Brain Teasers
"Hurry and Solve This," Said Tom Swiftly.
Language
Language brain teasers are those that involve the English language. You need to think about and manipulate words and letters.Language
Here are some Tom Swifties for you to complete.
A Tom Swifty is a play on words. Tom's sentence is quoted, and the description of the way he is said to speak is a pun. Both meanings of the pun could be true. For example: "I'm working as fast as I can, but the boat is still taking on water," said Tom balefully. Balefully refers to his tone of speaking, and also to his action (bailing).
Choose one of the listed words below to fill each blank in the following sentences:
1. "The bank must not want my money," said Tom ___________.
2. "Camping is fun," said Tom __________.
3. "The inmate escaped jail down a bed-sheet rope," said Tom ___________.
4. "I put out the blazing jack-o-lantern," said Tom __________.
5. "I'm definitely taller since I started taking this strange potion," said Tom __________.
6. "The surgeon removed my left ventricle," said Tom __________.
And your word choices are:
delightedly
unaccountably
gruesomely
bewilderingly
intently
frankly
condescendingly
half-heartedly.
A Tom Swifty is a play on words. Tom's sentence is quoted, and the description of the way he is said to speak is a pun. Both meanings of the pun could be true. For example: "I'm working as fast as I can, but the boat is still taking on water," said Tom balefully. Balefully refers to his tone of speaking, and also to his action (bailing).
Choose one of the listed words below to fill each blank in the following sentences:
1. "The bank must not want my money," said Tom ___________.
2. "Camping is fun," said Tom __________.
3. "The inmate escaped jail down a bed-sheet rope," said Tom ___________.
4. "I put out the blazing jack-o-lantern," said Tom __________.
5. "I'm definitely taller since I started taking this strange potion," said Tom __________.
6. "The surgeon removed my left ventricle," said Tom __________.
And your word choices are:
delightedly
unaccountably
gruesomely
bewilderingly
intently
frankly
condescendingly
half-heartedly.
Answer
1. unaccountably (un-account)2. intently (in-tent)
3. condescendingly (con-descending)
4. delightedly (de-lighted)
5. gruesomely (grew-some)
6. half-heartedly (half-hearted)
According to Wikipedia, the name comes from the Tom Swift series of books, produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. In this series, the young scientist hero underwent adventures involving rocket ships, ray-guns and other things he had invented.
A stylistic idiosyncrasy of this series was that the author, "Victor Appleton," went to great trouble to avoid repetition of the unadorned word "said." Since many adverbs end in "ly" this kind of pun was originally called a Tom Swiftly, the archetypal example being "'We must hurry,' said Tom Swiftly." This evolved to just "Tom Swifty", the term we use today.
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Comments
Oh! The puns. They hurt so good. .
Number 2 through 5, all terrible wonderful puns!
Very fun.
Number 2 through 5, all terrible wonderful puns!
Very fun.
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