Notes & Asides

■ Dear Mr. Buckley: You need not get software to find a third-gry word for Mary Wiltrakis (Aug. 9), simply because there is no third word. I quote master logologist Dr. Richard Lederer’s wonderfully entertaining book, Word Circus (Merriman-Webster, 1998):

“The greatest service the Word Circus staff can perform is to announce that the-gry question is a time-wasting linguistic hoax. This poser first slithered onto the American scene in 1975 on the Bob Grant radio talk show on WMCA in New York City. Word mavens have tried to bury-gry, but it keeps rising, like some angry, hungry monstrosity from Tales from the Crypt. ”