In praise of wrong answers

Only septuagenarians and above would recall that I was once a Quizling, a star of quiz shows in Australia and internationally. None of the three quizmasters I encountered (Bob Dyer, Philip Brady and Eamonn Andrews) had two neurons to rub together, as I realised when Dyer ruled me as wrong for identifying a work as Furry Lizzie — it was, of course, Beethoven's Für Elise, and I had been about to give that as an addendum, but too late.

This is explained later. Patience!

Ever after, I formatted replies so my jokes came after, like this: "Beethoven's Für Elise, or as we musos say, Furry Lizzie." That sort of silliness began for me with a phrase learned from Nigel Molesworth, which read Caesar adsum iam forte. This, he translated as Caesar had some jam for tea, but it is nonsense that might be taken to mean I, Caesar, am here by chance.

This later inspired me to coin mater tua caligas gerit, now widely found on the interwebs, without attribution, but I made it up for your mother wears army boots, so I have form for Latin jokes.  My reading and listening (to Muir and Norden) had shaped me into a fearful punster and word player.

Now let us jump on twenty years, to a time when I was an emerging anarchist/surrealist bureaucrat, known for getting the right solution, no matter how many evil bastards were rolled in the process.

I don't want to go into too much detail, but I served committees and boards, steering them occasionally, and for one member, thwarting him, because he sought to twist the way mathematics was taught, all over the state, just so he could win a squabble with his head of mathematics. The chair of the maths syllabus committee somehow knew how I had won the Battle of the One-armed Sculptress, and going on what this chair had heard, they briefed me against the Snake. 

Somebody had blabbed, and this chairperson knew more than I liked anybody to know of my methodologies, but it was a good cause, and I was happy to oblige, so I outdid Sir Humphrey Appleby, losing the file, getting the matter dropped from agendas, delaying meetings or bringing them on early, and in the end, the maths head was promoted out of the school, so the Snake dropped it.

The Snake: police
artist's impression

The Snake was clearly Case Suitable for Treatment, and I still had to sit with him in a small technical committee, along with urbane Brother John and dry, acerbic but delightful Professor Don (both of whom, during the next decade, engineered me into desirable {to them and me} jobs). Let's just say, three of us got on very well. 

It happened that  Brother John had instructed me not to rush into a certain matter. I said "So you're saying festina lente?" The brother and the prof nodded approvingly, recognising the Emperor Augustus' line, which means hasten slowly. The Snake did not know it, and demanded an explanation, which came out of nowhere when I said "It means, roughly, Get rotten during Lent." I then offered the real meaning, and we moved on, but I had just found a new hobby.

You see, I was not a voting member of these boards and committees, merely an observer and servant who needed to intervene when they strayed into danger, and answer when asked technical questions. I needed also to have the evidence they might want at hand, but for the most part, the meetings were total silent boredom for me. I could not do crosswords or chess problems, and people noticed my stippled doodles (like The Snake, above), but I could write down what I seem to recall that the Saturday Evening Post used call daffynishuns, and I would simply appear to be an assiduous taker of notes.

In the end, that fed into a computer file, which has now become a book. Here are a few samples:

incest. Sibling ribaldry.

tangent: A dark-complexioned man.

antiphonal. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Dark Ages. An era dominated by knights.

grey nurse. A nurse of a different colour.

White House. A house of a different colour.

open classroom. A way out form of education.

Murphy’s Law. You should always call a spud a spud.

multiple divorcee. A person suffering from annul fixation.

marine environmentalist. Somebody suffering from coral fixation.

acetate. The kind of chemical avoided by the wise chemist, on the ground that he who acetates is lost.

interpenetration. What happens when one sets out to sit on one’s bum and twiddle one’s thumbs, and one gets it wrong way around.

ability. Commonly a serious impediment to success, especially in politics and military affairs. It is probably contagious, since its presence usually causes discomfort in other people.

automania. The act of arguing with yourself. This is generally less satisfactory than arguing with somebody with the same name as yourself, which is technically argumentum ad homonym.

Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge. The pen-name under which Lewis Carroll wrote mathematics, being too embarrassed, as a successful writer, to admit that he also engaged in such frivolous pursuits as symbolic logic.

abstract. 1. In law, to remove. 2. In science, to remove the padding from a report. 3. In art, to remove meaning. Note that this only goes to show how little difference there really is between the different cultures.

Schrödinger’s cat. A cat, locked in a container, where there is an equal chance of the cat being alive or dead. Schrödinger was able to get away with this in his thesis only because at his university, 50% was a pass mark. A cat such as this has eighteen half-lives.

philately. The collection of stamps. Serious collectors specialise in certain kinds of stamps, such as air mail, first day covers, stamps featuring animals, or even forged stamps. This last kind of collecting is highly admired, since imitation is the sincerest form of philately.

inglenook. A small warm corner by a fireplace. In ancient times, the best of these corners were much favoured by witches, who would often huddle together there for warmth after putting all their washing in a cauldron and dancing unclad on a hilltop. Today, one should not judge a nook by its coven.

level playing field. A popular notion among conservatives and economists of malignant disposition. While it sounds good in theory, this ceases to be so good when you realise that the field in question is a rice paddy, the monsoon season is coming, and the economists have cornered the market in boats.

stone tablet. An engraved piece of stone containing information such as “Foo was here”, grain harvest details, or accounts for payment. Normally, the engraving for accounts is only on one side, except in Kurdistan, where it is common to use the second side, allowing people to bill two Kurds with one stone.

snake religions. In some religious communities in America, snakes are an integral part of the worship, the snake being manipulated by the celebrant. In some areas where snakes are uncommon, two congregations have to share a single snake, but this usually proves unworkable, since a snake cannot be a serpent of two pastors.

Tank Stream. A small brook, once the original water supply for the city of Sydney, it is now entirely contained in pipes, and can be seen only by descending shafts which are capped with standard regulation sewer manhole lids. The Tank Stream is not, however, a sewer, showing that you cannot judge a brook by its cover.

oxide. Leather: copper oxide is the skin of a brazen bull, but it must be recognised that this is neither a holy cow nor a golden calf. As a general rule, sacrifices in the vicinity of a golden calf are not a good idea, and this applies also to other activities in the immediate vicinity of any other kinds of young cattle as well. Never do things by calves.

self-paste learning. Otherwise known as cut-and-paste writing (or plagiarism), this method of obtaining a qualification without learning anything, is suitable for those who don’t have a glue about anything else. Once embarked on a career, they make their mark by giving everything a new name and a new logo, while sacking or forcing out anybody with any real ability.

feghoot. 1. The cry of alarm emitted by a young owl, after spotting any bishop, but especially the Bishop of Bingham, donning camouflage gear. 2. A shoelace which has lost its aglet. 3. Among ill-bred people, a story which ends in a dreadful pun, usually coming from an unexpected direction. The author sincerely hopes that none of his readers would approve of such outrageous behaviour.

logarithm. A folk song, sung by workers in the timber industry. Many of these feature the gritty humour of their profession, as in the traditional song about a man killed by a falling tree, The Oak’s on You This Time. These timber workers carry two logs wherever they go, they are accompanied by a wolf-like dog with glowing eyes, and they wear traditional clothing, so they can be recognised either by their songs or by their logs, dog and apparel.

Yates, Yacker. One of Australia’s most famous race callers, capable of an output greater than 400 words per minute at the height of a race. Like a number of other ‘callers’, Brown was also a racehorse owner, and his fastest deliveries usually occurred when one of his own horses was in a leading position, coming into the straight. He cared little for the horses of rival racing commentators, and if the leader was the horse of a different caller, he would deliberately slow his rate right down.

Pekingese. A breed of dog, now quite small, but formerly much larger, and once used as beasts of burden in areas where horses were susceptible to disease. This practice has died out as the dogs were reduced in size, but there is a haunting reference to it when Keats writes of ‘… stout Cortez, silent on a Peke in Darien’. The practice probably originated with knights who found that it was easier to get accommodation when riding a dog in bad weather, as people would feel guilty about “putting a knight out on a dog like this”.

This is fun for all the family, but mainly 12 and up, and it makes a lovely Christmas present. You can get the print version here and the ebook version (cheaper, less useful as a gift) here.