Racing Rebus Redux

A few weeks ago, I said that a listener had sent us a puzzle that’s a mixture of numbers and words.

That is, it was composed of various combinations of the numerals one and two, and it also included the words racehorse, was, and race.

And I found this really confusing at first, and then I realized, oh, this is actually a little repus about two racehorses.

One of them named Eleven, and another horse named Twenty-Two.

And so I read it as Eleven was one racehorse, Twenty-Two was one-two.

Eleven won one race, Twenty-two won one two.

You have to see this written out, and you can see it on our website, waywordradio.org.

But in any case, I was so proud of myself.

But you know what, Grant? I was wrong.

And we heard from many listeners who remembered it from their childhood or their time enjoying joke books or just something that their family used to say.

And they let us know with great glee and pleasure that there was another way to read the little rebus puzzle.

And what is it, Martha?

Well, yeah, you mentioned all the listeners who wrote in, and a whole lot of them were from Australia.

Amanda from Melbourne said, I love that you got to read that silly ditty about the two racehorses.

When I was a kid, it was a favorite to put in our autograph books, but you read it incorrectly. And then she wrote it out for me.

The horses weren’t named 11 and 22. They were named 1-1 and 2-2. And if you read it that way, then it goes, 1-1 was a racehorse, 2-2 was 1-2, 1-1, 1-1, 1 race, and 2-2, 1-1, 1-2.

That’s very good. That’s excellent. And we thank you for your email corrections. We read them all, and sometimes we just silently correct stuff on the text to the website. But, of course, the audio is there. Our mistakes live on forever.

Thank you for putting up with our imperfections. We’re always happy to hear from our listeners in the Antipodes. If you’re in Australia or New Zealand or anywhere nearby, you’ll find a lot of ways to talk to us on our website at waywordradio.org.

And if you’re in the United States and Canada, you can call us toll-free at 1-877-929-9673.