Agent 99 never had another name besides "Agent 99".
Also, I don't think that The Chief had another name besides "The Chief".

On their first meeting, Agent 99 and Agent 86 were supposed to meet in an airline terminal in New York City. Their contact code was supposed to be "The New York Mets have defeated the Yankees in the World Series." Well, it turned out that in an amazing event, the Mets really had defeated the Yankees in the World Series, and nearly everyone in the terminal was excited by this.

So, when Agent 99 said that to Agent 86, he replied, "Yeah, yeah..."
Then Agent 99 added this, "But the score was 99 to 86."
So, she finally got through to Maxwell Smart.

In a baseball game, a score of 99 to 86 would be absolutely incredible. In fact, it never happens. 99 to 86 is a possible score of a basketball game.
D.A.W.

Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, said to a group of agents of KAOS:

1. In one hour, this island will be invaded by General Ridgeway and 50 crack paratroopers.
2. Would you believe by J. Edgar Hoover and ten G-men?
3. Would you believe by Tarzan and some of his apes?

The agents of KAOS didn't believe any of these. They just walked away with skeptical looks on their faces.
D.A.W.

"pleaded"... in both AmE and BrE and always the best choice...

Whoever considers that to be true does not known anything about Information Theory.

Of course, the British have a great deal against Information Theory since this science was founded and developed by an Irish - American, Claude Shannon. Shannon was with the Bell Telephone Laboratories when he started, and then he moved on to become a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Irish and American! Holy cow. Is that anything like being Cockney and Australian, or French and Canadian? I don't think that upper-class British like any of these...

Information Theory is the science of efficient communication.
D.A.W.

The words "surf" and "browse" are just as short as is "cruise" (in syllables), so there is no efficiency in using "cruise".

I also "link" to the Internet, so one cannot do any better than this in words.

I have had a very long, ongoing dispute with my Internet company (AT&T), which was clearly in the wrong. Finally, someone conceded that there was a "network" problem. I told them, "No, not network, and you listen to me - a heck of an engineer from Georgia Tech. What you have is a LINK problem, and that is in the LINK between my apartment and the rest of the Internet system." I do not give one iota about the "network" of AT&T - you just get my LINK working, and things will be fine. After many months of this, a technician from AT&T started looking at this link, and he found a circuit box that birds or small mammal had broken into. That let rainwater into the box, and that rainwater was spoiling a splice between two cables.

The whole purpose of that box was supposed to be to keep that splice dry. If the administrators of AT&T had merely listened to me -- many months ago -- then they could have sent a technician over to examine everything in my LINK to the network. The whole problem would have been repaired long ago.
Get the chewing tobacco out of your ears, I say to them!

D.A.W.

Wow,

A reporter for NBC - TV news in the U.S.A. said this morning:

"He has pled not guilty to charges of ..."

The sweet sound of good, concise English, well spoken, entered my ears!
This was a reporter who is based in Los Agneles, but he was reporting on events in Washington State.

There is no need to use two or three-syllable words when one-syllable words work just as well in their places.

This reminds me of people -- whom I brand as attempted CHROME DOMES -- who say and write "individuals" (five syllables) now, when "people" (two syllables) works just as well, if not significantly better.

Likewise, they say and write "individual" (five syllables) when "person" (two syllables) significantly better.

Then, there are those people in law enforcement, etc., who say "gentleman" when "jackass", "cretin", or "slopehead" are a lot more appropriate to the situation.
"Neanderthal" would also fit, but that is a four-syllable word.

There was the man who was very rude to Taylor Swift, and then - away from microphones - President Obama was overheard calling him a "jackass". That word was so appropriate to the situation that nobody could complain, except for the five percent of people who will complain about anything.

Dale

I am a son of American TV from the 1960s, especially.

When it comes to programs like these, if it happened, I usually remember it:

Emergency!, Get Smart, Gilligan's Island, Hogan's Heroes, The Invaders, The Outer Limits, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Star Trek, The Time Tunnel, and Voyage ot the Bottom of the Sea.

I also remember a lot about some fine British TV series, such as The Avengers and The Prisoner, that were broadcast here. Later on. Danger: UXB was a fascinating British series. I remember the main character, Lieutenant Brian Ash, very well, too. This was a series of the 1980s.

Dale

Now, I am reminded of a comedy routine in the "Get Smart" TV series when someone was giving Agent 86 directions on how to drive somewhere. These included:

"Go over the underpass and then under the overpass...", but someone interrupted to argue, that it was actually:
"Go under the overpass and then over the underpass..."

I thought that this one was hilarious, and then a couple of decades later I found out that this one was a spoof of the difficulties of driving around in Washington, D.C.
I know, I know! That is hard!

I once took a taxi to the National Airport just south of Washington, and I swear that the driver drove a figure-8 to get to the right part of the airline terminal to drop me off. There was a place in the middle where one road went on a bridge over the other. So, I really have been "over the underpass and then under the overpass," or was it the other way around?
I must PLEAD ignorance on this one because I don't remember. I was thinking about "Get Smart" and Agent 86 at the time.

Dale

Here is some good news about language from this morning:

Nora O'Donnell on the "Face the Nation" TV program said: "Let's listen." - which is a very fine phrase that has stood the test of time.
Too many others say the completely awful "Take a listen."

For strong historical reasons, when it comes to the five senses, one can say or write:
1. "Take a look," or
2. "Take a taste."

But not
3. "Take a listen,"
4. "Take a feel," (Wow, this one sounds "off-color".), or
5. "Take a smell."

Things have been this way for a long, long time, and I cannot see any good reason to change now. I believe in changing things when there are positive benefits to this.

On the other hand, "Take a sniff" and "Take a whiff" have been in use for a long, long time.
Also have been, "Take a leap of faith," "Take a shot at it," "Take a seat," and "Take a nap."

On a different subject, in American slang English "Take a p***" and "Take a c***" have been in use for a long time. Do people say these things in other places? As for Canada, the answer is probably "Yes".

"Take a jump off the top of the Empire State Building" is not very nice, either.

I once had a date who objected when I told her to "Take a 270-degree turn at the next interchange," but I am an engineer, anyway.
Within an hour or so, I decided that she and I didn't have much in common, and I never saw her again.

"Take a 270-degree turn is just the way that I think," and it is the way that a good number of other people think. Lots of other people don't mind "90-degree turns", "270-degree turns", etc.
Dale

So many people are so passive nowadays, and they accept this w/o any complaint:

To CBS TV:

On the SUNDAY MORNING program today,

NOT "more risky" as your man said, but rather "riskier".

This is basic elementary school English, and it has been in use for at least 500 years.

Dale A. Wood

-----------------------------------------

Note that I have also heard these on broadcast TV this year and last year:

"more free" rather than "freer"
"more safe" rather than "safer"
"more happy" rather than "happier"
"more grave" rather than "graver"
"more hungry" rather than "hungrier"
"more clean" rather than "cleaner"
"more pure" rather than "purer"
"more rare" rather than "rarer"
(If a $2.00 bill is rare, then a $3.00 bill is even rarer. If an American $2.00 bill is rare, then a Canadian $1.00 bill is even rarer. They do not print these in Canada anymore.)

The next thing that we know, they will say "more corny" rather than "cornier", "more bad" rather than "worse", "more ugly" rather than "uglier", because their language on TV in the United States is getting worse, uglier, and cornier.

Alas, the phrases "more unique" and "most unique" just "gag me with a spoon" (to use some slang English). Nothing can be "more unique" than "unique".
(The experimental airplane "Voyager" made a unique flight around the world. That is true.)
D.A.W.

PLED, PLED, PLED! Four letters rather than seven, and one syllable rather than two -- much more efficient on both counts.

Also, here in the U.S.A., we have two famous and scenic Carlsbads:
Carlsbad, California, in the far south, and Carlsbad, New Mexico, Come on over, see them, and enjoy them. Take your choice, and then buy airline tickets either to San Diego. Albuquerque, or to El Paso, Texas (immediately south of New Mexico).
If you go to southeastern New Mexico, you can also visit Roswell, the home of weird tales about flying saucers in the 1940s and 50s.

Carlsbad, N.M,, has a spectacular National Park, and Carlsbad, Calif., has spectacular views of the coast and the Pacific Ocean.

Dale