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Etymologically sophisticated readers will guess, correctly, that passglas means “pass glass,” and the name accurately describes its use. The glass was filled with beer (or, depending on the locale and the desired depth of inebriation, schnapps). The first participant drank down to the first mark and passed it on, but if he—naturally, it would be a “he”—drank too much and the liquid level dropped below the line, he would be obligated to drink all the way to the next line, and so on. Presumably one’s precision decreased as the liquid drained, increasing the rate of consumption. Depending on the number of participants and the type of alcohol used, several refillings could be required in order for all parties to reach a suitable state of intoxication.

The Art of Drinking

Despite the apparent ubiquity and popularity of the passglas in its heyday, it’s rarely mentioned in literature or depicted in artwork—but there are some examples. Seventeenth-century Dutch artist Adriaen van Ostade specialized in paintings and sketches involving peasants, drinking, and drinking peasants. One of his more obscure paintings, called Het dansende paar (“The Dancing Couple”), painted some time between 1680 and 1685, shows a man drinking from a passglas while the next drinker eagerly waits his turn.

Nowadays passglases are sold as antiques or found in museums, and are little known outside the parts of Europe where they were once popular. This is too bad, because although modern drinking games may be more sophisticated in some ways, they rarely if ever involve a test of how skillfully one can actually drink. Precision drinking competitions could add an entirely new dimension to, say, New Year’s Eve celebrations—but a modern Pyrex measuring cup doesn’t match the simple elegance of the passglas. —Joe Kissell

An article titled “Can You Tell Red From White?” in the online edition of Wine Spectator Magazine a couple of years ago began with this line:

The New Yorker threw down the gauntlet. Wine Spectator rose to the challenge.

Whatever else you may say about the two magazines in question or the qualifications of the authors they hire to write about wine, this much is clear: Wine Spectator missed a critical opportunity for an excellent pun. In fact, so blatant was their oversight that it casts grave doubts on the magazine’s editorial sensibilities.

The Red and White Blues

But linguistic flexibility is a much less serious matter than that which concerned humorist Calvin Trillin, who wrote an article titled “The Red and the White. Is it possible that wine connoisseurs can’t tell them apart?” in the August 19 & 26, 2002, edition of The New Yorker. Trillin claimed to have heard from multiple sources that wine experts—even those with degrees in enology from the University of California, Davis—routinely failed a blind taste test in which participants were asked simply to pick which wines (served at room temperature in black glasses) were red and which were white. If true, this suggests that the whole enterprise of tasting and judging wines rests on a shaky foundation at best.

In the course of Trillin’s research, he discovered that the test he had heard of was most likely an urban myth, or at least a significant embellishment of a test where wines are judged by smell rather than taste. Nevertheless, he himself couldn’t reliably tell the difference. In an effort to show just how ridiculous it should be even to ask such a question, an enology professor subjected Trillin to an impromptu experiment with a pair of wines—one white, one red—and he guessed wrong. Volunteers on the staff of Wine Spectator fared much better in their own version of the test, correctly guessing color 40 out of 42 times.

You’d be surprised how few literary examples of goblet-throwing there are. I mean, sure, this sort of thing shows up every now and then in your basic fantasy novel, but history isn’t exactly littered with the shards of goblets broken dramatically at the climax of some great epic tale. Except for one, of course: the Hymiskviða (The Lay of Hymir), a poem that tells the story of Thor’s heroic acquisition of Hymir’s Cauldron. This is the sort of story you read to your kids at bedtime—if you happen to live in Iceland in the year 1300 or thereabouts. For those not familiar with the story, here is an extremely abbreviated and very slightly accurate retelling.

Give Me a Cauldron Large Enough, and a Place to Stand…

The gods of Asgard were looking for an eternal source of mead, and they demanded that Ægir, god of the sea, provide it for them. Ægir, unhappy with the tone of their request, said he’d only do it if the gods could supply him with a cauldron large enough, such enormous vessels being rather scarce. Tyr, the god of war and justice, knew just where to obtain such an item: his father, the giant Hymir, had one that was “a league deep” (that would be about three and a half miles—certainly large enough to keep the gods drunk for a few millennia). But Tyr knew his father wouldn’t acquiesce easily, so he enlisted the aid of Thor, the god of thunder, to trick Hymir into parting with the giant cauldron.

Thor and Tyr went together to visit the bellicose Hymir. After braving their way through a variety of adventures, including a fishing trip during which Thor managed to catch two whales, Hymir still was not warming to his guests. He taunted Thor by saying, “Sure, you may be able to row a boat well, but if you’re really strong you should be able to prove it by breaking this glass goblet.” Thor threw the goblet against a stone pillar, but the goblet remained intact while the pillar shattered. Hymir’s wife whispered a word of advice to Thor: “Try again; this time, throw it at Hymir’s head, which is much harder than any goblet.” Thor did as he was told, and the goblet broke.

When I was in high school, I had a darkroom in the basement. Because I didn’t do a large quantity of film processing, one of my biggest concerns was that the expensive chemicals would go bad before I had a chance to use them. Since it is primarily exposure to oxygen that damages photographic chemicals, I stored them in air-evacuation containers, which are basically plastic bags inside boxes. As you drain out the chemical through a special spout that sticks through the box, the bag shrinks, thus making sure no air gets in. This solution is simple, elegant, and effective.

The very same laws of chemistry apply to wines, and that is why wine is sometimes sold “by the box” in air-evacuation containers. It keeps wine fresher longer, and is even less expensive, in many cases, than bottled wine. What’s not to like? And yet, boxed wine is routinely ridiculed as low-class. Everyone knows that any decent wine will be stored in a corked bottle. It’s just The Way Things Are. It’s not about oxidation, it’s about perception. You have to do things right. Buying wine in a box is tantamount to buying wine with a screw cap. It’s an indication of poor quality. Or is it?

Recently I’ve been seeing an increasing number of wine bottles stoppered with a “cork” made out of plastic. And I confess that my initial reaction is invariably one of embarrassment. (“I should know better than to choose such a cheap wine.”) This is of course irrational; I know intellectually that the important thing is simply to keep air away from the wine. But I’ve discovered that there is in fact an intense debate raging in the wine industry over the best method of sealing a wine bottle, and the pros and cons of each approach are much different from what I would have thought. Here for your enlightenment and entertainment is a summary of the major positions in the debate.

Cork: the traditional approach

• Pros: Cork has a long history; it has been used as the sealing method of choice for over 400 years. Cork stoppers, because they are such a pain to remove, implicitly signal quality. When they work, they work well. They’re a renewable resource (the trees are not killed when the bark is stripped to make cork). They make a satisfying “pop” when removed from the bottle. They’re readily biodegradable. And they support an entire industry of corkscrews and other cork-removal products.
• Cons: Corks often go bad. Estimates vary widely, but many bottles of wine are ruined due to corks that are tainted, ill-fitting, or deteriorated. (Depending on which figures you believe, as little as 1% or as much as 20% of all wine sold is “corked,” which is to say, damaged by a problematic cork.) Corks can be difficult to remove, and sometimes break off into the bottle. The world’s cork supplies are nearly maxed out, so cork prices are increasing.

Plastic: the new cork

• Pros: Plastic is immune to cork taint, so wine is much less likely to spoil. Plastic corks can be made more cheaply, and with much more precision, than cork stoppers. Depending on the vintner’s tastes, plastic corks can be made to look very similar to natural corks, or be molded in any imaginable designer color. They’re recyclable. And the same cork-removal equipment (along with its obligatory “pop” sound) can be used.
• Cons: If the trees used to produce cork are no longer used for that purpose, they may be cut down to make space for more lucrative crops, thus endangering the habitat of various kinds of wildlife and altering the local ecosystem in unpredictable ways. If not recycled, plastic corks also pose a more direct threat to the environment. Some wine experts claim plastic corks unfavorably affect the flavor of wine. On the other hand, they don’t hold the aroma of wine well, making the ritual of cork-sniffing unsatisfying. The plastic may not retain its elasticity well over time, making it unsuitable for wines meant to age for decades. And most importantly, it’s just not right.

Screw caps: a strange twist

• Pros: Screw caps, like plastic corks, avoid problems of cork taint, and yet unlike plastic are much less likely to affect wine’s flavor or lose their effectiveness over time. They are less expensive than natural or plastic corks. And they can be removed without any special equipment.
• Cons: As with plastic corks, screw caps imply environmental issues associated with the loss of cork farming. Cork sniffing, of course, is right out. And again, most importantly, it’s just not right. You shouldn’t be able to get at your wine as easily as you get at your cola.

Crown seals: good enough for beer

Pros: Crown seals (the type of bottle cap used on most beer bottles) are basically screw caps without the screw part, so they have all the same advantages except ease of removal.
Cons: The downsides of crown seals are the same as for screw caps, with the additional issue of needing a bottle opener.

Of these, crown seals came on the scene most recently and so far appear with the least frequency. Meanwhile, air-evacuation containers, which were previously used only for the cheapest wines, now sometimes hold fancier varieties. (No one seriously proposes distributing high-end wines in air-evacuation containers, since bottles are more durable and less likely to leak over a period of many years.) There are, I’m sure, any number of other equally sensible alternatives out there. But the habit of associating cork with quality is very hard to break. —Joe Kissell

One day Morgen and I were having a brainstorming session, as we frequently do, about interesting things that might fit in with certain weeks’ themes. The expression “hit or miss” came up, and we began talking about things that involve hits and misses. Morgen said, “Do you know what the national sport in Bhutan is?” I was embarrassed to admit I did not even know exactly where Bhutan is located; it’s simply not a place I’ve ever spent much time thinking about. Morgen told me that Bhutan is between China and India. Although this didn’t give me any strong clues, I made what I thought was a safe guess: “Soccer.” That turned out to be a particularly bad guess, because in 2002, Bhutan’s national soccer team was ranked 202 out of 203 worldwide; FIFA sanctioned a special match that year, at the same time as the World Cup finals, between Bhutan and 203rd-ranked Montserrat; the match was covered in a documentary film called “The Other Final.”

In fact, Bhutan’s national sport is archery. That fact alone, I think, qualifies as an Interesting Thing, but there’s more to the story.

Weapons of Play

Bhutan is a Buddhist nation, and one of the central precepts of Buddhism is a reverence for all life. So it seems somewhat incongruous that the nation’s favorite game involves a hunting instrument (or, depending on how you look at it, a weapon of war). But in Bhutan, the bow and arrow can only be used for play. In fact, when making arrows, one can use only feathers that were found on the ground; to kill a bird to obtain its feathers would be considered wrong.

Each village has its own archery range, making them as common as curling rinks in Canada. (That is to say, extremely common.) Although modern, high-tech equipment is making some headway, most competitors use traditional, hand-carved bamboo bows. Village teams compete against each other in rowdy, elaborate, multi-day tournaments that are as much about spectacle as they are about hitting a target. Archers can use almost any means at their disposal to distract or demoralize their opponents, including dancing in front of the targets. A major part of the sport goes on behind the scenes, as teams conspire to throw off their opponents’ game. It is this, rather than what I typically think of as team interaction, that gives Bhutanese archery such popularity.

My wife kept her name when we got married. This being the 21st century, I wouldn’t have thought that would be in any way surprising or problematic. But in the modern English-speaking world, linguistic habits haven’t quite caught up with changing social conventions—many people (and computers) still assume that when a man and woman get married, the woman will take on the man’s surname. As a result, we get mail addressed to “Mrs. Morgen Kissell” and even, bafflingly, “Mrs. Liz Kissell”—Morgen’s given first name is Elizabeth, but she has gone by her middle name since birth, and has never, ever been called Liz. At least no one, to my knowledge, has called her “Mrs. Joseph Kissell,” which I think both of us would find rather offensive.

As annoying as such mistakes can be, I do sympathize with folks who no longer feel they have a proper, respectful, and appropriate title to use when addressing women. The title “Miss,” which used to refer to an unmarried woman of any age, has fallen into disfavor, except for young girls. And “Mrs.” is supposed to refer to a married woman, but only when using her husband’s last name. (Morgen certainly is neither “Miss Jahnke” nor “Mrs. Kissell,” but she can’t be “Mrs. Jahnke” either, because that would imply my last name is Jahnke.) So that leaves “Ms.,” which virtually every style guide now proclaims as the only reasonable choice, but which many people hesitate to use because it feels like an odd, newfangled, non-word.

Stress and Mistress

The basic distinction between “Miss” and “Mrs.” harks back to earlier times when a woman’s marital status was an important indicator of her position—and when, more to the point, a woman was considered a subservient entity with respect to her husband. Interestingly, though, both “Miss” and “Mrs.” were originally shortened forms of the word “mistress.” The modern sense of “mistress” implies an illicit relationship, but before about 1600, a mistress was simply a female head of a household—married or unmarried. As a result, the abbreviation “Mrs.” would originally have been pronounced “mistress,” and would not have been used exclusively to refer to someone’s wife. The pronunciation “misses” was simply a contracted form of “mistress.”

Meanwhile, when “miss” was first used as an abbreviation for “mistress” in the mid-1600s, it referred to a concubine or someone in a role more like what we would today consider a mistress. In other words, a few centuries ago, the meanings of “Miss” and “Mrs.” were, at least in some cases, roughly the opposite of what they are today! Only in the 19th century did “Mrs.” (with the pronunciation “misses” firmly established) come to refer exclusively to a married woman.

There is also, of course, the title “Ma’am,” which was short for “madam.” Although few people refer to a woman as either “ma’am” or “madam” these days, the situation is parallel to “Mrs./mistress” in that the shortened form is considered respectful whereas the longer form sometimes denotes a woman of questionable character.

The Long and the Short of It

One of the things about “Mrs.” that has always bothered me is that it can really only ever be used in its abbreviated form. No one would spell it out as “mistress” anymore, and yet there is also no agreed spelling for the full word as it is pronounced; “misses,” “missus,” “missis,” and “missez” all seem wrong. The title “Ms.,” which came into use in the middle of the 20th century, has an even worse problem—it appears to be an abbreviation, but it isn’t short for anything. As with “Mrs.,” no one would know how to spell it out. “Mizz”?

Pennsylvania is a state (well, commonwealth if you want to be completely nitpicky) known for its linguistic, uh, irregularities. In the western part of the state, where I grew up, many people speak an endearingly odd dialect of English called Pittsburghese. Some town names have pronunciations that utterly belie their foreign roots. DuBois is pronounced “dew boys”; North Versailles is “north ver-sales”; La Jose is “la Joes.” Then, of course, there are towns that simply have goofy names—Eighty Four, Slippery Rock, and Punxsutawney come to mind.

I’ve Been to Pennsylvania; Ask Me about Intercourse.

But to put all these oddities in perspective, western Pennsylvanians rightly consider their geographic nomenclature downright bland compared to what you’ll encounter on the other side of the state. Drive four hours east from Pittsburgh and you’re in Lancaster County, an area that attracts tourists by the thousands each year for no other reason than that they want to be able to say they went through Intercourse to get to Paradise. (This makes for a roundabout route, as it turns out, but that’s only fitting.) Other nearby towns include Blue Ball, Fertility, Gap, Bird-in-Hand, Smoketown, and even (I swear I am not making this up) Kissel Hill. These place names seem all the more amusing because the area is known for its religious conservatism, being home to large numbers of Amish and Old-Order Mennonite folk in particular.

The other thing Lancaster County is known for is Pennsylvania Dutch—a term that can refer to an ethnic group, a language, a culture, or all three. Interestingly enough, despite the proximity of towns named Holland and New Holland, Pennsylvania Dutch has nothing to do with the Netherlands. The term is a misnomer, or at least an anachronism; the Pennsylvania Dutch came from Germany.

Going Dutch

How did a group of German settlers in eastern Pennsylvania—and the unique dialect of German they speak—come to be known as “Dutch”? There are two main theories.