mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >

Maybe three weeks ago, I revealed a Brain Game to be “a poem wot I writ myself.” As a bonafide glutton for punishment, I’m doing it again. So here’s a riddle. (Yes, it’s bad.) Good luck!
Scratch the “Frosty,” slide the “the”
This word would fit right there
And if you set it off, you’d have
Hamburger everywhere.What’s the word?
Sir, like you I read Arnold Roth’s Pick a Peck of Puzzles. I’m surprised that you’d crib from it. On the other hand, it’s old enough and obscure enough that your chances of getting away with it were pretty good.
Not that your riddle was a bad one, far from it.
posted by Mark Patterson on 4-7-2009 at 9:08 am
A Bomb in a Bull badum-tish.
posted by GBurns on 4-7-2009 at 9:17 am
I dont get this..?
posted by Brock Sueme on 4-7-2009 at 11:29 am
I didn’t get it either until I read the comment from GBurns. (Nice rimshot, too.) Now it all makes sense.
posted by Aha Moment on 4-7-2009 at 12:09 pm
Mark, while I’m sure I’ve read Roth’s book, he does visual puzzles. I certainly didn’t steal the poem from him, and I’m sure that neither I nor he were the first to discover that “abombinable” sounds like “a bomb in a bull.”
We do sometimes offer old puzzle chestnuts here, sure. And my puzzles are sometimes based on others that I’ve seen. But I’m not trying to “get away” with anything.
Just wanted to set the record straight!
posted by Sandy Wood on 4-7-2009 at 2:14 pm