A game/contest on National Public Radio, which I find addictive, asks participants to guess the title of a book, movie, poem, etc. on the basis of various verbal clues. The catch is that one letter in one word in the answer will have been changed.For example, the person who is “it” gets told that this movie concerns Russell Crowe, as Prof. John Forbes Nash, who is pondering the loveliness of a chocolate confection. How much time lapses before the guesser comes up with “A Beautiful Mint”?
Because of my addiction, I played this game with family members on a long car trip. I’d carefully prepared a number of them (appearing below), expecting to stump my family, but in the case of Heather, my daughter-in-law, she came forth with the answer before I’d even finished providing the circumlocutious clues.
More recently, Liz Conescu of Las Vegas forwarded me an e-mail on the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational, which asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Now Mensa is an organization of people all over the world with the highest measured IQs. But even those (some would say especially those) with high intelligence tend to conjure up off-color answers, and because this is a family newspaper, you’re reading only the sanitized submissions.
One Mensa submission that ranks high is the word “intaxication,” defined as the “euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize that it was your money to start with.” Another one is “inoculatte,” the act of taking coffee intravenously when you are running late. And my favorite is “giraffiti,” defined as “vandalism spray-painted very, very high.” One wonders whether the spell-checkers on word-processing software either complicate or simplify communication, or at least spelling.
For example, my right ring finger is much heavier-handed than the others, with the result that by merely resting it on the home key, I get far more “L’s” in my text, before proofreading, than other lleters, llike this illlustration. One of us at the Optic once tried to cool it on the overuse of the letter “L” and committed an unfortunate typo that gave a different slant to the word “public.”
Many spell-checkers suggest alternate spelling, and that’s how I came to realize the many permutations of certain words, like “like,” which if I misspell it, often produces “lime,” “line,” “life” and “live” as alternatives.
Obviously well aware of what spell-checkers can do, Liz Conescu responded to a recent column on language and typos by addressing her e-mail to me as “Arf” and signing off as “Lig.” I shot back with “Lip” and “Arm” and she replied with “Arc” and “Lie.”
Some spell-checkers are sophisticated enough to infer meanings of words, even when the first letter is in question. There’s a small leap from “Liz” to “Lid,” but what if the first letter is obviously wrong? Some programs can tell you that “lypo” ought to be “typo.”
And that’s why the game on NPR is so challenging. We attempted a guessing game in which any number of words in the title could be subjected to a one-letter alteration. So, I asked the name of the movie in which Scarlett O’Hara schemed to win back Rhett Butler. I imagined growing much older before anyone guessed this one, but again, before I’d completed the clues, Heather answered, “Done With the Mind.” “Gone With the Mind” or “Done With the Wind” would have been the limit of my guessability, had I been fielding that question.
I wonder whether Heather was looking at my notes.
To make it simple, I’m asking readers to identify the movies, poems, novels, etc. based on the following, all of which have just one letter of one word altered. I expect the correct answers on my desktop no later than Wednesday morning.
No. 1: In this musical, Katherine Zeta Jones and Richard Gere join an ethnic-political group.
Too easy? Try this: No. 2: Some high schoolers, including Lindsay Lohan, challenge the dress code by wearing Levis-like clothes.
This one will stump you. Don’t even try: No. 3: This novel by Austen leads Jane Bennett to the altar.
Here’s one even Dubya can guess: No. 4: George Clooney and his crew go on an expedition to locate absolutely the best bird, even if it spends its life delivering babies.
No. 5: This novel features an Italian polymath during the Renaissance who perfects a delightful cold confection you can hold in your hand.
No. 6: This movie, featuring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon, is about a waterway infested with paste tilers use to make things stick to the floor.
And finally: No. 7: Stallone, in full military regalia, learns a new dance.
So you gave up? The answers next week.