Puzzle #97: Twice-baked Idioms
Each of the seven sentences below twice reference the same English idiom: once figuratively, once literally. Figure out the idiom in each one.
Standard rules apply: please only solve for one, so more people get a shot at answer. Thanks.
1.
When Felix spontaneously jumped out of Schrodinger’s backpack, the secret of his experiment was finally revealed.
2.
Three years later, Pete was still angry about that time his brother dumped an entire Pringles can on him from above.
3.
While floating in his inner tube, Alex felt a tug on his foot, only to quickly realize it was his friend, just pretending.
4.
“Whoops, I didn’t mean to drop that,” said Michael Jordan as he picked up the pieces of broken dinnerware set.
5.
As Jimmy stood awaiting his mafia execution, he regretted that he never got to fulfill his one dream of taking a nap in the big shark tank.
6.
Chef Charlie made a fabulous, explosive Bananas Foster, but it wasn’t enough to keep him around the restaurant for more than a week.
7.
The manager of the zoo supply store couldn’t keep bananas in stock because his surly teenage stock boy kept pocketing them.
Puzzle #61: Movie tagline translation party
Time for another translation party, wherein we visit translationparty.com, feed it some perfectly sensible English sentences, and get back nonsense. The site takes any English phrase, translates it into Japanese, then back into English, then back into Japanese, then back into English, on and on, until the translations reach an equilibrium. It is frequently hilarious.
(It was also the basis for a puzzle I did four months ago, in case this all sounds familiar.)
Below are thirteen famous and semi-famous movie taglines that have been run through the translationparty.com wringer. Your task: determine which movies they each belong to. Some will be easy, some will be very difficult. In order to make the puzzle fun for as many people as possible, please only solve for one line. (After Monday, I’ll relax that rule.) Happy translating!
- All people are one of the rules of the ring.
- “This statement is consistent with my family,” he said.
- Please wait long to get
- Her legs over his knees, brought a small town with big business.
- So far, the memory of her thumb before his death, must be protected.
- They are, simply because you have a service, they are meant to be like you, are
- Look at that 500 million
- Ruiakira is to please him wet food can be eaten
- Please enjoy a cocktail first. List of Questions
- George and Martha, your faith has been invited to a fun game night
- Then they can not remember the last day to come will never forget
- Comedy is not an active person.
- Death is the answer bears
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
In 1972, William Rapaport composed the above grammatically correct sentence. If you’re having trouble parsing it — and why wouldn’t you, for it seems to be lacking in many of the features we normally associate with, you know, English — head over to its Wikipedia page, which breaks it down. First thing to note is that “buffalo” can be interpreted three ways:
- a. the city of Buffalo, New York, which is used as a noun adjunct in the sentence and is followed by the animal;
- n. the noun buffalo, an animal, in the plural (equivalent to “buffaloes” or “buffalos”), in order to avoid articles;
- v. the verb ”buffalo” meaning to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate.
I assure you, by the time you’re done reading the article, the word “buffalo” will cease to have any meaning at all, and you’ll wonder how it ever did.
Related: List of linguistic example sentences
