This is the illusionist, in which I, Helen Zoltzman, accused language in the billiard room

with the lead pipe. Today's episode is solving some mysteries, mysteries of vocabulary,

posed by listeners of the She-Dunic podcast. I appeared on an episode a few weeks ago with

host Caroline Crampton, doing some investigative work into words and phrases that people had

been perplexed by in golden age detective fiction. If you haven't read the books concerned,

that is no problem. The terms are no more comprehensible within context than out of it.

Content note, anal discharge. On with She-Dunic's mysterious glossary with Caroline Crampton.

The first word of phrase that we're going to try and define for you today is this pair of

ACMA and PIPMA, which my understanding is that it's something to do with time. It comes up,

I think Peter Wimsey says it a fair amount, as a kind of stylised way of referring to a rendezvous

of the time for. But it also, I think, in Agatha Christie's a murder is announced, where there are

actually characters with names that reference these particular phrases. So, Helen, is there something

that you'd come across before? I didn't retain it if I had, but once I read what it meant, I thought,

oh, that is obvious. ACMA is AM as in morning and PIPMA is PM as in afternoon. And it was early 20th

century Signolas names for the letters AP and M. So, sort of Signolas as in military?

Yes, British Army. They didn't yet have the NATO spelling alphabet that we have now,

you know, the alphabet, but it was like a precursor to that from the late 19th century. And I think

in 1898, the war office issued it, but they didn't have words for every letter yet. They only had

ones for letters that were easily confused. So, AC, beer or bar for B. But then nothing until

M for M and then PIP for P, S's, Toc and Vick. And then they developed that during the First World War.

And after that, they had words for every letter, but still not the ones we use today.

I suppose now you wouldn't have M for M because people will be confused because they'd be expecting

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