Word of the week: "pleonasm," which is a grammatical term for the use of more words than necessary to express oneself. The previous sentence is an example of "syntactic pleonasm," since "which is" could be omitted without any loss of meaning. There is also "semantic pleonasm," more or less synonymous with "redundancy." Examples: "tuna fish" and "free gift."

Generation Mini-Gaps: Sean Connery, who portrayed Harrison Ford's father in the third Indiana Jones film, is less than 12 years older than Ford. Jessie Landis, who portrayed Cary Grant's mother in "To Catch a Thief" and "North by Northwest," was barely seven years older than Grant. Is there an even narrower "parental gap" in a well-known film? If you can help, please let us know.

The longest-distance nonstop commercial flight currently operated out of the U.S. links New York and:
A) Moscow
B) Sydney
C) Cape Town
D) Singapore

Previous answer: "Lap dissolve" is a movie term for a fade-out of a particular scene that is superimposed onto the fade-in of the next scene.

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