Last week’s contagious puzzle as previously posted:
Shirley Ellis singing “The Name Game” on American Bandstand.
Over the past week in our household, both Max and Nora have taken a liking to “The Name Game,” the late 1960’s Top 40 Hit. As seen on both American Bandstand and The Merv Griffin Show, the song is both simple to sing and a lot more fun if you are the singer (as compared to the hopefully very patient parent.)
Basically, the song creates rhymes with any name. The rhyme is “forced” by truncating the first letter or sound of the target word, and then repeating it in succession after pre-pending “B,” “F,” and finally “M.” Per the rules of the song, if the starting word/name actually begins with the letter “B,” “F,” or “M,” that specific letter is dropped at that part in the song.
Lost or confused? Here are two samples, with “Nora,” and “Max” as the target words.
Note that in the “Max” sequence, because “Max” begins with “M,” the “M” is omitted in “Fee-fi fo-ax,” (instead of “Fee-fi fo-max.”)
So, how is this a GeekDad Puzzle of the Week?
Most of the time, the created words (like “bora,” “fora,” “mora,” and “bax”) are nonsense words. In some instances, like with “fax,” and “ax,” above, the words created are actual English words.
This week’s GeekDad Puzzle of the Week is to send in as many word sets where all three words created by The Name Game are actual English words, or at least sound like them. Spelling doesn’t necessarily count, and the base words don’t have to be names, but the created words can be.
For this past week, volume was king. I submitted one “entry” into the drawing for each viable root/boot/foot/moot set sent in.
Congratulations to Michael Umbridge for sending in a list of some 200 entries, and for having one drawn at random to win this week’s prize. A $50 Gift Certificate from our friends at ThinkGeek will be on its way shortly!
A special acknowledgement and thanks goes to Randy Slavey for sending in the most entries, a list of 887 root words. I also thank him kindly for sensitively swapping out valid English words that can be created via the Name Game (but that aren’t polite in mixed company) with the word “party.”
Thanks to everyone that sent in a submission, and to the fine folks over at ThinkGeek for supporting GeekDad with the weekly prizes.
Happy puzzling!
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