Yo, readers: Between you and I, if you ain’t gonna speak English good, I’m gonna write less columns. Irregardless of me not doing nothing, I’ll just lay here and think about how I shoulda went to where the action is at.
April Fools! I, your user-friendly local linguist, would never speak and write like that, but we’re coming up on April Fools’ Day, so I’m putting you on without, I hope, putting you off.
What I’m really here for is to play some verbal tricks on you. Language traps are brief posers that test your ability to read or listen carefully and to avoid being fooled by misleading information. If you think precisely as you consider the classic language traps in today’s game, you can avoid being caught by the snapping shut of steel jaws and being dubbed an April fool.
Answers repose at the end of this column.
1. Do they have a fourth of July in England?
2. A doctor is about to operate on a little boy. “This child is my son!” exclaims the doctor. The doctor is correct, yet the doctor is not the boy’s father. What is going on?
3. An airplane crashes into a mountain. Every single passenger dies, but a couple live. How can this be?
4. Two men play five games of checkers, and each wins the same number of games. There are no draws. How can this be?
5. If a bus leaves from Boston to New York City an hour before another bus leaves from New York City to Boston, which bus will be closer to Boston when the two are passing each other?
6. What was the highest mountain on earth before Mount Everest was discovered?
7. What were Alexander Graham Bell’s first words?
8. If two is company and three is a crowd, what are four and five?
9. How much dirt is there in a hole three feet by three feet by three feet?
10. In the United States is it legal for a man to marry his widow’s sister?
11. Pronounce out loud the word formed by each of the following letter series: M-A-C-D-O-N-A-L-D, M-A-C-B-E-T-H, M-A-C-H-I-N-E-R-Y.
12. Read the following sentence slowly and just once, counting the number of F’s:
FINISHED FILES
ARE THE RESULT
OF YEARS OF
SCIENTIFIC STUDY
How many F’s did you find?
13. How many mistakes can you find in this sentence?: “Their are five mistaiks in this sentance.”
14. My name is Stan, and I have five sisters. Each of my sisters has one brother. How many children did my parents have?
15. The number of people in a movie theater doubles every five minutes. After an hour, the theater is full. When was the theater half full?
Answers:
1. Of course. It comes between July 3 and July 5. 2. The doctor is the boy’s mother. 3. The single passengers weren’t married, but the couple is. 4. Each man was playing a different opponent. 5. When the two buses are passing each other, both will be the same distance from Boston. 6. Mount Everest 7. No one knows for sure, but probably “mama” and “dada.” 8. Nine 9. There is no dirt in a hole. 10. If a man has a widow, he is likely to be quite dead. 11. The last word is pronounced masheenery, not MacHinery. 12. Five. Most people get only three. 13. Four. There are only three errors in the sentence, so the word five becomes the fourth mistake. 14. Six — five girls and one boy 15. After 55 minutes.
I’ll be speaking on “The Gift of Age” at the Longevity Fair (Del Mar Fairgrounds) today at 11:30 a.m. I’ll be hanging out there from 11 a.m.–5 p.m., and tomorrow from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. I’d love to meet you at the fair.
Please send your questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com