Cassowary Crossing

Dog’s Eye and Dead Horse is a new ABC book by Graham Seal that holds the wealth of Australian rhyming slang. Wait. Did I say wealth? Compared to Cockneys, we’re bloody ’opeless.

Even in the category of ‘famous people’, the list is slim. I found tennis champ Adrian Quist (pissed), keeper Wally Grout (shout) and Bass & Flinders (windows)….Are we serious? How dusty are these names? Surely we can modernise.

Treat this Brainstorm as the chance to enrich our rhyming reputation. Turn any TWO well-known Australians into rhyme, and put both into a sentence. For example Shane Warne (horn) and Don Burke (Merc) =

Some Don cut me off in traffic, so I had to blow the Shane. 

Obviously the names don’t need to be related, but that could be fun. Or maybe your sentence will decide the names, where the two new slang terms are related. Or just go troppo – the Barnaby Joyce (choice) is yours.

Please present suggestions in the vein below, just to give us a fighting chance:

The Brendan (Fevola/bowler) bowled a ripping Max (Walker/yorker).

The dipso ordered a Cheryl (Kernot/Pernod) on the Fifi (box/rocks).

Once Friday drinks are called to a close, the jury will then determine the Prize Turd (third), the Widely Reckoned (second) and Noni Hazlehurst for the nimblest, funniest, most ambitious rhymers in the land. So Pro Hart (start).

Three rhyming surnames await each trio of people below. Pru, John, Noel equals Goward, Howard, Coward. (For offshore browsers, as the example has warned, some trios may have a parochial flavour.)

 Jonathan, Missy, George

Heather, Adam, Stephen

Rachel, Gabrielle, Michelle

Mia, Mike, Bill

Frida, Jean, Christopher

Kerry, Laurie, Steve

Eva, Malcolm, Lindsay

Donald, Shane, Shane

Wayne, Ian, Ian

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK

BB243 SOLUTION: Swap one word in each pair for its own ‘simile’ adjective: strongbox, clear cut, floodlight, stiff cheese, granny flat, highchair, cardsharp, happy hour, common ground, fresh water

No romantic picnic, believe me, trying to adjudicate this week’s Storm results, with a welter of good ideas and tangents, trying to find a couple with opposite meanings. As Valentine’s Day, this bunch of bloggers can offer Cupid a few suggestions for likely targets.

We had the numerical pairings from CRD (Mark Twain & Han Solo), the Cockney from marmaloid (Evan Rachel Wood & Elle Macpherson) and the lavatorial debut of Koan (Winnie the Pooh and Wee Willie Winkie) – all Fran Fine examples of this match-making art.

Loved how we turned to nicknames (Steady & Dizzy), Asian potentates (Sun & Moon) and Mr X’s dyed-in-the-wool duet: Tori Amos and Red Symons – all Eddie Perfect ideas.

So who won, you ask? This lot, with match-maker, honeymoon package and the lucky couple listed:

Bronze to X – a Caribbean cruise (which may not please one newlywed) for such an original pair of opposites, pulled from sport and Year 10 English: Dwayne Bravo & Boo Radley

Silver to marmaloid – a week in the Left Bank, all the medoc you can drink for breaking the monolingual ceiling with another pair of pink-voters – Mal Walden and Bon Scott

Gold to Simon L – heli-skiing in Whistler, so long as they send back photos. (Just to picture these two in the sack is priceless, not to mention the 5-star wordplay.) Away you fly, Chopper Reed and Margaret Thatcher.

 Makes a grown man cry. Please leave all gifts with the mother-in-law.

Stumbled across two more You Tube clips this week, both with a crossword flavour.

The first is Mastermind contestant, Dave Tilley. The guy goes two minutes, answering questions on the history of the crossword, and fares pretty well.

(Mind you, researching a puzzle manuscript of my own at the moment, finishing the draft this month, I also managed a reasonable hit rate. How many will you bag?)

Passing note: just love the smirk when the ‘pseudonym’ question pops up – that inner peace of knowing the solution when the heat is on. (Though don’t apply too much heat to today’s cryptic in the SMH….)

The second clip is comic relief, a short from Hot Fuzz which every adolescent boy and BBQ blatherer says I must see (and eventually will), if only to place this brilliant puzzle scene in context.

Enjoy the black-and-white visions.

Kath Day & Kel Knight are living proof. In the same way Daryl Somers and Shelley Winters may have missed their silk-sheet moment….

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, your Storm this week is to conjure couples – straight or gay, present or past – that can be viewed as verbal opposites.

As with the first two couples, spelling doesn’t need to be precise. Homophones will do, just as couples across the ages, across cultures, are also fine. Fictional characters are likewise. Hence Artemis Fowl and Gary Sweet have some conjugal potential.

You may also involve a first name as the antonym, such as Glenn Mitchell and Faith Hill (glen + hill). Nicknames can also be enlisted: this is the month of amore after all.

To sharpen your Cupid aim, let me recommend these items:

Conrad Black & Patrick White

Yahoo Serious & Conway Twitty

Orlando Bloom & Shane Dye

Gai Waterhouse & Ryan Cross

What more do you want? Get out among the masses and start match-making. Best three couples (and their dating agent) will win the appropriate honeymoon packages after late Friday’s deadline.

Before we finish the Year of the Ox (seeing the Tiger prowl into view on Valentine’s Day), can you convert this week’s ten odd phrases into something more familiar?

 ox box

bell cut

flood feather

board cheese

granny pancake     

kite chair

card tack

Larry hour

muck ground

daisy water

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK

BB242 SOLUTION: ILLINOIS, LOUISIANA, TENNESSEE

Bloody barnstorming return to Brainstorming, you lot. This one took me yonks to adjudicate, with so much quality gear, turning Yankee titles into their Ocker versions.

Not only did we get the Tolkien trilogy via CRD:

Mateship of the Clacker

Coupla Towers – Bewdiful

F*** Me, the King’s Back

But we also got Mary Poppins’ mouthful, courtesy of Mauve:

Beauty! Mallee Madge has biscuits Eskies, yabbies toasters. (Brilliant, and tenfold brilliant if original. Who needs brollies if we can reach these heights with raw wit?)

Plenty of small & sweet morsels too, like

Bingle [Crash] – marmaloid

Mates [Friends] – Mr X

Ooroo [Cheers] – moi

And a special mention to The Too Rights, Too Rights, Too Rights (X), which CRD re-translated into The Yeah No Yeahs, giving the contest a dash of Vicky Pollard too.

But time for trophies. And here we go:

Bronze Bilby to Mr X for Redblackboke [Spiderman]. You can almost see the McHappy merchandise.

Silver Snag to maramloid for Bog In, Hit the Piss, Bloke, Sheila [Eat, Drink, Man, Woman]. While technically a Taiwanese production, the Anglo title has copped a ripper Aussie mauling.

Golden Gumnut to CRD for Beverly Hills 2209. One subtle numerical shift and the migration is complete. Sleight-of-hand genius. Look forward to CSI Menai any season now.

Fan-bloody-tastic work, Stormers. Siya, and Have a Good’n.

Must be a record – four Huh clues in one crossword. The puzzle was Times 8570, hoarded from a few weeks back, and solved at leisure these holidays. Fine challenge too, but then I began glancing at some of my pencil-work, wondering how I managed to weasel the answers.

Maybe you bright lot can tell me, unpicking the four in question, or explaining the mechanics of the next four from assorted Guardian puzzles. Be much obliged if you could.

1)  Channel does prize for this fight, often = RUT  

2)  Explorer bitter when stopping just short = RALEIGH 

3)  All things considered with or without Mary = IN SUM

4)  Crown discovered in my old bag = CORONET 

5)  She was a Scarlet Maid = BARBARA   [Fidelio]

6)  As we speak, but against = ANTI  [Paul]

7)  Novel site for cricket = HEARTH  [Rufus]

8)  Between you and me she’s helping the cook = TWEENY  [Bunthorne]

We good for a new Brainstorm? Let’s see if we can assemble a post-holiday posse to tackle this Oz Day challenge.

The theme is a flip-flop on what Americans do. Movies, books, songs, TV shows: whenever it’s liable to cause any confusion in the US market, the Yanks will make a parochial change. Here are some real examples:

Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone – Harry Potter & the Sorceror’s Stone

Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin – Fleshmarket Alley

Born Survivor with Bear Grylls (great show by the way) – Man versus Wild

The Boat That Rocked – Pirate Radio

Sherbet – Highway

Et cetera. It’s bloody endemic. And time we antipodeans turn the tables. Pick an American title and give it an Aussie tweak. Like these few maybes:

The Postie Always Rings Twice

Off the Piss (Sober by Pink)

Hitched….with Billy Lids

Holden Monaro (Gran Torino)

Where it’s not obvious, supply the import’s original name. Choose across the spectrum: TV, cinema, music, books, even commercial products, flip-flopping from US to Us. Feel free to go Ocker, off-colour, Ruddish…so long as the translated title has a greater chance of local acceptance.

Three prizes to be doled out on Satdee, depending on the list we can generate. The Golden Gumnut. The Silver Snag. And the Bronze Bilby, oyoyoy.

Resisting a visit to the atlas – or the household Scrabble set - what three American states are spelt entirely with one-point Scrabble tiles?

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK

BB241 SOLUTION: Strictly Ballroom; Herbie Fully Loaded; Desperately Seeking Susan; Suddenly 30; Truly, Madly Deeply; Love Actually; You Only Live Twice, For Your Eyes Only