Puns and Word Play 3 Trivia Quiz

Answer: He soared

The famous carpenter soared too. Soaring is a word usually associated with a wild, free and beautiful bird flying high in the heavens, unfettered and uncaged as all birds should be. Even a few moments of that glory would surely be worth a lifetime in a wired enclosure. Dear me, pardon that poetic spurt. I've just had breakfast.

Fencers - the sports people, not the kind who build lovely picket edifices around your property - use swords of various shapes, sizes and names in their sport. These are known as foils, epees or sabres, with the epee being the heaviest of the three. When using any of these three pieces of equipment in a match or tournament, there are specific rules and strategies to follow. The foil, for example, must only target the torso. It's a fascinating and elegant sport to watch, but very fast as the opponents thrust, parry, feint, lunge and retreat across the mat, so don't blink, or you'll miss their exceptional hits.

The pun for this question combines the use of the word "soared", associated with flying, with a "sword" used by a fencer.

Answer: In a ward

A ward is a large room in a hospital in which patients currently undergoing treatment sleep. Apart from these poor inmates in their assorted hospital beds, wards usually have nurses buzzing in and out doing health checks, carrying bed pans back and forth, taking temperatures and blood pressure and so on. An award is some type of recognition given for meritorious service or achievement.

The pun for this question combines "a ward" in which nurses work, with an "award" - a trophy of honour.

Answer: A debacle

A debacle is a word used to describe anything that has turned out to be a disaster, a huge mess, a total collapse, or a complete fiasco in any way. In the case of the foolish neighbour, he was taken to court, sued, he lost his savings, his wife left him, and his neighbour never spoke to him again.

The pun here rests in the word "debacle" as defined above, with chopping down a beautiful leafy, bark-covered tree. It was de-barked, in other words.

Answer: A drip

A drip is a colloquial term to describe anyone who is considered a bit of an idiot altogether, who usually annoys you in some way, and whose very presence and everything about him is an irritant if you're forced to deal with him. Somebody like that is usually described in Australia as "a bit of a drip".

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was an American artist who was considered to be a leading light in abstract impressionism - if you like that kind of thing. He created his most famous works during his "drip period" from 1947 to 1950. This involved, more or less, dripping paint onto a canvas, giving it some airy fairy sounding name, and selling it for a lot of money. The question has to be asked though as to who were the drips - the artist or the buyers. Personally, I think his work is absolutely hideous, a case of the emperor's new clothes, and that my little granddaughters could do a better job (they're six years old), but art means different things to different people, so that is just an opinion.

The pun for this question combines the use of the word "drip" to describe an annoying idiot, with the "drip" technique of painting used by Jackson Pollock.

Answer: He went wild

The author of the disturbing "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890) was the sorrowful, victimised Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) who was sentenced to two years of hard labour in prison for his involvement with other men. Colloquially speaking, if you're "wild" about something, you're very angry.

The pun for this question combines the surname of the author for the above story - Wilde - with its angry homonym, "wild".

Answer: Disgruntled

One of the many vocalisations associated with pigs is a grunt. This sound, when heard first hand, is a combination of repulsion and hilarity, but what else can you expect from a pig but a grunt. One of my great-grandmothers said that once to a farm worker who criticised her home made butter. She was a bit feisty. Actually, all the Irish great-grannies were. But where was I?

Aha, you could, if you're in a humorous mood, describe a dead pig as being disgruntled, because it no longer grunts. And if anyone is feeling in a grumpy mood, they are sometimes described as being disgruntled. So that is where the puns rest for this question. The farmer was disgruntled because his prize grunter had gone to that great sty in the sky.

Answer: Rhino

Rhinos are large and very dangerous animals native to Africa and the south of Asia. A rye sandwich is one made with rye bread. Bread is made from flour. Flour is made from associated grains, such as rye and wheat. So there is the rye connection to this question.

The pun is the combination of the animal "rhino" with the homonyms "Rye? No", a polite refusal of a query as to what kind of sandwich the gentleman preferred.

Answer: Screamed

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a Norwegian painter who was famous for the psychological themes and symbolisms incorporated into his rather horrible works. One of the most famous of those works is the 1893 "The Scream". Munch described in his diary the inspiration for this ugly work as the following:

"I was walking along the road with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature" (Wikipedia)

Accordingly he painted that bizarre work and titled it as such. At the time his sister was a patient in an insane asylum, and the formless figure in the centre of those swirling, disturbing colours in this work captures perfectly the feeling of terror and of being disoriented and out of synchronisation with the environment all around it. A psychologist or psychiatrist would indeed love this painting, and in that regard, it IS a brilliant work - but as a reasonably normal viewer who loves the works of artists such as Monet, I loathe it.

When people get a fright, they tend to scream - so the pun for this question combines a scream of fright, with the scream of terror featured in this famous painting, and its title.

Answer: A grey nurse

A nurse is a health care professional whose work almost always entails being involved in some fashion with a doctor. Sometimes, indeed, nurses are so in touch with their patients that they really know far more about the entire person whom they are treating, than the doctor. We are, after all, far more than a set of symptoms. Doctors have far more of a focus on the patient's condition. And that's the way it should be. A grey nurse is a large and fearful looking shark that inhabits oceans in warmer climates throughout the world. Oddly enough though, in spite of its terrifying appearance and deadly sharp teeth, the grey nurse is not a man eater, and is, in fact, a rather placid creature. Still, we don't want to tempt it to try a new kind of dish, so stay right away from it, or any other shark you come across in the ocean.

The pun for this question combines the use of a hospital worker known as a nurse, with the grey nurse shark - the former of which works on a regular basis with a doctor, and the latter of which would never dream of really biting such a dedicated professional as a doctor swimming in the ocean.

Answer: Mona

Everyone has surely heard of the famous Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the famous Italian polymath who was incredibly skilled in a wide range of areas - "invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography" (Wikipedia). Yet even famous polymaths have to eat, and no doubt Leonardo would have owned a cook - unless of course he was a famous chef as well. Perhaps, even, his cook's name was Mona or Lisa, who knows? The comical portray of cooks in various books or television shows is usually one with a very sharp tongue, who complains a lot about everything she has to do. She's a moaner in fact.

So the pun here combines the use of the name, Mona (a name of da Vinci's very famous painting, the "Mona Lisa"), with the description of an endlessly complaining cook - a moaner.