{"id":952,"date":"2012-08-08T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T06:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=952"},"modified":"2012-08-17T02:21:28","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T20:21:28","slug":"can-you-find-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=952","title":{"rendered":"Can you find another?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Teaching an honors course in Cuba, N.M., I had the pleasure of being surrounded by some extraordinarily perceptive students. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no particular reason why Cuba, of all places, would have had such a bumper crop of bright students; it must have just happened.<\/p>\n<p>One day, Annette asked in class, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you consider yourself knowledgeable when it comes to state capitals?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Of course I said I could hold my own. But before you, the reader, wonder whether we actually took the time to teach, let me assure you that yes, we followed a syllabus and at the time were covering current events, as part of a journalism class.<\/p>\n<p>I contend that our state-ly discussion dovetailed into that day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s teaching unit. I mention this to fend off any attempts by New Mexico\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s education secretary, Hanna Skandera, to yank my teaching license \u00e2\u20ac\u201d retroactively.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So Annette asked me to identify a state capital that contains the letter \u00e2\u20ac\u0153k\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and is in a state that also has that letter. A few minutes passed before I submitted, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Little Rock, Arkansas.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gotcha, Annette!<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can you name another?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she persisted. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, nor could any other member of the class, although years later, I have discovered such a capital with its corresponding state. But can you?<\/p>\n<p>Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s play, then, a round of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can you name another?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to test what you learned in public school geography. I know the answers to some of the questions, but I admit I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve neither the wit nor the patience to check them all. In my honors class, in the pre-computer era, we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even using an atlas or reference book during our game.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s give it a try. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re game, send your answers to either of the email addresses at the end of this column. (Note the new home email address). I will write about your reactions to this quiz in a subsequent column.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Name two state capitals that rhyme.<\/li>\n<li>Identify a state capital with the letter sequence \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ento.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d OK, smarty. Can you find another?<\/li>\n<li>Remember the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153k\u00e2\u20ac\u009d question above? Well, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at least one more state capital with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153k\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in its name and in its state. Which is it?<\/li>\n<li>But wait, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more. Can you find a fourth \u00e2\u20ac\u0153k\u00e2\u20ac\u009d combination?<\/li>\n<li>A state capital, when combined with its home state, contains four words. Name it.<\/li>\n<li>Now, can you name another?<\/li>\n<li>Oh, I just discovered a fifth special \u00e2\u20ac\u0153k\u00e2\u20ac\u009d combination, which you need to find.<\/li>\n<li>Find a state capital with its state that contains all the vowels.<\/li>\n<li>Find another. No, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother. There isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t one.<\/li>\n<li>A palindrome is a combination of letters that reads the same in both directions. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Radar\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153civic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are two common examples. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Madam in Eden, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m Adam\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is an example of a more complex palindrome. What is the state capital with a combination of four letters that reads the same in both directions?<\/li>\n<li>Can you find another?<\/li>\n<li>What four state capitals are named after U.S. presidents?<\/li>\n<li>Two state capitals begin with the same seven letters. Which are they?<\/li>\n<li>Identify a state capital with the letters \u00e2\u20ac\u0153den.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/li>\n<li>Can you find another?<\/li>\n<li>Two state capitals begin with the same six letters. Identify them.<\/li>\n<li>One capital contains the name of a month. Find it.<\/li>\n<li>Can you find another?<\/li>\n<li>The pair of four-letter palindromes mentioned above have now grown to three. What is that third capital with a four-letter combination?<\/li>\n<li>Two capitals begin with the same letter as their state. Can you name them?<\/li>\n<li>I just now located yet another same-initial letter combination. Can you find it?<\/li>\n<li>One state capital contains the letters \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which?<\/li>\n<li>Can you name another?<\/li>\n<li>And still another?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That was the easy part. In a later column I just might throw in even more challenging trivia questions. Some of these questions came from an old issue of Games Magazine. Yet, my Cuba class and I played this state capital game years before the magazine appeared.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n<p>Almost 50 years of knowing this woman has taught me a great deal about language. A very well-read and intelligent woman, Velma Coppock, accordingly came up with words that staggered this language cop.<\/p>\n<p>Are you familiar with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cattywampus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to describe something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crooked, as in, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That tablecloth is cattywampus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Or how about the expression \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All stove up\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n<p>Velma preferred \u00e2\u20ac\u0153britches\u00e2\u20ac\u009d over \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pants,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d especially in the context of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153getting too big for &#8230;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And to Velma, people didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t complain; they caterwauled. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a fascinating lexicological experience knowing Velma.<\/p>\n<p>This 90-year-old agrarian word-coiner, Velma Coppock, was my mother-in-law. She died Monday morning, and we will miss her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teaching an honors course in Cuba, N.M., I had the pleasure of being surrounded by some extraordinarily perceptive students. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no particular reason why Cuba, of all places, would have had such a bumper crop of bright students; it must have just happened. One day, Annette asked in class, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you consider yourself knowledgeable when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":954,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}