Writing a Fractured Word Quiz

Answer: Fond trippy yaw

The rules for fractured word quizzes dictate that your clue may not include correct spellings for any of the words that you are fracturing. So a fracture of FunTrivia may not include "fun" or "trivia." In "Fawn trivet awe" the word part "vet" makes the clue sound too different from the answer.

Answer: no punctuation and answers that "roll off the tongue"

Fractured quizzes may NOT include punctuation. Punctuation is disallowed for technical reasons: to ensure that players with different keyboards don't receive false "incorrect" messages. Also, punctuation varies too much. For example, when typing a phrase such as "red, white, and blue," some players will include no commas, some will include one, and others will include two.

It is more fair to quiz takers to fracture a well-known idiomatic phrase such as "easy does it" than a lesser-known or vaguer one such as "five easy steps."

Capitalization/lowercasing doesn't count on FunTrivia.com.

Answer: True

You may include proper nouns in clues as long as the nouns are fairly well known.

Answer: because her first name can be spelled in so many different ways

Players who have never seen "Katharine Hepburn" written might spell her first name "Katherine," "Catherine," "Kathryn," or another way. When writing Fractured Word quizzes it is best to steer clear of such names. My name, for example, might be spelled Robyn, Robin, Robbin, Robbyn, or even Robbynne.

Answer: by using a longer fracture

The guidelines ask writers not to use one-syllable homophones such as "Maine/mane" or "rain/reign." You could lengthen your answer to "the state of Maine" and fracture it as "thus Tay tough May yin" or some such.

Answer: True

If you read a clue such as "Hand Jello cayuse stun" too slowly, you may not be able to figure out that the answer is "Anjelica Huston."

By the way, a cayuse is a Western U.S. pony breed developed by a Native American group called the Cayuse.

Answer: sin knit her

A good fracture has the same number of syllables as the answer. Try to also match all the consonant sounds in the answer.

Answer: Fractured Dog Breeds

As a topic, "Items in Our World" is far too broad. Maybe "Fractured Kitchen Utensils" would work better. The "Famous Quotations" quiz was one of mine (now defunct). It included clues such as "Two bee oar naught tubby." But the answers were too long and included too many possibilities for varying punctuation.

They also broke the "no homophones for one-syllable words" rule. As for the UC Berkeley building theme, I attended Berkeley and can remember the name of only one building, Wheeler Hall. How can one expect Australians or even Kansans to know the answers to a quiz such as this one? An author called JuniorTheJaws wrote the popular "Fractured Dog Breeds" quiz (which players can find in the Fractured Words subcategory under Brain Teasers).

Answer: False

Nope. Does "Jewelry or rabbits?" (my fracture for Julia Roberts) make sense? The clues' nonsensical nature is one of the reasons that they are so much fun to write.

Answer: by asking quiz takers to type in the last word only

Here's a possible way to phrase the question:

Hit saw one turf hull hive
Type in the LAST WORD ONLY!
Hint: One word with 4 letters
Answer: life

This classic 1946 Christmas movie stars James Stewart and Donna Reed.