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Allusionist 193 Word Play part 3: Lemon Demon transcript

April 23, 2024 The Allusionist

AJ JACOBS: Anagrams played a part in a trial, sort of a witch trial in the 1600s in the UK. And it was a woman who was put on trial for claiming that she was a prophet. Part of her proof was that if you rearrange the letters in her name - her name was Eleanor Davies - if you rearrange it, then it says, ‘Reveal, O Daniel’, as in the prophet Daniel. I don't believe that that was proof she was a prophet. They came down on her hard in the trial, so they said, “If you rearrange” - her married name was Dame Eleanor Davies - “and you rearrange those letters, it spells ‘Never So Mad A Lady;.” So like, “she's so crazy.” So that was how she was convicted. And by the way, that was when anagrams were easier, because there were so many spellings.

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In transcript, Word Play Tags history, word play, word games, puzzles, puzzling, AJ Jacobs, Bible, Constitution, USA, America, American history, US constitution, anagrams, legal, law, Alexander the Great, war, games, rebus, Louis XIII, France, French history, witch trials, prophet, English history, eye rhymes, ough, patterns, confirmation bias, pens, handwriting, quills, writing, letters, guns, second amendment, arms, insults, punishment, legs, apophenia, virtue, timocracy, satyr, ghoti, Bernard Shaw, pillory
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Allusionist 200: 200th episode celebratory quiz!
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live tour of the UK!
live tour of the UK!
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.