Groan up
As you probably know, the French are very fond of word games, and they were long among bored and snide courtiers’ favourite blood sports. A rival seeking favour with the king could be cut down to size and, with luck, ostracized thanks to a well-honed calembour.
The language itself is rife with homonyms – further boosted by liaisons (when you pronounce the last letter of a word if the word that follows it begins with a vowel, e.g. les arbres is pronounced layzarbres) – so leads to lovely play and ambiguities such as: la fin justifie les moyens (the end justifies the means) transformed into la faim justifie les moyens (hunger justifies the means) – the ear being incapable of distinguishing the two.
So I thought it might be fun until the fun wears off (or until I’m ostracized), to offer up a few of most popular French word games, and see if we can make them work in English (some, of course, probably exist in English but I’m going to pretend they don’t).
We’ll start off easy today with groaners: riddles that appeal to kids and which are a mainstay among the painful jokes you find inside gum wrappers here.
In French they’re called Combles, as the riddle starts ‘Quel est le comble du…’
Which led Raymond Queneau to, ‘le comble de l’inattention, c’est de prendre l’Édit de Nantes pour une Anglaise’ and Jules Renard to, ‘Le comble pour un journaliste, c’est d’être à l’article de sa mort.’
(Translation: dream on. That’s inadequacy not meanness talking. Oh, all right… taking liberties wherever I can find them: The ultimate of optimism is taking Bush’s support of Hispanics as an admission of paranoia. The ultimate for a journalist is to be a bit too wary.)
So the English equivalent is roughly: “What is the ultimate of/for…” which leads to the painful experience of…
(Oh, god, I just realised that I have to think of examples. I’m so lousy at telling jokes. Okay… Please keep in mind, these are meant to appeal to 6-year-olds.)
Q: What is the ultimate for a lawyer?
A: To be caught in his briefs.
What is the ultimate of politeness? (For all you Canadians out there)
To close the window behind you, after pitching yourself out of it.
What is the ultimate for a calendar?
To be in a daze.
What is the ultimate for a painter?
To strike oil.
What is the ultimate for Conrad Black?
To be media barren. (Thank you, darling.)
Got it? All right. I’m sure you can do much better. And I promise that tomorrow’s game will be a little more lofty. Or not.
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Comment
- What’s the ultimate for a John?
Hormones.
— Simon Sep 29, 12:41pm # - What is the ultimate for a big fish? To get debate.
— peggy Sep 30, 2:21pm # - What is the ultimate for a joke?
To be punny!
— bobby Oct 1, 7:02am # - What is the ultimate for a martini?
– To be dry.
— sean Oct 1, 3:35pm # - What is the ultimate for a fiction writer?
– Novel writing – of course.
— sean Oct 1, 3:55pm # - What is the ulitmate for a fast egg? – To be beat!
OK I quit.
— sean Oct 1, 4:09pm # - I do love a bad pun.
— cmb Oct 2, 7:32am # - hahahhaaaa.. u guys are so good at this!!
— jennir Oct 3, 10:35pm # - I agree.
And confess that I too love a bad pun (in case you hadn’t noticed).
— gail Oct 4, 2:02am # - What is the ultimate for one seeking the ultra mate? Still looking!
— Jack Oct 4, 8:29pm # - Q: What’s the ultimate for Andrew Sullivan?
A: To be Bushed after a treeless tirade.
Q: What’s the ultimate for a Web Standards geek?
A: To be unblinkingly anchored to the top layer for a span.
— Eric Oct 7, 9:51am #
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