Wordplay
Ants assemble at arms and advance
Against apes all absconding askance.
After aardvarks arrive
Antsy apes (all alive)
Assert, ‘Arrogant antsholes are ants!’
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An appropriately abject anecdote about assorted animals (angry army ants, asinine apes, and A-listed aardvarks) as all articles, adverbs, adjectives, and associated alphabetical agents are A-words, and antsy apes, alas, are always atrociously A-assonant antsholes.
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Besting bull-butchers, Blossom believes,
Best begins before blade breath bereaves.
Because butcheries ban
Breathing beef, Bloss began
Buying bulls before bulls became beeves.
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Breathless bull-benefactor Blossom's burning beef's been blatantly bull-beneficent bull. Basically, beautiful Blossom's been besting beefy bloody bull-butchers because B-listed B's been baldly begging B-benefaction. (Before B became belatedly bold, bullying A-listed A brilliantly bested B).
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Canon Cantwell cantankerously
Canvassed cannibals cannibally.
Canny cannibal chancers,
Chanting ‘Cannular cancers!’
Cancelled cannibals' candidacy.
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canon: a priest in the Anglican Church
canvass (archaic): to castigate or trounce (particularly in religious contexts)
canvass (modern): to seek out suckers by asking them clever questions
cannular: a property of tubular structures such as arteries and bowels
To compensate for this not-only-C author's note, the verse itself has been forced to call on not just any old C, but on C-A-N (plus two errant H's) - a far more frustrating challenge, and one that was exacerbated by a successful effort to have just three words on each line. So the verse uses only fifteen words in total, and dispenses entirely with one-syllable words - perhaps the only limerick to do so.
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BREAKTHROUGH 1
Squiggled means of expression need praising.
This stanza at which you are gazing,
Like all thoughts of jerks —
Even Shakespeare's full works —
Used but twenty-six letters. Amazing!
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Amazingly, the same little family of marks can, in principle, be used to describe every aspect of the entire universe - at least to the extent that we understand it - because even numbers and mathematical symbols can be expressed by letters alone.
On a less ambitious level, it is perhaps worth mentioning that because all twenty-six squiggles have indeed been used in this verse, it is classified as a pangram. A perfect pangram would be a passage of clear, grammatical prose that used each of the twenty-six letters just once. This is constantly attempted with varying degrees of success by English wordsmiths, but alll efforts incorporate foreign words, spelling mistakes, or grammatical flaws - or make little sense. My own contribution to this frustrating challenge is revealed in the following anecdote set in Britain's Government Communications Headquarters.
When cryptographer Mary Moneypenny, a clever coquette stationed at GCHQ, the famous intelligence establishment near Cheltenham, was given the challenging task of finding the shortest possible sentence using all twenty-six letters of the alphabet, she immediately decided against basing it on the quick brown fox who famously jumps over a lazy dog. Her contempt for this sentence (which she considered unnecessarily lengthy) was revealed in her own remarkable solution. The unique, but self-indulgent fox-bashing perfect pangram developed by Miss Moneypenny was:
GCHQ's wry vamp blitzed fox junk.
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BREAKTHROUGH 2
Other signwriters, taken aback
That dim Jack will be painting the plaque,
Because tails on glyph Q's
With their friz (curls) confuse,
Wonder, "Won't Q-glyph's friz vex dumb Jack?"
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A pangram is a grammatically complete sentence that contains all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. The most famous is probably "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". It uses thirty-five letters in total. The search for a "perfect pangram" — one that uses each of the twenty-six letters just once — has been as long-lived as it has been frustrating. A few solutions have been found over the years, but almost all have incorporated spelling or grammatical flaws, have used excessive abbreviation, or have made little sense. My best contribution to this infuriating challenge is revealed in the note following my “amazing” limerick above.
The pangram in this verse takes the challenge a frightening step further. Not only does it avoid all the usual errors, but it also adheres to additional rules governing a unique search for what could be called a "perfect perfect pangram": one without abbreviations (which render the task much easier), without any gratuitous use of proper nouns (too long, too false, too many, or — in the case of names — with initials added to mop up homeless letters), and without the aid of any other shortcuts to success.
This is, I believe, the first pangram to have met the challenge. It is certainly the only perfect pangram to have appeared in a limerick.
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To his madam, those strange parts of Adam
Fulfilled not the reason he had ’em.
With his third rib torn free,
Eve reflected that he
Might have had ’em had Adam had madam.
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According to the Christian Bible's Book of Genesis, Judaism's Torah, and Islam's Koran, Adam was indeed the first man created by God. The sources are not, however, consistent regarding the widely-held belief that Eve was the first woman. They all say that she was fashioned by God from one of Adam's ribs, but even Genesis can be interpreted to suggest that there were ‘other women’ in the supposedly monogamous union between Adam and Eve. If there had indeed been others, it seems reasonable to assume that they would also have been created by God from the diminishing supply of Adam's ribs. My limerick assumes that Eve was created either first or second, and is now exasperated that Adam doesn't know yet that there is a very pleasant way of saving God from having to perform this bloody task for Adam every time he wants another little feminine playmate.
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BREAKTHROUGH 3
‘Let's draw lots,’ Hadya teased. ‘I feel bad!
Draw the “HAD” (not a “had”). You'll be glad!’
Cheating Had also drew,
So the six poor guys who
Had had ‘had’, Had had had (Had had ‘HAD’).
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I wrote this verse in association with Chris J. Strolin. We believe it to be the only wholly original non-nonsensical limerick ever written that contains nine identical words in a single line. Unlike the famous grammatical ‘had had’ riddle, our ‘hads’ have different shades of meaning and tell a complex story.
‘Hadya’, often shortened to ‘Had’, is a common girl's name in the Middle East where, we must confess, girls would not normally be as coquettish as our teasing Hadya.
Here is the simple plain-language truth about Hadya: Hadya hadya! Hadya not noticed that Had had cheatingly removed the winning ‘HAD’ token? That is why none of the guys (whom, never having had Had, Had had had) had had Had! Had had had ‘HAD’. Had Had had ‘had’? Well, that would have been a less savoury story — and it might have had sixteen ‘hads’ in a row rather than only nine.
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From page one of a ten-volume book,
A worm ate to the last page. It took
Seven claims statisticians
And mathematicians
To prove the sly bookworm a crook.
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No, the crooked bookworm was not the small wriggly one. The false claim was made by the book-loving bookworm who owned the damaged volumes. He said that a small bookworm, or moth-larva, had eaten from the first page of the first volume to the last page of the last volume of a set of rare books standing together in the correct order on one of his bookshelves, and that all ten volumes were therefore damaged. Because the modern covers were not covered by his insurance policy, he was claiming only for the damage done to each of the precious old pages.
Although the assessors accepted his claim that the worm had eaten from the first page of the first volume all the way through to the last page of the last volume, they would not accept his conclusion that all the pages were therefore damaged — nor even that all the volumes were damaged. Their resident mathematicians proved, without visiting the library, that the insured had a legitimate claim for only eight damaged volumes. Two of the volumes, they concluded, would each have had no more than tiny surface scratches on just one of its many old pages.
Only by physically examining books on a bookshelf are you likely to understand this surprising conclusion — a conclusion that is very real. In a set of books standing on a shelf in the correct order, two volumes are always excluded from the space between the first page of the first volume and the last page of the last volume.
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BREAKTHROUGH 4
Bishop Tutu toot-tooted, at Crewe,
His own 2 o’clock Tutu to-do.
Aware he loved trains,
Christian drivers took pains
To toot-toot Tutu, too, to 2:02.
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2:02 is pronounced "two-two". The modern "two-oh-two" is largely a result of our exposure to digital time. In the heyday of train travel, railway clocks did not, of course, have zeroes. Travellers spoke about the "two-two to Crewe" (as did "Tutu-to-Toot" Tutu, too). Crewe is a famous English railway junction.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (b. 1931), the Nobel Peace Prize winner, told me when I approached him in a first-class airport lounge many years ago to speak about a mutual friend, Joseph Sibiya, that he preferred trains to planes. That discussion inspired me to write this verse, the first limerick ever written that includes a non-nonsensical line in which all nine syllables are essentially identical.
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Alphabetic demands weren't so great
When pet anagram scribes doted late.
Now a lean-care GP
Is Death's better MD,
And the Prince begs a red slaw to mate.
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This verse is a fourfold anagram of the first line (the short lines are treated as one), which means that all thirty letters repeat four times to make four completely different sets of words, which nevertheless tell a simple story within the limerick's standard anapestic rhyming format.
So, what is the story? The aging writer found anagrams very easy to compile when his doting girl-friends used to stay up late to help him. Now, without their cheerful help, his anagrammatic verses have taken a dark, difficult turn. This one deals with deadly GP Harold Shipman, the Jekyll of Hyde, and snivelling Prince Charles Windsor, the Whiner of Wails famed for talking to red cabbages and other plants.
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A canner’s can-canny son, Danny,
Annoyingly announced (to his Nanny):
‘No canner can can
No can-canner can,
For no canner can can a can, can he?’
‘Alphabetic brats cheat, droll Evette,’
Fumed Guy Hezlatt, ‘if joshing kids let
My no-open-place Q
Remain stranded! That U
Voids wry xerus, Yvetta Zlahett!’
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Dear reader, I know you are puzzled. To enjoy my strange story you need to understand why the sassy little Evette Hezlatt is now in awe of her father's skill with words — even though, by the way, she ended up thrashing him in their family game of Scrabble®.
Desperate for a U to accommodate his Q, Guy Hezlatt shamelessly invents an outrageous rule that would force Evette to use her own U in a word other than the precociously mocking xerus, which she is about to place in a position that will still leave his Q stranded. Any other word, he hopes, will be better for him than this accursed African ground squirrel.
Aware of the unsporting depths to which he has descended, he belatedly uses his exotic spoonerised pet name for her in a pathetic attempt to charm her — and disarm her. However, the little whizz-kid ignores his subtle endearment, for she has noticed something else — something quite extraordinary: her father has very nearly uttered a complete limerick comprising just twenty-six words representing each letter of the alphabet in exactly the right order! Clever Evette has herself mentally inserted ‘Fumed Guy Hezlatt’ to consolidate his achievement. Without her quick assistance, her father might have failed in his unconscious attempt to impress her, just as he failed in his conscious attempt to defraud her. Her cheeky xerus went onto a triple-word score and earned her fifty-seven points and the game. He never did get to use his querulous Q.
Now, dear reader, you are fully qualified to understand those Hezlatt clever clogs. Won't you try again?
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A gangster who also taught flute,
Once tutored a tooter to shoot.
Said the shooter to tutor,
‘It’s, tutor, astuter
To tutor toot-tooters to toot.’
BREAKTHROUGH 5
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Nailed Britain's mass antitheism.
As Trinities dim,
Ents nab, alas, Him,
And net British aisles animatism.
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This verse is a fourfold anagram of the first line, the short lines being treated as one. All twenty-eight letters repeat four times to make four completely different sets of words. Not only do the resultant anagrams fulfil the complex metrical and rhyming requirements of a standard limerick, but they also make sense.
Antidisestablishmentarianism was resistance to the separation of the British state and the Church of England. In my verse, those who held such views fought antitheistic hordes successfully at first, securing the Church's role in the Establishment. Now, however, as the importance of the various versions of the Christian Trinity fade, even mythical beings like Tolkien's Middle-Earth Ents (humanoid trees) are overpowering the Christian Christ and are netting for the cinema aisles of the British Isles a new quasi-religion: animatism, the attribution of Ent-like consciousness to trees and stones and other natural forms and phenomena. I have no doubt that more British children believe now in Ents and Hobbits, and Quidditch and Golden Snitches, than in Jesus of Nazareth.
Antitheism in line two should be read as AN-tee-thee-IZ-uhm, although it would probably be more correct to say an-tee-THEE-iz-uhm next time you are chatting about the subject to your mates down at the pub.
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No woodsman would cut a wood would he
If woods would be woodless – nor should he.
Yet no woodcutter would
Cut a woody-wood wood
If no woodsmen cut woody woods would he?
BREAKTHROUGH 6
"Well, Cam Roy, am I Mayor Macllew?"
"O Democrats' non-star, come, do!
Not New York," Roy went on,
"Now Sahoto has 'Won'...
Oh, who came to vote, Mac, oh who?"
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It is left to the reader for now to discover that this verse is deceptively forward in demonstrating the meaning of backward in each of its five lines.
Cam Roy, Macllew, and Sahoto are all real names. In my story, Cam Roy is Macllew's campaign manager in the mayoral election of New York City. To the despair of the Democrat pair, "Won Ton" Sahoto (as they rudely call him behind his back) has won, for Macllew's supporters have stayed away from the polls.
Many elements of this verse, including most of the dialogue in lines two and three have been borrowed from anonymous jugglers of words, just as they have been borrowed a thousand times before by others. With their unwitting help, I have been able to stitch together the first non-nonsensical, fully anapestic limerick of its kind ever written — each of its five lines a perfect palindrome, also known sometimes as an emordnilap.
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Prepahs yruo'e azmead taht tihs mses
Smees so esay to raed thguoh it's lses
Lkie rael Esnlgih tahn Siuox?
Scrbalnmig wdros, lanevig two
Ouetr ltertes, wlil csuae no dsritses.
BREAKTHROUGH 7
He once owned, Old Man (Ou Ou) O'Ouw,
Thirteen miles of The Orange (The O),
So when farmers pumped water,
He bantered, ‘You oughter
Owe O'Ouw o' O (Ou Ou), oh, eau!’
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This is the only limerick ever written that contains a whole line of nine identical sounds, carrying nine different meanings, written in nine different ways. Despite these difficulties, it maintains correct anapestic metre.
In South Africa, the word ‘ou’ is indeed pronounced ‘owe’, and it does indeed mean both ‘old’ and ‘man’. Particularly in its meaning of ‘man’, it has been borrowed from Afrikaans by English-speaking South Africans and can now be found in many English dictionaries. ‘Ouw’ is a valid surname. In Afrikaans it would indeed become a perfect O-rhyme pronounced exactly like the common Afrikaans name ‘Louw’. I have taken the liberty of adding to the Dutch and French Huguenot ancestry of Meneer O'Ouw of Orange (notice his jocularly self-bestowed royal Dutch title) a few convenient drops of South African Irish blood as well.
As schoolboys, my friends and I often referred to the nearby Great Orange River as ‘The O’.
The final line of this limerick has, then, the following linguistic origins: Owe (modern English), O' (Irish), Ouw (Dutch), o' (old English), O (Cape schoolboy slang), Ou (Afrikaans), Ou (South African English), oh (English interjection), and eau (Huguenot French).
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BREAKTHROUGH 8
The bill of the pelican relican
Hold more than his pelican belican.
People still see how welican
But not how the helican
Stock more than a pelican delican.
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With apologies to Dixon Lanier Merritt, whose famous limerick of 1910 first used the rhyming words belican and helican. This is the world’s first 8-elican pelican limerick.
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BREAKTHROUGH 9
Ray K. Fray begged, ‘Say, Jay Clay, pray stay!
They may bay, “Hooray, prey! Hey, gay ‘Fay’!”’
‘Eh? I'll splay, flay — nay, slay, Ray,
A gray bigot today, Ray!
Stray! Fey sway is play Ray's way...Okay!?’
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There are a record thirty different rhyming words here. ‘Ray’ is counted only once.
My Ay-list pack of bigoted idiots, who sometimes bay for effeminate Ray's blood because he does not conform to their own miserable ideas of normality, are really nothing but braying jackasses in wolf's clothing. It is fortunate for Ray that his tough friend Jay Clay has the courage to stand by him when he is faced with overt bigotry.
Although ‘Fay’ means fairy, Ray's tormentors are probably unaware of this, and are giving him a girl's name similar to his own simply because that's one of the traditional witless weapons in their pathetic arsenal. ‘Gray’ means dull, dismal, and depressing. Jay Clay calls one of Ray's tormentors a stray because he is a member of a baying pack of urban mutts. ‘Fey’ means camp. ‘Sway’ means both influence and the swaying walk that a few gays, including Ray, affect — often with humorous intent.
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"Qwerty worked," England's real typists yawned,
"Until IBM's own print ads scorned
Damaged full-golfball heads'
Jumping K's, leaping Z's.
X-cajoling vexed Brits never mourned."
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Mourned, scorned, and yawned are exact rhymes in standard British English.
This verse is ostensibly about the demise of the old IBM golfball typewriter in favour of computer keyboards and printers. However, the reader should not get bogged down trying to understand every last nuance of this nonsense verse, for its only real purpose is to provide a twenty-six-word limerick revealing the arrangement of the alphabet keys on the standard "Qwerty" keyboard.
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The blind mystic's monistic Synoptic,
A panoptic synoptic in Coptic,
Would thrill the eristic
Theistic ill mystic
Were Copt cystic optics orthoptic.
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Copts now comprise only 5% of the Egyptian population. Their story is a fascinating one, stretching back 2000 years to the time of Christ. The following definitions will help you unravel the meaning of this playful verse, and give you at the same time a few hints of the Copts' history and beliefs.
mystic: a person who seeks communion with a supreme being.
monistic: relating to the doctrine that only one supreme being exists.
Synoptic (Gospel): each, or all of, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
panoptic: showing or seeing the whole in one view.
synoptic: relating to the Synoptic Gospels.
Coptic: the ritual language of the Coptic Church in Egypt.
eristic: given to controversy or disputation.
theistic: relating to belief in a supreme being.
Copt: a descendant of the ancient Egyptians who adopted Christianity.
cystic: relating to a cyst.
optic: an archaic, but now jocular, term for the eye.
orthoptic: relating to normal binocular vision.
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Like the Greeks, first read forwards and then
nehw ,dne eht litnu sdrawkcab ot hctiwS
You'll have learned how to read
deeps avulleh eno tA
And to alternate lines that you pen.
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The early Greeks wrote in this boustrophedon style, which simply means "as the ox ploughs the field".
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As a palpably awkward array
Marks a stanza that's madly all-A,
Batty bards, always daft,
Brag, “An A-canny craft!"
And attract "Crazy, ay! Canny, nay!"
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This unusual verse is classed as "univocalic", which means that it employs only one of the five vowels, the admirable letter A. We batty bards enjoy challenges like this.
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BREAKTHROUGH 10
Why rhymy Y rhythms? Why try?
My syzygy's spry, by my cry!
Y's glyphs ply my syth,
Scry myrrhy-sylph myth —
Shy sky nymphs fly spryly, by Y!
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The adjective avocalic refers to writing or speech that lacks vowels. Because A, E, I, O, and U are always regarded as the five vowels of the English language, I have written this very difficult verse as an example of avocalic writing. There are those who will argue that Y is being used as a vowel here, and they will be right: strictly-speaking, the Y should also be omitted. I shall, however, leave the writing of such a verse to more brilliant writers, who (unless they use abbreviations) will be limited to shshsh and zzz and pfffft and their avocalic ilk. Mmm.
rhymy: rhyming
syzygy: (SIH-suh-jee) metre
glyph: in this context, a symbol or character
syth: satisfaction
scry: describe
sylph: nymphs of the air
myrrhy: of myrrh, a classical perfume
So, very loosely, this verse simply means: Why bother with a Y verse? Why even try? Well, my metre works fine, if I may say so. Y's symbols bring me great satisfaction, describing the myth of perfumed sylphs. Shy nymphs of the air fly perfectly well, even though they are encumbered by all those Y's!
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Have you noticed that words such as thrash
Are all brutal or hurried — like flash?
When you rip off their starts,
They are burnt at their hearts,
And you're left with just worthless grey ash.
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Readers may test this claim for themselves. From this list of "ash" words, search for any that are not associated in some way with disaster, violence, energy or haste: ash, bash, brash, cash, clash, crash, dash, flash, gash, gnash, hash, lash, mash, rash, sash, slash, splash, smash, stash, thrash, trash. If you have found more than two, you should read them again. This curiosity of our great English language remains a puzzle to me.
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People like to abbreviate in
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrn-
drobwllllantysilio-
gogogoch, but will go
The whole hog when the spring tours begin.
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The economy of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, one of my neighbouring villages in Wales, depends heavily on the annual influx of tourists who come to view the famous sign at the railway station. Despite the local reluctance to abbreviate this income-producing name when tourists are listening, I have rebelled. Once, I attempted to tell my neighbour the full formal name of my destination when I popped out to buy a paper. He listened politely for no more than ten minutes or so, and then rudely went about his business. Although my excited Welsh dog had been invited to go with me, even she had slunk off by then. Now I simply go either to Llanfairpwll (thlan-vire-POOTH) or Llanfair PG — and the dog comes with me.
For those curious readers who would like to know exactly what out-of-season benefits abbreviation brings to the inhabitants of this tiny town with the gigantic name, I have transcribed the whole verse, and its metre, into a more readable form. The sounds are as accurate as I can render them for the English tongue.
people LIKE to ab-BREV-i-ate IN
thlan-vire-POOTH-gwin-gith-GOG-er-ich-WIN-
drob-ooth-THLAN-tee-sill-YO-
go-go-GOCH, but will GO
the whole HOG when the SPRING tours be-GIN.
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BREAKTHROUGH 11
I do not, Archimedes, know why
You put marks on your ruler. Sir, I
Know that trisection tricks
Give a trisector kicks,
But why fudge when it's easy as pi?
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This limerick refers to a method I have developed for trisecting an angle, a challenge that has been exercising the minds of mathematicians and countless deluded laymen for nearly 2,300 years. The method has been described in my paper published recently in the March 2007 issue of the Mathematical Association of America’s College Mathematics Journal. Because it achieves with just an unmarked ruler what specialised trisecting tools such as the famous Tomahawk were designed to do, I ended my mathematical paper with this little limerickal observation:
Like its namesake once swung by the Sioux,
The old Tomahawk trisector’s through,
For it seems it’s been matched
By the ruler unscratched,
Which can paddle its own smart canoe.
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