Spoonerisms with Greg Pliska

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and we’re joined once again by that crazy man, the quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Crazy man.

Hello. What’s up, dude?

I’m foaming at the mouth with excitement.

He has dealy boppers on, or is it that Steve Martin arrow going right through his head, right?

No, there’s our head foes.

Where’s your banjo?

I was thinking about the fact that you always call me Puzzle Guy. You haven’t called me Puzzle Guy in a while.

You’re very puzzling.

Which spoonerizes into…

And you have a quizzical look on your face.

Well, the reason I brought up Puzzle Guy is because if you spoonerize it, it comes up to something that you need to do in order to win the dessert eating contest.

Oh, guzzle pie.

Spoonerism.

Somebody who’s born with a silver spoon in their mouth says those.

Exactly.

To guzzle pie.

Guzzle pie.

Guzzle guy.

Guzzle pie.

There we go.

You know where the term spoonerism comes from, do you?

Archibald.

A country in the middle of Atlantis.

I don’t know.

No, William Archibald Spooner, who was an Oxford University don in the late 19th, early 20th centuries.

But as I understand it, most of the Spoonerisms that are attributed to him weren’t actually his.

But still a lot of fun, though, right?

It’s kind of like, I want to believe that Mark Twain said all those things, even though I know he didn’t.

And it doesn’t matter because they’re great.

Yeah, they’re fun.

He’s repeated to have said once, let us raise our glasses to the queer old dean.

Right.

Meaning, of course, the dear old queen.

A moo-noo-vie.

So I guess your quiz today is about…

Is about spoonerisms.

Zeroed queens.

Exactly.

Now, that’s you guys.

Now, it’s about spoonerisms, which is, just to be clear, the shifting of the initial consonant sounds on a pair of words.

Right.

So I’ll give you definitions for both the original phrase and the spoonerized phrase, and you have to guess the phrases.

Right.

So you give us two definitions and we give you two phrases.

You got it.

And it all comes out even in the end.

For example, common undergraduate college degree and online auction site.

BA and eBay.

You got it.

Move the initial consonant from BA over to the other syllable to get eBay.

Oh, boy.

Okay, here we go.

A place where they fix car dents and a second-rate jazz style.

See, auto shop, shot-o-op.

No, a place where they fix car dents.

How about body shop and shoddy bop?

There you go.

Second rate jazz is shoddy bop.

All right.

Yes, and body shop.

Okay.

All right.

Ronald Reagan’s favorite candy and what you hope your overweight dad didn’t pass down to you.

His belly jeans.

Jelly beans.

Exactly.

Reagan loved those jelly beans.

And you don’t want the belly jeans.

All right.

Here’s one.

I actually love discovering this one.

Vladimir Putin, for example,

Or Otto von Bismarck or one of his neighbors?

Vladimir Putin, at least for many years,

And Otto von Bismarck or one of his neighbors.

Chancellor and Anselture?

I know.

Is it a title?

Is it something like czar, premier?

Putin’s title is or was.

Prime Minister.

Or the other one.

Premier.

The other one.

President.

President of Russia.

President of Russia and resident of Prussia.

Oh, resident of Prussia.

There we go.

Okay.

Sorry, I muffed that one completely.

That’s all right.

I just heard a show about that this morning.

Putin’s a complicated thing there.

You know, a man who fishes with his shirt off.

That’s all I want to say.

Did you see that picture of Putin with his shirt off?

I don’t know.

That’s the beginning of a great colloquialism.

A man who fishes with his shirt off.

Catching his bass in his pants.

I mean, he needs to be in charge of intelligence gathering.

And there he is now laying it all out for the world to see.

Which is like fishing with your shirt off, intelligence gathering.

You know, he’s got this weird floppy hat on that probably hasn’t been washed since they bought it 40 years ago.

Right.

And he’s fishing.

Here you go.

Strongly flavored cinnamon candy and dandruff, for example.

Ew.

Yeah, something you eat and something you don’t eat.

Gross.

A strongly flavored cinnamon candy.

Also another term for Frankfurter.

Red Hot and Head Rot.

Head Rot, for example.

Here you go.

What a very naughty child will get into.

And a pocket of air filled with cosines and tangents.

A pocket of air filled with cosines and tangents?

Yeah, clearly that’s the fanciful one.

Wow.

Okay.

What’s a pocket of air?

A wind shear.

What are you going to get into?

Bubble.

If you’re very naughty.

Oh, trouble.

You’re going to get in.

Double?

Trouble in the first one and bubble in the second one.

I like the way you’re working this out.

Trouble.

What’s with a B?

What goes with trouble that has a B?

Grant Barrett, you get in here or you’re going to be in…

Oh, big trouble.

And?

Trig bubble.

There you go.

Oh, my gosh.

Ding, ding, ding.

We have our horrible joke winner today.

Stuck here in a trig bubble.

It could be a place where you’re safe from trigonometry.

He’s been talking to my mother again, Martha.

He knows.

I sat in more corners.

Okay, here we go.

One of America’s two favorite radio wordsmiths and the attic where the goose is kept.

So John Chiarty and…

Jeffrey Nunberg.

Nefri Junberg.

There we are.

The what?

One of America’s two favorite radio wordsmiths and the attic where the goose is kept.

Grant Barrett and Brant…

Brant Garrett?

The Brant Garrett.

What the hell’s a Brant?

A Brant is a kind of goose.

Oh, come on.

A Brant is a kind of goose.

Look it up.

Oh, yeah.

I will.

It’s funny.

I know how to do that.

It’s right there, right before Couch Rocket.

It’s just in the section right before.

Well, is that it?

That’s all I got.

You know, these always end too quickly for me.

I’m serious.

Even though I get, like, one out of ten, they’re great fun.

Well, I do have like two pages for it that we haven’t done.

Oh, you can save those for a couple months from now and we’ve completely forgotten.

I’ll just do the same ones.

You can just give us the same one, Martha, and we’re like, oh, these are new.

But no, this is great fun, Greg.

I want to thank you for taking all this time.

This is fantastic.

It’s my pleasure.

I always like plumbing to K with you two bird walks.

Greg, Link’s a thought.

We’re yelkum.

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