Thursday challenge delivers a straightforward five-letter noun with a single vowel that could challenge players who rely on vowel-heavy starting words..

The great vowel shift did not involve the shortening or the forward movement of vowels, as Michael Erard says (29 March, p 28). Only the long vowels shifted – upwards – or became diphthongs (two ...

In most languages, including English, vowels that occur next to nasal consonants (m, n, and ng in English) are produced as slightly or entirely nasal. I saw this as phonetically interesting. In my ...