One of the great pleasures of any language is getting to play with it. Word games, brainteasers, puzzles and quizzes – they all have ways to both challenge and educate us. For over two decades, a radio show in the U.S. has delighted and confounded its listeners by having fun with the English language. Please let me introduce you to the joys of Says You!

Since the show often focuses on the etymology of words and phrases (where they come from), you should know the origin of the show’s title. Says You! is a common retort, or phrase, spoken in response to a disputed statement. “You couldn’t beat him in a fight if he had one arm tied behind his back!” “Oh yeah? Says you!” Thankfully, the show is far more clever and charming than its titular origin.

The series was created and initially produced and hosted by Richard Sher, a former optician who eventually found a more lucrative career as president and founder of Pipit & Finch, a marketing and media development company with clients such as CBS/Westinghouse, Hearst Broadcasting and National Public Radio. Most importantly, Sher was a student of the English language. At dinners and parties, he would regale friends with his knowledge of word origins, and could be endlessly entertained by puns and trivia derived from word play. Many of these friends soon became the panelists on his show.

In fact, the show is often best described as a parlor game. These are games which grew out of Victorian England, when members of the upper and middle classes would gather indoors (often in the parlor, hence the name) on cold and damp days looking for entertainment. Played with a mix of male and female participants, parlor games could be highly competitive, though individual and team scores seldom mattered. This aspect of the Victorian games is on display every week on Says You!

Sher took advantage of his media connections, and sold NPR (National Public Radio) on the concept of the show. He may have based the format on a long-running radio show from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), called My Word! Each week, two teams of three face questions from the host on words and phrases, brain teasers, and trivia. Rounds 1, 3, and 5 consist of games like “Definitions and Derivations”, “Acronyms and Initialisms”, “Cryptic Puns” and variations of other language games.

One of the favorite games in each episode of Says You! comes during Rounds 2 and 4. These “Bluffing Rounds” give one team cards on which a very obscure English word, such as egrote, is written. One team member is given the correct definition of the word, and the other two members of the team have only a few minutes to provide fake definitions for the word. These definitions must be convincing enough to fool the other team, who are tasked with guessing the correct definition. I cannot tell you how often I have been fooled over the years!

Using the example I gave above; let’s see if you can guess which is the correct definition of egrote. And don’t look it up, that would be cheating!

Is it

1. To be mildly demented
2. Pretending to be sick
3. A dance movement

I should add that the panelists color their definitions with amusing examples and stories. In fact, the show is a repository of excrutiating puns and smart wit. Sher often said that he took his smartest and funniest friends and just let them be themselves. While the panelists vary from week to week, there is a core group that are regulars, and they are all very, very intelligent and funny. Sher famously said of his show, “You don’t have to know the answers; you just have to like the answers.”

Tragically, Richard Sher passed away in February of 2015. One of Sher’s original panelists, Barry Nolan, now hosts the show, which is available for free on Public Radio stations  throughout the U.S., as a podcast through apps on iTunes or Google Store, or archived at their website http://www.saysyou.net/

Oh, and the definition of ergote? It means to pretend to be sick.

Photo from “Says You!” a Pipit and Finch production