Tag Archives: puns

These Puzzly Puns Will Echo Through Eternity…

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Oh yes, it’s that time again! It’s time to unleash our puzzly and punny imaginations and engage in a bit of sparkling wordplay!

You may be familiar with the board game Schmovie, hashtag games on Twitter, or the Hashtag Wars segment that used to run on @midnight on Comedy Central.

For years now, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was #PennyDellPuzzleHistory, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles with historical figures, historical moments, and historical quotations!

Examples include: Daisy Defeats Truman, V-Words-Day, or “Ask not what your mystery country can do for you…”

So, without further ado, check out what the puzzlers at PuzzleNation and Penny Dell Puzzles came up with!

Penny Dell Puzzle Historical References!

Oregon Word Trails

Monrows Garden Doctrine

Woodstock Flower Power

Right of Wayflower Compact

Christopher Explore-a-word Columbus

Samson says and Dilemma

Lucky Star of Bethlehem

Lincolnwords

Federalist-a-Crostic Papers

Hannibal Crisscrossing the Alps

Washington Cross Pairs the Delaware

Military Sudo-coup

Alan Turing’s Codebreaking and Cryptocrossing during WWII

Fancy Ninety-Five Theses / Ninety-Five of Diamonds

Transcontinental Railroad Ties

Circles in the Tiananmen Square

Enigmatch-up Machines (for making Codewords)

Middle of the Silk Road

Boston Three-D Party

Sum Totals of ’69

Spanners Armada

The Treaty of Versyllability

The Stars-Spangled On Parade Word Search Banner

Penny Dell Puzzle History Quotes!

“Four Letter Score and seven years ago” / “Plus fours scorewords and seven-up years ago…”

“Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the Word Play?

“Read my Blips: No new text messages…”

“The Buck Stoplines Here” / “The Buck Stops Here & There”

“Ich bin ein Berlinkworder…”

Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a Give-and-Take.”

Churchill: “The Battleship of Britain is about to begin.”

“Letterboxes them eat cake!”

Bill Parcells: “No matter how much you’ve won, no matter how many games, no matter how many championships, no matter how many Super Bowls, you’re not winning now, so you stink.”

Even Shakespeare can get into the hashtag game! From The Tempest:

ALONSO
And Trinculo is reeling ripe. Where should they
Find this grand liquor that hath gilded ’em?—
How camest thou in a pickle?

TRINCULO
I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that,
I fear me, will never out of my bones. I shall not fear flyblowing.

There were also several submissions that deserve their own section, as these intrepid puzzlers went above and beyond.

One player offered this historical summation: HubCaptain Smith Who Became More than a Blip When He Ventured Across and Down with His Ship: A Titanic Tradeoff

Another player created his own puzzly Pledge of Allegiance:

“I pledge Accordion Words, to the flag, of the Untied Mystery States of America.
And to the republic, for which it Anagrams, one nation under Guess Who,
in Decisions, with liberty and Jigsaw Puzzles for all.”

Have you come up with any Penny Dell Puzzle History entries of your own? Let us know! We’d love to see them!

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Farewell, @midnight…

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For a couple of years now, we’ve been doing monthly puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles.

In fact, just last week, we collected and shared all of the responses to our #PennyDellPuzzleMyth hashtag game that combined the names of puzzles from Penny Press and Dell Magazines with various characters and storylines from famous mythical traditions, like Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology.

We’re far from the only ones who play such games online. Hashtag games or hashtag wars are an immensely popular pastime on Twitter, often encouraged by comedy bloggers or pun-based game companies like our friends at Galactic Sneeze, who created Schmovie.

But, when it comes to hashtag games, most if not all of them can be traced back to one interactive television show: @midnight with Chris Hardwick.

This Comedy Central show has aired four nights a week for four years (originally at midnight, as the name suggests, then later on at 11:30 pm), and every night, they’ve offered up a new hashtag war to challenge and entertain with.

Not only do the comedians on the show strut their punny stuff during the game, but anyone on Twitter can contribute their best efforts at games like #CarSongs or #AddALetterRuinAMovie.

And each show, one of the submissions from those Twitter users is chosen as Tweet of the Day and shared on national television. Which is pretty cool.

Not to brag, but PuzzleNation has won Tweet of the Day not once, but twice, back when we used to participate in hashtag wars on a nightly basis.

And although we don’t indulge our hashtag urges more than once a month, we’re grateful for @midnight, not only for their creativity and humor, but for inspiring us to never stop finding fun, puzzly ways to engage our audience.

Sadly, after four years on the air, @midnight will wrap up their impressive run in the next few weeks. I’m sad to see the show go, because many of my favorite lesser-known comedians got a lot of air time on the show and got to show off their hilarious punny chops.

The show comes to an end on its 600th episode, and it will be missed. Thank you to the cast, crew, and host Chris Hardwick for all their hard work, all their silliness, and all their wit.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: December Wordplay edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday! And Merry Christmas!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, we’re returning to the twin subjects of puns and wordplay!

As everyone on our PuzzleNation Facebook page knows, we post memes and puns twice a day every Wednesday in a celebration of linguistic playfulness we call Wordplay Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I shared a few holiday-themed images. But I had so many left over that I thought I’d share them with you today! Please enjoy!

And, of course, I couldn’t resist tossing in a few Darth Vader-themed holiday puns to close out today’s post.

Have a very Merry Christmas, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

 

Get thee to a punnery!

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Wordplay is an integral part of many puzzles, from anagrams and rhymes to letter-shifting and palindromes. But perhaps the most predominant form of wordplay is the pun. (Where would Wordplay Wednesday be without them?)

Sometimes puns are Cryptogram answers or Anagram Magic Squares solutions. Sometimes they’re fiendish crossword puzzle clues that send you one way when your answer lies elsewhere, or they’re the key to figuring out the theme entries in a Thursday New York Times puzzle.

Whether it’s a groaner or one that makes you laugh out loud, a pun can add humor and style to a puzzle.

Some of my fellow puzzlers have some classics to their credit, like Penny Press editor Keith Yarbrough’s “Public hanging” for ART, or crossword guru Eileen Saunders’ “Wombmates?” for TWINS.

But it’s not just in puzzles. Social media has given the art of punnery a new lease of life. Several YouTubers have made puns their stock in trade, like My Drunk Kitchen’s Hannah Hart and You Deserve a Drink’s Mamrie Hart. (No relation.)

Check out this video by musician and pun enthusiast Andrew Huang:

Twitter is also home to some monstrously talented punsmiths. Here are two recent favorites I stumbled across:

And did you know there are even contests and prizes for great puns?

Every May, the O. Henry Pun-Off attracts wordplay aficionados from all over to ply their trade in front of a live audience!

For a primo example, here’s a video of champion Jerzy Gwiazdowski busting out a flurry of geography puns:

What are some of your favorite puns, fellow puzzlers? Are they from puzzles, jokes, Internet memes? Leave them in the comments!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Answers to the PuzzleNation Punderful Costume Game!

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It’s time to reveal the puns behind our second annual PuzzleNation Punderful Costume Game!

We challenged you to figure out these clever costumes, so let’s see how you did!

PuzzleNation’s Punderful Halloween Costume Game!

#1

costume2

She’s a social butterfly!

#2

costume3

That’s one smart cookie!

#3

costume4

It’s snakes on a plane!

#4

costume5

Check out that #hashtag!

[Picture courtesy of the cleverboots at The Thinking Closet.]

#5

costume6

It’s shrimp on the barbie!

#6

costume7

Why, it’s 50 shades of gray, of course!

#7

costume8

Who doesn’t love a Lincoln log?

#8

photo by Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph

Miss Universe, at your service.

#9

costume10

She’s fit as a fiddle!

#10

costume11

It’s Snow (Walter) White!

How did you do, PuzzleNationers? Did this inspire any punny costume ideas for you? Let us know!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Schmovie

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Galactic Sneeze is a relative newcomer to the puzzle/board game scene — they describe themselves as a “fun stuff think tank,” rather than a company — but if their game Schmovie is any example, they definitely live up to that name.

Schmovie is the brainchild of Galactic Sneeze co-founders Bryan Wilson and Sara Farber. (Check out Sara’s session of 5 Questions here!) Schmovie challenges players to conjure up the funniest movie title for a given scenario, based on a roll of the die (to determine the genre of the film) and a card from each of two decks, the “who” deck and the “what” deck.

[So, in this case, we need a drama about a hypersensitive granny.
Can you come up with a better title than “Irritable Mrs. Howell Syndrome”?
My friend suggests “The Slow and the Furious.”]

Each round, one player is the Schmovie Producer. This person rolls the die and flips over the Who and What cards. Every other player writes down their movie titles on their erasable boards, and then turns them in to the Schmovie Producer face down. The Producer shuffles the boards to keep the players anonymous, then reads each title aloud. The Producer then chooses a favorite, and that player earns a Schquid Trophy.

The first player (or team) to earn 5 Schquids wins the game.

This is a terrific game for puzzlers, because creativity and wordplay are such a key component. (Considering how many crossword puzzle clues are puns or plays on words, a facility with groaners is something most puzzlers already have in their skill sets.)

You can write anything as your film title, whether it’s your own creation or a pun based on an established film — whatever gets a bigger laugh or best shows off your cleverness.

And you can even try out Schmovie from the comfort of your own phone or computer. There are frequent rounds of Schmovie played on Twitter and Facebook by the game’s creators, complete with electronic Schquid trophies!

With plenty of replayability and enough cards to keep your wordplay muscles in fighting trim for a long time to come, Schmovie is punderful fun for all.

[Glenn’s note: For anyone who has noticed the similarity between Schmovie’s play mechanic and the @midnight television show’s game #HashtagWars, it seems to be a happy accident that both emerged on the pop culture scene in late 2013. @midnight debuted in October, weeks after Schmovie started hitting stores.]

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!