Fill Me In #357: The best conspiracies have a grain of truth in them.

This week, the Fill Me In studio is invaded by barnacles! Or actually, just one barnacle -- THE Barnacle, a.k.a. Ben Zimmer, linguist to the stars. There's still some baseball and sandwich talk, but it's word-related, so stick around for that.

Also in the news:

• Lollapuzzoola, the greatest crossword puzzle tournament ever held annually on a Saturday in August!
• Hayley Gold & friends are doing a Twitch stream on Thursday, August 18 at 9pm Eastern
• Ben Zimmer's "sunsetted" podcast, Spectacular Vernacular, is still available online. Also available, his new video content with Wired

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We're putting these words here to help with search engine optimization. We don't think it will work, but you probably haven't read this far, so it doesn't matter: baseball, crossword, crosswords, etymology, game, hunt, movies, musicals, mystery, oscar, pizza, puzzle, puzzles, soup, trivia, words