Looney Tunes Title Puns and Gags Quiz

Answer: Railroad transportation

A whistle stop was a small station at which trains stopped only when signaled to do so. By extension, it became associated with a form of political campaigning in which candidates traveling by rail stopped at small communities and gave speeches from the platform of the last car in the train.

In the 1956 cartoon, rooster Foghorn Leghorn tries to put a stop to a weasel's efforts to steal chickens.

Answer: Congratulations

"Muzzle Tough" is a pun on mazel tov, a term used to express congratulations. It's a Hebrew term used in Yiddish. The other choice referring to a Yiddish term that has gained some currency in Standard American English is to meddle, or "kvetch." As might be expected, the 1954 Sylvester and Tweety cartoon involves many cat and dog set-tos, but what makes the title pun particularly relevant is the urban New York setting.

Answer: A Latin term

The Latin term "vox pop" is a shortening of "vox populi," literally, voice of the people. In journalism, it was used in reference to the opinions of the general public or man in the street. In the 1942 cartoon, a fox, hearing that silver fur foxes are popular, paints himself silver only to learn that it's just his skin that everyone wants.

Answer: A Streetcat Named Sylvester

"A Streetcat Named Sylvester" puns "A Streetcar Named Desire," the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams, later made into the well-known Marlon Brando film. All the others are puns on best-selling books by John Steinbeck: "Cannery Row" (1945), "Of Mice and Men" (1937) and "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939).

Answer: A slang term for burglar or safecracker

The precise origin of the term remains obscure, but it seems to have come from U.S. underworld slang dating back to the early decades of the 20th century. While it often relates specifically to a safecracker or burglar, it can also mean any thief or thug in general, of which several appear in the 1947 Bugs Bunny cartoon "Easter Yeggs."

Answer: A dance

The Bunny hug was a dance popular among the young in the early 20th century. The gag value of the 1951 cartoon title comes does come from Bugs Bunny getting involved in a professional wrestling match, however.

Answer: A college student

A panty raid was an early- to mid-1950s type of college prank in which male students invaded co-eds' quarters in order to steal their undergarments. The 1963 cartoon features a bantam (get it?) rooster's repeated attempts to sneak into the chicken yard to make time with the hens.

Answer: Edward R. Murrow

All of these are well-known newscasters of the 1950s, but it was Edward R. Murrow who hosted the popular prime-time interview program "Person to Person" between 1953-61. The novel format consisted of studio-bound Murrow questioning famous people live in their own homes. Murrow was the subject of the 2005 Oscar-nominated film "Good Night and Good Luck," that phrase being Murrow's trademark sign-off.

The 1960 cartoon is a spoof of the show, with a caricatured Murrow interviewing Bugs Bunny.

Answer: Catch phrase of radio personality

"Greetings, gates!" was a catch phrase of Jerry Colonna, one of Bob Hope's sidekicks on his popular radio show. Along with those phrases and other outlandish vocal mannerisms, Colonna's pop-eyes and walrus mustache made him a prime object of cartoon caricatures.

In addition to this 1943 cartoon, in which he's caricatured as a worm, he voiced and served as a model for the March Hare in Disney's "Alice in Wonderland."

Answer: Quentin Quail

"San Quentin quail" was another term for jailbait. I'll let you explain that one to your kids. Though it's rather startling that any film, much less a cartoon, was given such a title in this period (1946), it's a reminder that theatrical cartoons like the Looney Tunes weren't made just for children. In fact, since movie programs of the time generally always included a cartoon, their success depended on them being funny to adults.

"Quentin Quail" featured quail characters in a take-off on the "Baby Snooks" radio character of entertainer Fanny Brice, herself the subject of Barbra Streisand's 1968 film "Funny Girl." While the phrase "the deuce, you say," might have been inappropriate in polite Victorian-era British society, it was inoffensive by the time the 1956 Daffy Duck/Porky Pig Sherlock Holmes spoof "Deduce, You Say" was made. "Mexican Joyride" refers to the 1944 Cole Porter Broadway musical "Mexican Hayride."