Weekend Word Wrap: Paging Doctor

Now that the summer is unofficially over, and we're all wishing it wasn't, I thought one way at least to pretend like casual Fridays are still in effect is to play a little casual word game.

For those wordies who haven't yet had the fun of playing this one, the game is called "Paging Dr." and goes like this:

You begin your sentence with "Paging Dr._____" and then fill in the blank with a made-up doctor's name, using the last name first, and then the full name, like this: "Paging Dr. Pearson, Dr. Will Pearson."

Now, the object of the game is to come up with a clever word pun in place of Will Pearson - one word that could be broken in half to form a fictitious proper name. For example: if your word is "elocution" the Paging Dr. pun would go thusly:

"Paging Dr. Cution, Dr. Ella Cution."

Or if the word is "edifice" you have "Paging Dr. Ifice, Dr. Ed Ifice."

Obviously this is a game best played with two or more people, out loud. Because the puns don't work as well in print. They're meant to be heard. And yes, the rules do permit slight alterations in pronunciation "“ as I changed the "elo" in "elocution" to "ella" to make the pun work. Furthermore, you should always keep the funny pronunciation of the back half of the word intact. So where you might be inclined to pronounce "Ifice" with a long I-vowel sound, it's much funnier to keep the short I-vowel, pronouncing "Ifice" just as you do in the word "edifice."

One of my best friends back East taught me this game some years ago and she suggests putting your best "Public Address Voice" into it for even more fun.

As always, we'd love to hear your Paging Doctors!