He asks all the kids at the pep rally who think they are nerds to come forward.

So nearly everyone in the place does.

So the nerds want?

Yes.

I'm Greta Johnson.

I'm Tricia Bobita.

And from WBeezy in Chicago, this is Nerdette.

Coming up, public radio nerds know Will Shorts as the Puzzlemaster.

But he also has another nerdy passion.

It's something he and comedian Judah Friedlander also happen to have in common.

All that plus an epic Lord of the Rings confession.

Right here on Nerdette.

We didn't set out to do a whole episode about table tennis.

But I love it.

I grew up playing basement ping pong with my brother and my dad.

Most of my friends stopped playing with me when I got vaguely better than them.

So I petered out there at the end of high school because I hit one friend in the eye with a ping pong ball with a pretty hard serve and suddenly

nobody wants to play anymore. And so besides that, and then a little time in college, I haven't played a lot of

ping pong since. This episode really makes me miss playing ping pong. I might have to seek out one of these

ping pong clubs, Will and Judah talk so much about. Me, too. One thing we wondered about early on was if ping pong is an ignorant person's term for table tennis. I always kind of figured ping pong was what I did in junior high gym, and table tennis was what, like, Forrest Gump, was so good at. We found a great comment thread on the Guardians website that addressed just this thing.

Turns out it's a contentious issue.

One person says ping pong was the name given to the game when it was played by gentlemen and ladies.

...