36 Funny Word Pairs Generated (Sort of Randomly) by BookWorm

. . . BookWorm is a computer game very similar to Boggle. You scan a grid of letters and find strings of letters that make words. You get points for each word. Rare letters are worth more than common letters, and long words are worth more than short words. At the end of each level, the game pauses and tells you the highest-scoring word and the longest word you got on that level. Sometimes these two words make a very silly pair. Here are a few pairs I've collected over the years.

1. Quahog Quaffing

2. Pie Sedation

3. Vole Pleater

4. Fugu Angler

5. Dinky Divots

6. Junk Barrage

7. Pun Teller

8. Run Sinner

9. Alien Didie

10. Hex Treatise

11. Horn Honkers

12. Doozer Patterns

13. Dinner Palate

14. Frat Banger

15. Green Vender

16. Vamp Queens

17. Jeep Scouring

18. Inky Hell

19. Perky Mistletoes

20. Quantile Undertaxing

21. Slug Breeder

22. Queued Spoons

23. Grim Reaper

24. Wars Vain

25. Vacuum Collies

26. Ion Filtering

27. Nacho Renaming

28. Riddler Henchman

29. Beano Battle

30. Jazzy Language

31. Bearded Preambles

32. Fluky Grammar

33. Fork Foundation

34. Feme Trucker

35. Chewy Leapers

36. Zen Dating

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30 Essential New Words

. . . Terms from the used-book business, terms for stupid customers and bad drivers and other everyday annoyances. Those coined by me are marked bdg.


1. book climbing. scouting for books in a location where the amount of refuse, junk, rubble, discarded personal effects, furniture, etc, must be climbed over to get to the books. Book climbing is always risky but especially so in a place where the people in charge don't want to let you climb. bdg (Other bookdealers call this book crawling, digging, or excavation.)

2. cactet. a really bad band. (cacaphony + quartet.) bdg

3. citiot. urban idiot; a person of city origin who comes to the country on vacation and treats the place like his own personal garbage dump. (coined by Crosshair, a fellow online wordgame player, who said the term is about 25 years old.)

4. combateer. bad driver of any ridiculously large vehicle (SUV, pickup, van); such vehicles not only impart a false sense of security to the driver but they impede the visibility of all other drivers. Term based on the fact that Hummers, which are perhaps the most ridiculously large vehicle of all, were designed for use in combat zones. bdg (Click here to see more New Terms for Bad Drivers )

5. crebbit. opposite of debit. bdg

6. cussism. my uncle Fred's religion. bgd

7. custoner. stupid customer. (customer + stoner) bdg 2009

8. derogen. derogatory racial or ethnic term, such as abo, cracker, wetback. There seem to be a million of these terms yet no one has invented a simple word for them. (pronounced der-OGG-en) bdg 1982

9. dickularian. genteel-sounding epithet (or adjective) for a creep. bdg

10. elbow driver. a species of foffer (see below) who drives with one hand at the top of the wheel and the other hand doing something useless. So called because they often end up trying to steer with their elbow, and because they often have their other elbow hanging out the window where it can do no good. bdg 2008

11. emulationism. trade name or folk term for something that sounds precious but is only a cheap imitation, such as German silver (an alloy like pewter) or Alaska sable (skunk fur). bdg 2008. Click here to read my collection of emulationisms.

12. epeople. people who used the internet a lot.

13. fale (n. and adj.). both male and female.

14. flumlum. 1. nonsense. 2. doodad; thingamabob.

15. foff. 1. to do things while driving that you shouldn't do while driving. 2. to drive without proper hand placement on the steering wheel. bdg

16. foffer. 1. one who drives while trying to do something they shouldn't be doing while they drive, such as: using a cell phone; peeling an orange; putting on mascara. 2. one who drives without good hand placement on the steering wheel, such as: only one hand, at the bottom; only one hand, at the top; both hands at the top. bdg

17. foffle. to lose control of the vehicle because you were foffing. bdg

18. hexpo. witch convention.

19. igluet. 1. a small pile of snow. 2. a small statue made of snow. 3. a small igloo. bdg

20. jellot. a zealot who is really wishy washy. bdg 2007

21. moudness. mysterious quality a person has that scares other people away. bdg Jul 2008

22. munro. name invented and placed on a list or in a reference in order to use as test when trying to track down a copyright violator. bdg

23. plorf. the uncanny ability to see perfectly good words that aren't real words in word games. bdg

24. proctomorph. polite-seeming epithet for an asshole. bdg 1970s

25. roft. the last part of a cold / flu / the crud. One who is suffering in the last part of such a condition is rofting; they are a rofter. bdg 2008

26. sgwipe. carcass of a dead animal run over in the road. bdg 1978 (Note: I coined this word years before I ever heard the now common term "road kill," and besides, English needs a word that begins sgw--.)

27. thip. to set something in motion by curling a finger behind your thumb and then releasing the finger with great speed. (We had this word in my family since I was a small child; I don't know where it came from.)

28. thresto. general term for any object that tends to snag on everything. For example, a long coat can be a thresto ("that book must have been knocked over by a thresto") or eczema can cause threstos ("my finger has a thresto on it again"). The adjective is threstic. bdg 2008

29. ueai. the sinking feeling you get when playing a word game and there are way too many vowels to deal with. (pronounced OO-ee-aye) bdg July 2008

30. ultracrepidarian. a literate moron; one who has books on display in their house, just for looks, and never reads. (coined by Babble Rabble, a fellow online wordgame player, Jan 2009.)

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20 New Tongue Twisters

. . . I started collecting tongue twisters in the eighth grade when I was required to learn some for a speech class. This was 1978. Now I have hundreds and my friends and I keep inventing new ones. Here's just a few.


1. Answering machine message.

2. Broad-brimmed black hats.

3. City shellfish.

4. City snowshoes.

5. Fish hatchery.

6. Fish sauce shop.

7. Fresh French fries.

8. Garlic bark.

9. Gig-whip. (Try to say it 7 times.)

10. Horseradish sauce.

11. How long does a fruit fly live?

12. Memorized crash statistics.

13. More ruthless or less ruthless. (Try to say it twice.)

14. People's preferable pickles.

15. She sent a special message by special messenger.

16. Shiny soap suds sailed down the shallow sink.

17. Short Saudi soldiers.

18. Socialist ship.

19. Sockless Crocs. (Try to say it 5 times.)

20. Sweet and sour shrimp.

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47 "Secret" Letter Squares

. . . I list below a group of 47 "secret" letter squares. These are groups of words that all use the same four letters (with a few 5-letter words included). What are they good for? you may well ask. Well, if you're addicted to Boggle, which I am, then having these "letter squares" memorized gives you three, four, or even five, six or seven words for the price of one.

I can see you're still confused. Well, to be more specific, when you're playing Boggle, or any Boggle-based wordgame -- Babble, Bookworm, Scramble, Wordsplay, whatever -- and you see one of these words in a cluster on the grid, then, in most cases, you can get all the words in the group in one fell swoop. (Okay, some of these games don't accept some of these words. No matter. Don't try to remember which game will take which words; just type 'em all as fast as you can.)

Of course, in a perfect game, the four letters will appear in a perfect 2x2 square, but in many cases you can still make all the words even if the letters appear in a 1x2x1 cluster, or some other pattern. As long as they're all together.

Those of you who have played Boggle with me will be shocked that I'm revealing one of my secret strategies. Don't be. This is just one of my strategies and it's not all that secret. I have plenty other strategies that I'm not going to share. 8-)

I have arranged each group starting with the word that I tend to find the most often, followed by less common words, and then the least familiar words at the end of each group. Enjoy!

---o Seven-Word Letter Squares o---

1. lair > liar > rail > rial > lira > aril > lari

2. seat > teas > eats > east > sate > ates > etas

---o Six-Word Letter Squares o---

3. meats > teams > mates > tames > steam > metas

4. spot > stop > tops > pots > post > opts

5. steel > sleet > leets > teels > stele > teles

6. times > mites > items > emits > metis > stime

---o Five-Word Letter Squares o---

7. ales > sale > seal > lase > leas

8. peas > pase > apse > apes > spae

9. deer > dere > dree > reed > rede

10. diet > dite > tide > tied > edit

11. lone > nole > leno > noel > enol

12. hate > haet > heat > eath > thae

13. tale > teal > tael > late > tela

14. seam > same > mesa > mase > maes

15. meat > mate > team > tame > meta

16. miter > mitre > timer > remit > emir

17. pins > spin > snip > nips > psi

18. rose > roes > sore > ores > eros

19. roti > riot > tori > tiro > trio

20. rotis > riots > tiros > trios > trois

---o Four-Word Letter Squares o---

21. said > dais > aids > sadi

22. slap > laps > alps > pals

23. pass > saps > asps > spas

24. anan > nana > anna > naan

25. rats > star > arts > tsar

26. coin > cion > icon > coni

27. send > dens > ends > sned

28. door > rood > odor > ordo

29. seel > lees > eels > else

30. time > mite > item > emit

31. gore > goer > ogre > ergo

32. sink > skin > inks > kins

33. noir > iron > nori > inro

34. lion > loin > lino > noil

35. nose > noes > eons > ones

36. part > tarp > trap > prat

37. rile > lier > lire > riel

38. soil > oils > soli > silo

39. tows > stow > twos > swot

---o And a Few Fun Three-Word Letter Squares o---

40. duel > lude > leud

41. taxer > extra > retax

42. fate > feat > feta

43. huts > shut > tush

44. lane > lean > elan

45. pane > pean > neap

46. nitro > intro > niton

47. fret > reft > tref

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