Word play

[sarahmichigan]

An LJ friend posted on her journal that if she pluralized her screen name, it'd be a palindrome. I thought that was kind of nifty. Palindromes are cool, but then I like all sorts of word play. J. and I used to religiously listen to Will Shortz's Puzzler on NPR on Sunday mornings for years, though we're out of the habit now. We love playing scrabble. I play word games on-line. I have a ton of "variety word puzzles" that I do for fun, and have that listed as one of my interests on LJ.

So-- cryptograms? Crossword puzzles? Anagrams? Making terrible puns? Talking in rhyme or in Pig Latin?

What's your favorite kind of word play?

Comments

[custardfairy.livejournal.com]

All of it! :)

Crosswords, cryptograms, puns, rhyme, anything to do with words and language.

My ex and I used to play this game where one of us would say something like "a handbag under a spell" and the other one would guess the answer (cursed purse). The answer was aways something that rhymed. We'd usually play it at 1am when we were in bed. :)

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

Those are called "Hinky-Pinkies". We used to play that in my family, too, and with some friends of the family.
http://www.teachersdesk.org/vocabhink.html

[custardfairy.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I was just trying to find the name of it. :)

[lefthand.livejournal.com]

I like live wordplay. I like puns, not so much because they are funny but because they show that the person was both listening and thinking about the conversation. I have deep suspicion of people who profess to hate puns. In my experience, this response is not indicative of sharp mind.

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

For some reason, it's chic to despise puns. I seem to get punished for every pun I shed.

Here's one you might appreciate: What writes French literature and bounces really high? Gustave Flubber!

[lefthand.livejournal.com]

That has really always been the fashion. People don't get the puns and it annoys them. I take this as further proof I have something better to do than hang out with this person.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

I get a kick out of most of those things i think... things like palindromes and anagrams are cool just because of the unlikelihood of them. I also just enjoy puns or double-meanings a lot.

In general, though, i like the kinds of things that let additional information be embedded into something more obvious. Double meanings or anagrams are some forms of that, but i also enjoy ones that border on being "non-word" data -- for example, the musically-encoded morse-code message we worked into one of our recordings. I was also fascinated with codes as a kid.

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

Cryptic crosswords are my absolute favorite.

[firecat]

I like crossword puzzles. I don't like games that call on the skill of thinking of words as if they were made out of letters. I don't have that skill.

[theal8r.livejournal.com]

bad puns, spoonerisms, and talking in Ob (think that character on Fat Albert).

and fiddling with slang. I'm a language fiddler.

[lilpeace.livejournal.com]

I love crossword puzzles.

[dubbage42.livejournal.com]

Online Scrabble

I have had a subscription for 2 years and use it *constantly*.

Deb

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

I have a bunch of variety puzzles too. I like crosswords sometimes, kriss krosses, crostics? ..the ones where there are clues then the first letter going down spells a quote, or there is a quote across the top. I really like quotefalls. I'm not very fond of anagrams. I really dislike wordsearches, they just bore me.

Puns...hmm, puns I like in small doses. The trouble is I find a lot of people who once started punning won't stop, and will really set things up for them..so they come off a bit contrived. I really like double entrendres, though I can't spell it at the moment.

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

And oh yeah..foreign languages..speaking them, listening to them (even if I don't understand the one I'm hearing), just the sound of them, and the construction..what the rules are.

[scien.livejournal.com]

I adore word games of all kinds. I like crossword puzzles but suck horribly at cryptic ones. But really I'm up for anything involving words. Words are awesome :) (sayeth the Medieval English Literature student! haha you'd better hope I like words!).

[chimalis.livejournal.com]

Donald is king of bad puns, which crack me up. Sometimes we have pun contests. He can out-Boggle me, and I can out-Scrabble him. He is a worthy adversary in both. I've always loved clean turns of phrase (the song line "She told me to come, but I was already there" comes to mind) best of all as a wordplay, but any kind of clever word game is fun for me. I used to keep track of "um"s during long public speeches given by others, and when that failed, I would do an anagram of the speaker's name. And anagrams and long division have gotten me through many a church service.

[chimalis.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the speech accent archive at GMU has entertained me for many many years, although this may be in my capacity as a linguist/scientist rather than in my capacity as a linguophile/layman.