Dictionary.com’s word of the year is ‘6-7.’ But is it even a word and what does it mean?

Go ahead and roll your eyes. Shrug your shoulders. Or maybe just juggle your hands in the air.

Dictionary.com's word of the year isn't even really a word. It's the viral term “6-7” that kids and teenagers can't stop repeating and laughing about and parents and teachers can't make any sense of.

The word — if you can call it that — exploded in popularity over the summer. It's more of an inside joke with an unclear meaning, driven by social media.

Dictionary.com says its annual selection is a linguistic time capsule reflecting social trends and events. But the site admitted it too is a bit confused by “6-7.”

Hommage vivant à une pionnière du théâtre franco-manitobain

Du 22 octobre au 1er novembre 2025, le Théâtre Cercle Molière donnera vie à la figure emblématique de la francophonie manitobaine, Pauline Boutal.

Pour le centenaire du TCM, l’ancienne direction a choisi d’inaugurer sa saison avec la programmation d’une pièce “100 % Manitoba,” comme le dit Marie-Ève Fontaine, nouvelle directrice artistique et co-directrice générale de l’établissement.

Il s’agit de Pauline Boutal, entre les toiles et les planches, œuvre de théâtre écrite par l’une des plus importantes figures de la littérature franco-canadienne de l’Ouest actuelle, Lise Gaboury-Diallo, et mise en scène par Simon Miron, également franco-manitobain.

Le spectacle retrace en deux actes les faits saillants de la vie de Pauline Le Goff Boutal (1894-1992), illustratrice, artiste-peintre, costumière, comédienne, metteuse en scène et première directrice artistique du TCM, qu’elle a dirigé pendant 27 ans.

The Orange Notebooks navigate love, longing and a quest for a lost child

He turned. He looked back, precisely when he seemed to have the cosmic solution in his hands — and that was his terrible undoing. That was Orpheus’s mistake.

Susanna Crossman reimagines turning and looking back here, in a kind of experiment in genre. The Orange Notebooks is an adventure story, to be sure, but it is also part aching memoir, part lyrical poetry, part polychromatic kaleidoscope, part surreptitious “found footage” but, most thoroughly, part primordial myth.

Crossman seems to dwell, as her writing does, between worlds. She grew up in the U.K. in a “utopian commune” about 50 years ago but now resides in France, writing (both essays and fiction), lecturing and practising arts therapy. Her 2024 memoir, Home Is Where We Start, set a lingering tone of journeys, nostalgia and psychological reflection.

The Orange Notebooks reprises that tone, beginning with the pretense that we are being handed a set of journal reflections written by our protagonist, “Anna,” who herself lives in liminal spaces. She too was raised in England but grew to adulthood as a server on an English Channel ferry, married a dashing Frenchman with an exotic name, Antton (the two Ts a vestige of his Basque heritage) and eventually settled with Antton in a lovely rural French home, both as teachers.

New truths emerge among sea of orange

No matter where you are, the path towards reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and Canadians has been very turbulent over the past decade.

In the 10 years since the end of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 94 calls to action, much attention has been placed on the progress — and lack thereof — towards changing the policies, practices and beliefs that embody principles of Indigenous inferiority and Canadian superiority.

The fact is: the Indian Act, the most racist law in Canadian history, is still here.

Virtually all of the Indigenous land stolen during the last 150 years remains stolen.

Most refused to listen then, more understand now

An open letter, to the children:

It’s late September in Manitoba and the leaves are turning golden. Autumns are beautiful on this land. I hope that, wherever you were, you were able to enjoy it. I hope that there were moments, and maybe more than moments, where you were able to leap face-down in the fallen leaves, to gather them to your nose, to breathe their earthy perfume of red and orange.

There is more orange in Winnipeg now. I wish you could see it. The signs and flags, dotted around the city, staked into lawns and hung over doors and posted as stickers in shop windows. That orange means people care about you and they remember. Even those who didn’t know you, because you lived your whole lives before we were born.

Some of those lives were long, some far too short, and most were somewhere in the middle. Some found joy, whether in spite or because of everything that happened. Some were imprisoned by the pain, haunted by the memories and the grief for what was taken away. There, too, perhaps most were somewhere in the middle.

This is what I want you to know

I sometimes stand on the third floor of the former Portage la Prairie Residential School, where hundreds of children stood before me, and look out over the grounds and the lake beyond.

In praise of messy, unruly free speech

There’s a lot of obnoxious and hypocritical talk about free speech circulating online, in editorial pages and at the family dinner table.

Local filmmaker’s lo-fi feature packs a punch

It feels right that this low-budget, lo-fi experimental feature should be showing as part of We’re Still Here, a slate of programming that marks 50 resilient and resourceful years of the Winnipeg Film Group.

Hard pass. Cold brew. Dad bod. Merriam-Webster adds over 5,000 words to ‘Collegiate’ dictionary

NEW YORK (AP) — Word nerd alert: Merriam-Webster announced Thursday it has taken the rare step of fully revising and reimagining one of its most popular dictionaries with a fresh edition that adds over 5,000 new words, including “petrichor,” “teraflop,” “dumbphone” and “ghost kitchen.”

The 12th edition of “Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary” comes 22 years after the book's last hard-copy update and amid declining U.S. sales for analog dictionaries overall, according to Circana BookScan. It will be released Nov. 18, with preorders now available.

Petrichor, by the way, is a pleasant odor after a rainfall following a warm, dry period. Teraflop is a unit of measure for calculating the speed of a computer. Dumbphones are just that, mobile devices we used before the smartphone revolution. And ghost kitchens, which came into their own during the pandemic, are commercial spaces for hire.

Other additions: “cold brew,” “farm-to-table,” “rizz,” “dad bod,” “hard pass,” “adulting” and “cancel culture.” There's also “beast mode,” “dashcam,” “doomscroll,”“WFH” and “side-eye.”

Indigenous stories given wings by peers, playwrights

Six Indigenous storytellers are sharing new works with local audiences this week through Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Pimootayowin: A Festival of New Work.

Setting the record straight on Reading Recovery

When I read the op-ed Empire of illiteracy in a recent Winnipeg Free Press (Think Tank, Sept. 9), I wasn’t just frustrated, I was deeply disappointed.

‘Love Island’ revives conversation about racial bias and misogynoir in dating

It used to be that dating was as simple as deciding between dinner, a trip to the movies or an arcade. Now, understanding the dating scene has become intermingled with smartphones, matchmaking apps and one’s ability to navigate thorny social issues like racial preference in a mate.

“Love Island,” a widely popular international reality television franchise, is emblematic of the complexities of modern dating. It has also sparked heated discussions among fans about the desirability of Black women and darker-complexioned people both on and off air.

The show, which aired the finale of the seventh season of its U.S. version Sunday and is airing the 12th season of its U.K. version, casts conventionally attractive “islanders” who are generally in their early to late 20s for a six- to eight-week stay in a luxury villa. Men and women compete for long-lasting relationships and a cash prize.

But as the show’s daters face challenges meant to test their bonds, as well as elimination by villa mates or by fans’ vote, notions of who is and isn’t desirable frequently come up for viewers and contestants alike. In the end, many fans are left with the perception that racial bias, colorism and misogyny are especially inescapable for Black women on reality dating shows.

Esports competitions motivating force for First Nations students, educators say

Esports clubs are allowing First Nations students to play against peers from other on-reserve schools without the costly and time-intensive trips required for basketball, hockey and other traditional extracurriculars.

For teacher Karl Hildebrandt, one of the many motivators to grow Manitoba’s online gaming community is giving youth in rural and remote areas more competitive opportunities to represent their schools.

“When you tell kids they can play video games at school, their eyes open and when you tell them you can compete against another school in the province, their mouths drop,” said Hildebrandt, director of rural and northern esports for the Manitoba School Esports Association.

A handful of members of the Manitoba First Nations School System, including Lake Manitoba, Brokenhead, Fox Lake, Roseau River and York Landing, have started developing cybersport programs. Some teachers have also started integrating online games into their everyday lessons.

Raising up books as social justice tools

Valerie Chelangat spends her days reading. She reads every day, mostly in the morning, sometimes before bed in the evenings and, if she has time to spare, in the hours between.

City company set to expand online tutoring presence after raising large equity stake

Winnipeg education technology company Hoot Reading has landed one of the first investments in a new venture capital fund from toy maker Spin Master.

Interest in Hoot Reading, which has developed an online tutoring platform whose mission is closing the gap in what’s been identified as a reading slump in the fourth grade, has grown significantly through the pandemic.

With school-age children home in various parts of North America at various times during the pandemic, parents have been forced to look for more tools to help with early childhood educational habits and Hoot Reading has caught on.

“We have had incredible traction during the pandemic,” said Maya Kotecha, co-founder and co-CEO of Hoot Reading. “It has been a tailwind for us.”

It’s a tough spell for official wizards

What with there being only two weeks until Halloween, I’m not sure this is a good time to fire your official wizard.

But that’s exactly what the New Zealand city of Christchurch did the other day when it dumped its official wizard from the payroll after 23 years of loyal service.

Ha ha ha! OK, I’m not kidding. Christchurch’s city council has ended its contract with the world’s only state-appointed wizard — “I’m going to have to ask you to turn in your wand!” — because it has decided to go in a more modern and diverse direction.

Anyone who has ever read a Harry Potter novel or seen one of the films is probably thinking: “Laying off your wizard just before All Hallow’s Eve can only end in tears, right?” Or as famed American columnist Dave Barry chirped in his blog: “Tomorrow’s headline: City council turned into frogs!”

When it come to Munsch stories, I’ll love them forever

When bedtime rolls around in our home and it’s time to pick a story (or three), there’s usually at least one Robert Munsch book in the mix.

We love Munsch stories. They’re fun, they’re usually silly, and they’re often central to some of my most favourite memories.

My mom read them to me as a kid, and now I read them to my own kids. Reciting the familiar words of the stories I grew up with feels like a rite of passage, as my kids echo them back to me. You can’t read a Munsch book without emphasizing the words and becoming the characters. That’s what makes his stories so special. It’s a whole production.

When my daughter was born, my mom gave a copy of Love You Forever, the sweet and sad story Munsch wrote years after he and his wife suffered the loss of two stillborn children. The lullaby in the book was one that he made up in his head for his lost babies — words he couldn’t say out loud.

Simplicity has kept Ticket to Ride steaming ahead

What defines a great board game? It is its theme, the accessibility and elegance of the rules, the design and production of the components, the depth of strategy, or the level of enjoyment one experiences when playing it? I believe it is a combination of all of these factors, and very few games are able to fulfil all of these criteria satisfactorily.

These are games that have staying power and that are loved not only by thousands, but by millions of people around the world. There is no doubt in my mind the game Ticket to Ride is one of them.

Ticket to Ride was created by the American designer Alan R. Moon and was first published in 2004 by the game publisher Days of Wonder. Since its inception it has sold more than eight million copies worldwide and has received dozens of international awards, including the much coveted “Spiel des Jahres” in Germany. It is one of the most popular modern board games in the world, an honour that can only be shared with other mammoth titles like Catan or Carcassone.

One of the reasons for its success is that it is deceptively simple. The game casts players as railroad developers, crossing North America in the age of steam. It is played on a large and colourfully illustrated map of the United States and southern Canada. It even features Winnipeg as one of its destination cities — something I am strangely proud of! In addition, it features a large deck of cards that depict train cars in different colours as well as a supply of mini plastic trains for each player in their colour. Most turns, a player can take one of two actions: They can either add cards to their hand from the card supply, or they can claim a route between two cities on the board. If they choose the latter, they trade in a set of cards of the same colour as the track and place their train tokens on that route. They then immediately receive points for that action. The longer the route they claim, the more points they get. The game ends when at least one player has two or fewer train tokens left. The player with the most points is declared winner after one final round. That’s pretty much the core of it. To add a little more depth, each player also receives another set of cards listing pairs of cities. At the end of the game, players receive bonus points for each card they were able to link up, but they lose points if they couldn’t. This adds a hidden point structure that can alter a player’s ranking at the very end.

For a quarter-century, McNally Robinson's Grant Park location has tapped into local book lover's desires

Twenty-five years ago this week, the staff of McNally Robinson were frantically preparing, bounding about their Grant Park store, a 20,000-square-foot behemoth that had yet to welcome its first customer.

The grand opening was near, and so was Margaret Atwood.

Atwood, if not the country’s most famous author then at least its second or third, was in Winnipeg to promote her latest book, Alias Grace, and to lend her authoritative support to what was to become the country’s largest independent bookstore, with a reading and book signing. A large crowd was anticipated.

There was a wild push to get ready for Oct. 15: staff were shifted from the company’s smaller locations, shipments were arriving in rapid succession. Shelves still had to be set up when Atwood arrived a few hours early to discuss the details of her reading, where she would be joined by a local literary icon, Carol Shields.