The instructions for Stet! suggest that you “play with three or more players” (is that redundant?), and we had been unable, during the pandemic, to scare up a third nerd. Nitpickers by profession, we ran into a problem right away. “That’s the Times,” she’d say, or “That’s the Washington Post,” or “That’s CNN.” She outnerded me from the start. Her cell phone beeped intermittently all afternoon, a unique tone for each news outlet. My friend was Merrill Perlman, who writes the column “Language Corner” for the Columbia Journalism Review, where her biographical note says that she has “managed copy desks across the newsroom at the New York Times.” Although retired from full-time journalism, she continues to teach and serves on the board of ACES: The Society for Editing. Nerdsday fell on a Tuesday this year, and I invited a friend over for a doubleheader: a round of Stet!, the new language game based on “Dreyer’s English,” followed by an episode of Mark Allen’s “That Word Chat,” a homespun Zoom talk show for editors, lexicographers, linguists, and others of the inky tribe.
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