We used to have names for people in our youth who made a bad impression. Any girl, doomed to never having a second date, who 1) dipped her straw into the guy’s malt or tied a knot in his straw, 2) expected the guy to pay for her meal, or 3) (in later, more affluent times) ordered the most expensive item on the menu, got relegated to the lowest rung of huwomanity. She became a “mensa.”
We’d dismiss these junior high and high school schoolmates with much derision, even though those about whom we’d say, “Es una mensa” more likely wouldn’t have dreamed of a second date with us anyway.
My English/Spanish dictionary defines mensa or menso as someone who’s dull and witless. It’s a coincidence, then, that Mensa (with a capital “M”) is also Latin for “table” and is the name of a prestigious organization of bright people, those whose intelligence is verified through a tough series of tests.
Mensa membership ranges from 2 years, 9 months, to 102 years. One of their members is Niall Cormier, 17, who was the first reader to e-mail me the results of a word game I initiated recently. Niall wrote, “1, 3, 4, and 7 took me like five seconds. 2 took a minute or two of research (I’ve never seen Mean Girls). 5 threw me off because I spent five minutes naming every Renaissance figure I could think of, and I still don’t know if it’s right. 6 was etchy at best, and I feel I was missing something. Anyways, nice set of puzzles there.”
Though I admire Naill’s correct answers and his membership in an organization that allows only those whose measurable IQs in the top 2 percent, discussions with others make me surmise the quiz was w-a-y too easy.
John Geffroy, an instructor at the United World College, came up with the correct answers in record time — and even added a few of his own, which appear below. And the dedicated verbologist Dorothy Trujillo Maestas, my sister, e-mailed me her (correct) answers. But if siblings already know what and how other siblings think, do Dorothy’s answers count?
You’ll recall that previous quizzes involved a one-letter change in a single word in the title. For example, a Steinbeck novel about a family of whiners on their way to a new life in California would now be “The Gripes of Wrath.”
But this time, in order to make it sufficiently challenging for the Niall Cormiers of the world, new items may now include rhymes and near-rhymes, and even involve changes in two or more words. Naill, by the way, is from Las Vegas but now attends St. Pius X school in Albuquerque. The teacher in Las Vegas who challenged him the most: Ray Gallegos at Memorial Middle School.
Here are a few new ones proffered by us gentle folks whose brains work while others sleep:
•A novel by Alan Paton whose protagonist gourmets his way into his nation.
•An English novel by Jane Austen whose heroine feels deeply just doesn’t get it.
•A 1981 Paramount biopic about Joan Crawford, starring Faye Dunaway concerning a daughter’s fondness for a relative uncovered in the catacombs.
•A 1957 crime film based on a short story (and later play) by Agatha Christie. It deals with the trial of a man accused of murder, but the accusers’ case doesn’t hold water.
•Sinatra’s coiffeur contemplates mortality in this 1953 flick.
•A 1995 American comedy by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone in which the Sunrise Kiwanis Club, Las Vegas-San Miguel County Chamber of Commerce and the Lions Club expel these two actresses.
•Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan dream of ovine pursuits but find the northwest not to be very fertile territory.
•Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall become optimistic about total destruction in this 1979 Vietnam-era pic.
•Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are trapped on a horse that will explode if it has to stop.
•Kiefer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon rush to a car wash where the owners offer much more than a wash and rinse, and at no charge.
•Leslie Nielsen falls asleep on his stomach while on the beach (this one requires two word changes).
•In this Shakespeare comedy, Oberon and Titania milk a cow in the third week of June.
•This colorful 1939 novel about a poor mining family of South Wales ponders the total inexperience of the family’s manservant.
•Monica Potter, Michael Wincott, Penelope Ann Miller, Michael Moriarty and Billy Burke star in this 2001 James Patterson psychological suspense thriller about a volleyball team that can’t win a match until it recruits the high-jumping Morgan Freeman, who insists on arriving on court by himself (two changes).
•A 2006 box-office bomb in which the FBI tries to transport cuts of top sirloin and T-bone on top of a two-by-four, from Honolulu to Los Angeles (two changes).
•Arnold Schwarzenegger works as a remorseless, opinionated and efficient hairdresser.
Good luck, Mensans. Answers on my desktop by Wednesday noon.