A Scramble for the White House

If you rearrange the letters in “Joe Biden” you get “Jibed One.” What do anagrams tell us about the rest of the 2008 presidential field?

  • Hillary Clinton = Rant, Chilly Lion
  • John Edwards = Jaws, Herd Nod
  • Rudy Giuliani = Gaudily I Ruin
  • Dennis Kucinich = Induces Inch Kin
  • John McCain = No Jam Cinch
  • Barack Obama = Maraca Kabob
  • Bill Richardson = Rabid, Shrill Con
  • Mitt Romney = Mime, Not Try
  • Fred Thompson = Hemp-Fond Sort

And “Al Gore” yields “Galore”.

| Language

Kangaroo Words

Kangaroo words contain smaller versions of themselves. INDOLENT, for example, contains the letters I-D-L-E, in order. Can you find the hidden synonyms in each of these words?

  • ABIDE
  • ALLOCATE
  • ASSEVERATE
  • ASTOUND
  • CALUMNIES
  • CATACOMB
  • DEPOSITORY
  • DESTRUCTION
  • ENCOURAGE
  • HONORABLE
  • ILLUMINATED
  • INEFFECTIVE
  • REVOLUTION
  • SCOUNDREL
  • TRANSGRESSION
  • UMPTEENTH
  • UNSIGHTLY
Click for Answer
| Language · Puzzles

Dig Latin

In 1980 the New York Daily News reported a state bailout of the city’s subway system.

It used the headline SICK TRANSIT’S GLORIOUS MONDAY.

| Language

“Geographical Love Song”

In the State of Mass.
There lived a lass,
I love to go N. C.;
No other Miss.
Can e’er, I Wis.,
Be half so dear to Me.
R. I. is blue
And her cheeks the hue
Of shells where waters swash;
On her pink-white phiz.
There Nev. Ariz.
The least complexion Wash.
La.! could I win
The heart of Minn.,
I’d ask for nothing more,
But I only dream
Upon the theme,
And Conn. it o’er and Ore.
Why is it, pray,
I can’t Ala.
This love that makes me Ill.?
N. Y., O., Wy.
Kan. Nev. Ver. I
Propose to her my will?
I shun the task
‘Twould be to ask
This gentle maid to wed.
And so, to press
My suit, I guess
Alaska Pa. instead.

— Anonymous, cited in Carolyn Wells, A Whimsey Anthology, 1906

| Humor · Language · Poems

Shakespeare For Lawyers

Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy rendered in jargon, from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s On the Art of Writing (1916):

To be, or the contrary? Whether the former or the latter be preferable would seem to admit of some difference of opinion; the answer in the present case being of an affirmative or of a negative character according as to whether one elects on the one hand to mentally suffer the disfavour of fortune, albeit in an extreme degree, or on the other to boldly envisage adverse conditions in the prospect of eventually bringing them to a conclusion. The condition of sleep is similar to, if not indistinguishable from, that of death; and with the addition of finality the former might be considered identical with the latter: so that in this connection it might be argued with regard to sleep that, could the addition be effected, a termination would be put to the endurance of a multiplicity of inconveniences, not to mention a number of downright evils incidental to our fallen humanity, and thus a consummation achieved of a most gratifying nature.

See also Hamlet in Klingon.

| Language · Literature