Eureka!
Page 2
How can this problem be addressed? Humor is a powerful motivator. Word play can encourage reading and language learning at all levels. Young children love puns, and playing with words helps them expand their vocabulary and master language skills.
Adults from other parts of the world who study English delight in the multiple meanings of many words.
As for the contention that puns are sometimes greeted with groaning and scorn instead of laughter, remember what diamond cutters say: “They can’t all be gems!”
Don Hauptman
New York, March 28, 2009
The writer is the author of Cruel and Unusual Puns, a celebration of spoonerisms.
Humor is one entertaining usage of English. The creative writing possibilities provide another channel of diversion and mental exercise. Many of the puzzles contained in this book will force you to think outside your normal frame of reference. Here is a preview of the word gymnastics to follow.
PUZZLE 1. OBSERVATIONS OF AN ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON
Ankle bones can degrade easily from getting hit. Inside joints, key ligaments meet nerves. Ordinary photographs quickly reveal swollenness. The usual visualizing with X-rays yields zilch.
What is unique about these observations of an orthopedic surgeon? Can you see the obvious pattern of word selection? It cannot be coincidental.
Puzzle 1 demonstrates creative contortions that are possible with English. If you need a hint, count the words. (Hyphenated words count as one.) That number will give you an obvious clue for solving the puzzle. Try to create a similarly formed paragraph that makes sense. It is surprisingly hard to do, and a great exercise for an English class teaching creative writing. Such an exercise requires you to think explicitly about word selection, sentence style, syntax, and semantics in a totally different way.
This book contains a uniquely crafted set of puzzles that are mostly tests of observation skills. Some of them are frivolous, some challenging, and most contort our language in entertaining ways that should leave readers saying, “This author is nuts.” That’s the reaction I hope for and what my daughters and friends have said to me for years. They have also learned some new ways to look at words, to find humor in language, to evaluate problems from different perspectives, to engage in battles of wits, and to enjoy English. The puzzles provide memorable lessons about diversity of perspective.
Many people’s lives are enriched by the puzzles and games they play at work, at home, and at leisure. These pastimes provide opportunities to extract enjoyment, accomplishment, and entertainment from the everyday situations we all encounter. These one-of-a-kind puzzles are sprinkled here and there to reinforce some of the topics treated in the text. Although you can tackle these puzzles alone, they are much more fun to reason through with a group. A variety of perspectives will help provide the clues and breakthroughs you need to reach a solution.
The puzzles are intended to help people experience the power of teamwork and diversity of thought, and to improve observational and out-of-the-box problem solving skills. They are simple to explain and require relatively basic knowledge. Solving them mostly requires an ability to observe from a new perspective and reason in non-obvious ways. The answers to most of the puzzles are not provided. Why not? This is partly because I am a sadistic ogre, but also because discipline is a part of meaningful exercise. Putting a puzzle aside for awhile allows you to take a fresh look and examine it from a different perspective. If the solutions were provided, too many people would look them up and spoil the workout. This would be like cutting short your run or skipping out of yoga class early. In most cases, the puzzles have an obvious answer. Once you find a solution, you will know it is right. Readers who want a push in the right direction can find some hints in Appendix C.
NAVIGATING THIS BOOK
This book is targeted at a diverse audience, including adolescents, mature adults, professionals, English teachers, and people learning English as a second language. One of my writing challenges was to integrate loosely connected topics and materials that appeal to a broad spectrum of interests and intellectual levels. One consequence of writing for such a broad audience is that the chapters will not always be part of an obvious sequential thread. Although occasionally there is content in a later chapter that assumes the reader has completed an earlier chapter, most chapters can be read as standalone topics.
The first half of the book briefly covers the basics of English. Most of this material explores the more fascinating elements of our language that give it such depth, breadth, and intrigue. It is meant to be more entertaining and diversionary than instructive and process-oriented. Some elements of English that you don’t think much about are discussed, with numerous judgments on attractive and repulsive usage.
The second half of the book presents some serious observations, lessons learned, and guidance for improving your ability to communicate. By exploring communications styles and a few high-stakes types of communications (professional presentations, selling ideas, interviews, and romantic offerings), some key aspects of communicating with purpose are illuminated.
Applying the English language effectively in school, at home, at work, at play, and in interpersonal relationships is a powerful skill. As with any power tool, you can make progress or do harm, depending on your skill and knowledge. You can accomplish much more with a chain saw than you can with a scout knife, but you can also do substantially more damage. Similarly, good ideas can be obfuscated, good relationships can be ruined, and good humor can bomb if you misuse the language or deliver it in a sloppy way.
There is always tension when people communicate. When two people use the same style of communicating, there is less tension and more comfort. With opposing styles, there is typically more tension and less comfort. Is tension always bad? Not necessarily. However, too much comfort or too much tension leads to less productive communications, while a balanced tension leads to more effective communications.
In the many roles we play in our lives—parents, colleagues, supervisors, subordinates, spouses, friends, neighbors, teachers, coaches, trusted advisors, strangers—we use a broad spectrum of behavioral and communications styles. Our behavior, whether it is actions, words, facial expressions, or emotions, is perceived by others and communicates our intentions, feelings, and judgments.
Our oral and written communications are a significant aspect of how we form relationships with other people. Communications are the exchange of information between transmitters and receivers, and the key to effective communications is that transmitters and receivers must be in synch. The serious parts of this book lay the groundwork for understanding how to get in synch with others.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people and sources deserve acknowledgment for the material compiled into this book. My wife and puzzle partner Jennifer helped me reason through many of the organizational dilemmas and content decisions. She also inspired me to write all this stuff down as a tangible step toward my vision for a leadership camp. My daughters Cameron and Emily were the primary puzzle testers over many years, and they helped me hone the puzzles. One of my dreams is to get their children into a camp and teach them to be word perverts like me. Many of the New England Geocachers also deserve some credit for testing these puzzles in mystery Geocaches. My editor, Karen Ailor, improved the organization, content, and presentation considerably with her editing skills and English savvy. If you think this book reads well, blame her. In the spots where it reads a little rough (like most of the puzzles), blame me. I probably wore her down battling for poetic license.
The chapter art is a product of www.wordle.net. This great little website has many uses, and it was perfect for providing an overview of the dominant words in each chapter.
Many web sources were researched to collect some of the trivia and word lists in the first few chapters. The more helpful sites are referenced in the bibliography.
CHAPTER 1
The ABCs of English
As the English language has evolved
over the past few hundred years, we have created some interesting elements. No one designed the language we use today; its architecture was created more or less after the fact. We can describe English construction pretty accurately and fairly concisely. But if we try to represent it completely and precisely, the result is very, very messy. Most of us learned English by trying to understand all the messy parts. It was no fun.
Many people would think it ridiculous even to attempt to introduce the English language in a few short pages. I disagree. It is a challenging exercise in communications. Start with a complex concept that takes a lifetime to master and boil it down into its basic elements. This thinking has led to most of the world’s scientific breakthroughs, and it is one of the skills possessed by good coaches and teachers. Simplify. This section provides my solution to this challenge. For an excellent and concise treatment of English, read Write Right! A Desktop Digest of Punctuation, Grammar, and Style, by Jan Venolia.
PARTS OF SPEECH
The basics of English can be captured in just nine classes of words traditionally called parts of speech. Here they are in (my) priority order:
1. verb
expresses an action, occurrence, existence
2. adjective
modifies a noun
3. noun
names a person, animal, thing, place, idea, quality, act
4. interjection
exclaims
5. adverb
modifies a verb, adjective, adverb
6. preposition
relates one noun to another
7. pronoun
stands in for a noun
8. conjunction
connects words
9. article
precedes a noun
Why this priority? The order reflects my opinion as to which words count the most when writing or speaking. And some words do count more than others. Actions speak louder than the other parts of speech; consequently, verbs are at the top of the list. Many people would place nouns at the top, but most nouns are usually obvious, and they become interesting only when they are specialized (through adjectives) or when they do something (through verbs). Interjections are one of the more underused parts of speech.
The introduction of emoticons (such as smiley faces) in online communications has increased the popularity of communicating with interjections. Emoticons are simply modern-day substitutes for interjections. I have never used a smiley face, preferring the challenge of building “tone” into my style with interjections and careful word choices.
Prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and articles are lower priority because they are mostly mundane necessities. Adverbs, on the other hand, are intentionally low on the list. I think adverbs are the most abused part of speech in today’s everyday language. They clutter prose with redundancy, exaggeration, and unnecessary complexity. Learn what adverbs are best used for so that you can be more selective about their use.
PUNCTUATION
Be wary when something is defined by expressing what it is not. This is usually a sign that the definer cannot articulate the meaning clearly or doesn’t understand the subject clearly. Nevertheless, this is the best way to define punctuation: all the stuff that is not letters or numbers. The primary elements of punctuation are shown in Table 1-.
TABLE 1-1. Punctuation Primer
Punctuation marks are symbols that serve two primary purposes. First, they help clarify the syntax (structure) and semantics (meaning) of the words that are strung into sentences, paragraphs, and pages. Second, they help the reader understand the pauses and tones intended by the author.
The role of punctuation is best described in Lynne Truss’s classic work, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. How important is punctuation? It is much more important than it appears on the surface. Here are some simple demonstrations.
Punctuate the following sequence of words to form a complete sentence.
A woman without her man is nothing
If you are male, you probably punctuated this sentence by putting a period at the end.
A woman without her man is nothing.
If you are female, you may have punctuated this sentence differently.
A woman: Without her, man is nothing.
A change in punctuation turns the meaning of the sentence upside down. Here is another example.
Don’t stop.
This means keep going.
Don’t! Stop!
This means the opposite of “Don’t stop.”
Here is a longer paragraph. This is a little more tortured, but it is still easy to see the power of punctuation. The words are exactly the same in both paragraphs; only the punctuation changes the entire meaning.
Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy—will you let me be yours?
Jill
Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn! For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours, Jill
These examples illustrate the primary purpose of punctuation: to help you express your intent. The secondary purpose is to help the reader with the flow and rhythm of the words, sentences, and paragraphs. Whereas punctuation was originally invented so that written words could be read aloud, it has evolved into a much more important element of communicating with the proper intent.
The book jacket of Eats, Shoots & Leaves provides a nice example of the beauty of the English language and why there are so many jokes and plays on words that we get to enjoy.
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. “I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
That last misplaced comma is consequential. It demonstrates that punctuation is a powerful means for enhancing clarity.
WORDS
The word is the most basic element of our language, the atomic unit of language that has some meaning. Words are composed of only two sub-elements: vowels and consonants.
What are vowels? The simple definition is a, e, i, o, and u. Here is a more precise definition from Wikipedia.org:
A vowel is a sound in spoken language, pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract.
Vowels are the key building blocks of most English words. There are only 127 words in The Official SCRABBLE® Players Dictionary that have no vowels; 107 of these include y. Conversely, there are only five words that are all vowels (aa, ae, ai, oe, and eau).
What are consonants? The simple definition is all the non-vowels. The more technical definition is a speech sound produced by occluding, with or without releasing (p, b, t, d, k, g), diverting (m, n), or obstructing (f, v, s, z, etc.), the flow of air from the lungs. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of consonants:
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx. Consonants contrast with vowels.
Good grief! Can you imagine the geniuses way back when coming up with those definitions and selling them to academic author
ities who blessed them as the standards?
What are the most popular letters in the English language? Although the answer varies depending on the context of the analysis, the result will come out something like the distribution-of-letter frequency shown in Figure 1-1.
FIGURE 1-1. Letter Frequency in English (Source: Wikipedia.org)
It is important to know this information if you work crossword puzzles, solve cryptograms, play Scrabble®, or watch Wheel of Fortune. It is also worth knowing for the everyday enjoyment of English. It is easier to remember if you group the letters into five sets:
Very frequent
E T A
Frequent
R H I N O S
Average
C L U D
Infrequent
M W F G Y P B V K
Very infrequent
J X Q Z
PUZZLE 2. VOWEL BLENDS
The object of this puzzle is to find the shortest English words that contain each of the possible 25 vowel digraphs (two-letter blends of vowels). Each word must be three letters or more. Score 1 point for each letter used. Score 10 points for each digraph that you can’t find a word for.
90 letters or fewer
Scrabble® whiz
91-95 letters
Crossword puzzle whiz
96-105 letters
Average Joe