In Idiot Genius you’ll run into a number of odd expressions. Some are specific to particular neighborhoods (or burgs, as the locals in Grandeur call them). In the Clockwerk burg, for example, it’s common to hear gears and spindles! Sadly, outside the Clockwerk burg, you might come across name-calling that’s downright mean, like wobblepot! or Oily Cog! (There’s nothing more offensive to a Clockwerk than being called a Cog.)

Willa Snap arrives in Grandeur with a few exclamations of her own, like totally bean!—something she and her mother enjoy saying when they spot something amazing. And Nut Yippee! which Willa yells like others might yell Geronimo! Nut Yippee was a real peanut candy introduced in the 1930s by the Squirrel Brand Company. Willa adopted the saying from an engraved slab of granite in Squirrel Brand Park, across the street from her old house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In no time, Willa starts picking up Grandeurisms so quickly it’s hard to tell which ones are from her new friends and which ones she’s making up on the spot. Luckily, it isn’t hard to figure out where these sayings came from. But just in case . . .

Newton’s apple!

This is the kind of thing someone might say after making a big discovery that’s been sitting right out in the open. It comes from Sir Isaac Newton, the 17th-century English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and theologian, who often told a story about how seeing an apple fall from a tree inspired him to formulate his theory of gravitation.

Franklin’s fire!

A person might say this after seeing something unexplainable, and possibly dangerous. It comes from Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century Founding Father, printer, inventor, and diplomat. After retiring from the printing business, Franklin began experimenting extensively with electricity, which he called electrical fire.

Tesla’s coil!

This one comes from Nikola Tesla, the 19th-century Serbian-American inventor, who, before inventing the alternating current (which powers most of the world), invented the Tesla coil, an electrical resonant transformer circuit. (Yeah, what he said.) Someone might shout Tesla’s coil! after seeing or learning something fantastic and unexpected.

Einstein’s hair!

This one doesn’t need a lot of explanation. Just check out the hair! Einstein was the German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity. E=mc²!

Feynman’s bongos!

A person might yell this one during a heart-pounding, completely unexpected, moment. It comes from the bongo-playing American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who, in 1959, gave a talk titled There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, in which he laid the foundation for nanotechnology.

These are just a few of the exclamations you might hear in Grandeur. You can find more in Willa Snap’s first illegal memoir: Idiot Genius: Willa Snap and the Clockwerk Boy, by Richard Due.

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