On today’s episode of Spectacular Vernacular, Nicole Holliday and Ben Zimmer share their thoughts on Pfizer’s official name for its COVID vaccine. They also interview Sam Ezersky, digital puzzles editor for the New York Times, about the popular online game the Spelling Bee. And finally, we invite a listener to play our inspired version of the Spelling Bee. We hope you’ve been practicing! You could win a year’s membership to Slate Plus.

Do you have any language questions or fun facts to share? Email us at [email protected].  

Produced by Jasmine Ellis. 

Subscribe to Slate Plus. It’s only $1 for the first month. To learn more, go to slate.com/spectacularplus.

Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:

Rewordable: https://rewordable.com/

BLABRECS: https://mkremins.github.io/blabrecs/

Lisa Davidson on Comirnaty: https://slate.com/technology/2021/08/comirnaty-pfizer-vaccine-linguistics.html

New York Times Spelling Bee: https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee

Spelling Bee Forum: https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/spelling-bee-forum

Laura Lippman on her Spelling Bee obsession: https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/02/spelling-bee-new-york-times-praise.html

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