipated and beaten and whipped and killed and there were the softer sides of things and actually as they got into minstrel shows and it caused quite a lot of consternation

[00:14:17] because it was a form of black expression to be able to say, look we're people we're gently mocking you, you know we are you get the joke, we get the joke isn't it a bit of fun. But then when they put the Cakewalk into the minstrel shows

[00:14:29] it kind of took away the power that the black people had because it was white people dressing as black people doing a dance. And that feels like it's a little bit... So they were mocking the black people for doing the dance in the first place.

[00:14:40] Early 20th century entertainer Tom Fletcher said his grandparents were champion Cakewalkers but he said there was no prancing just a straight walk on a path made by turns and so forth and you had to carry a bucket of water on your head.

[00:14:53] The couple who was the most direct and spilled the least water or no water at all was the winner. Can I just add then? Yeah. To make fashion shows more interesting can they make them into where the models have to walk down the catwalk

[00:15:05] with a bucket of water on their head? You know what, I think it all comes from the same place. That's kind of weird to think that maybe that walk comes from the Cakewalk. Yeah, but it probably does. That's weird. Isn't that strange? It is kind of strange.

[00:15:19] Equally next time you say that was a piece of cake comes from the same place. Good. I'm glad I didn't pick my final word of this show to be that was a Cakewalk. What is your next word Paul Gannon? This word is cliche. I love it.

[00:15:32] Because you know... I love a cliche. I like a cliche too. It is a noun. It's a phrase or opinion. It's overused and it betrays a lack of original thought. Like that old cliche of the woman's place is in the home.

[00:15:43] Now obviously I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. So it's not a cliche. By and large, a cliche seems to be a lazy way of summing up a complicated thought process if that makes sense. So you know when someone goes, oh, I've had a hard day at work

[00:15:58] and you know, I've just done this and then someone turns around and you go, well every cloud has a silver lining. That's them saying, I can't be asked to engage with you. It's a lazy auto phrase that you roll out. Because it instantly conjures up

[00:16:12] the term or the emotion or the expression or the emotion that you want to get out without having to impress any original thought upon it. Is there a particular cliche that upsets you? I think it's phrases like don't judge a book by its cover.

[00:16:23] You know when someone says that, you think, but no, he looks creepy. He's taking meth outside of a kids school. I'd like to judge him accordingly. Mine is when they describe something as being like Marmite. Oh yeah. Like it's lazy.

[00:16:38] When people can't be bothered to make up their mind, they'll go, oh it's like Marmite, isn't it? Why, give you a yeast infection. It's brown and comes in a bottle. You go, there's room for more than two opinions in this world. I'm fairly ambivalent towards Marmite.

[00:16:51] I mean they're used in pop culture a lot because they are narrative shorthand. So for instance the obvious story here is when a tale ends with a phrase and they lived happily ever after. Which basically means you don't need to think about their story anymore.

[00:17:05] And then they all went to heaven. Snow White eventually found out that Prince Charming had a bit of an OCD problem when it came to keeping the bedroom clean. He didn't bring them up when they were dating, but now they're together and they're married, they're locked in.

[00:17:18] Clichets are also useful ways to shut down a conversation. Because you could be apathetic towards a conversation and you go well don't judge a book by its cover. What I want is a cliche to combat cliche. So here we go, let's play cliche tennis. Fourty-thirty.

[00:17:34] I'm as fit as a fiddle. Well every cloud has silver lining. I love you more than life itself. All that glitters isn't gold. All's fair in love and war. When pigs fly. You see those people that run around with the cliches

[00:17:48] to end their sentences, just smack them back with your favourite cliche and see how you get on. I will say this though to end on. What we tend to use cliches in more than any other genre, nearly any other part of pop culture are things like advertising.

[00:18:01] Advertising does nothing but trade in cliches to sell their products in a very lazy and very shorthand way of getting it across. I found this sketch online from a Michelin Web which I think rather exemplifies the point of advertising cliches. Ow! My stomach!

[00:18:15] Do you suffer from gut agony? And my head! Tension head. Got that bloated feeling. Inevitable wrinkles. The beginnings of lady moustache. Women. You're leaking, aging, hairy, overweight and everything hurts. And your children's clothes are filthy. No wonder men long for other, less clammy women.

[00:18:42] For God's sake, sort yourself out. That's very clever. And for more on that, see last week's episode Barnomise. Yes. There you go. Time for this week's Cheap Letters. Chazan. Spellcasting C-H-A-Z-Z-E-N. Did you have any guesses on what you thought Chazan might be?

[00:19:05] Well apart from the obvious gag about being one-half of a Courtney Neesaw music band I was actually going to say Chazan. It sounds like it's either some kind of fabric for something, or some kind of way of preparing food.

[00:19:17] Because they do test you when you play these games. There's always someone that goes, yeah well what is it? You can't put it down until you tell me what it is. Yeah. So here we go. Chazan is a Hebrew word.

[00:19:35] It's the alternative form of a Jewish canter in a synagogue. Canter being someone that sings. Especially someone that leads the singing in a ceremony. Oh. And to remember. So it is Chazan Dave. You could argue actually if he was Jewish. Yeah you could argue. Chazan, right?

[00:19:50] The best way to remember this and it will score you 80 points of Scrabble, 66 in words of Friends worth 30 alone. The best way to remember Chazan other than Chazan Dave is that the famous Jewish singers include Paula Abdul, Billy Joel, Neal Diamond, Lou Reed, Gene Simmons and Barry Manilow.

[00:20:09] If you're interested in another Jewish words, hutzpah, spellcasting C-H-U-T-Z-P-A gets you 23 in Scrabble and 25 in words of Friends. Also, hopa cabana. Sorry. This show is part of Pidomedy, the podcast comedy network. We're the best kept secret on A-Cast. Why not laugh at what else we've got?

[00:20:42] Check out Pidomedy.com now. Thank you.