January 16 2011
Seabirds [BB293]
This week’s Birdbrain seeks birds that who can trade their initial for a C in order to spell a common word. Among the rarer examples are grackle, darter and harrier – making crackle, carter and carrier – while lark yields cark, to die. Beyond these, I netted a clean dozen. Can you?
SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB293 SOLUTION: My 16 were sad/glad, steep/cheap, he/she, ma/pa, make/break, stay/stray, hire/fire, small/tall, fat/flat, bye/hi, wane/gain, cake/flake, kiss/miss, womb/tomb, gush/hush, shrimp/blimp.
Comments
Nib — 16 January at 12:17AM
'Chicken.' said Luke, pointing to his plate.
'There's chicken on the farm and the chicken you eat.'
(Puzzled injoke. Also, this Luke went to The Armidale School. It's an all boys' school. You were probably thinking of New England Girls' School mentioned a page prior to this quote. :P)
Nib — 16 January at 12:23AM
dove - cove
plover- clover
parrot- carrot
finch- cinch
I can C a hummingbird joke on the horizon.
Sam — 16 January at 09:23AM
kite - cite
bittern - cittern
vulture - culture
and my favourite, the:
bustard - custard
Boniface — 16 January at 10:21AM
Vulture, bustard, partridge, eider, wonga, gull, kite, loon (non-pejoratively), fowl, hawk, bittern, tit, manakin, jay, rook.
Sam — 16 January at 10:56AM
and if acronyms are possible:
Tern - CERN
SK — 16 January at 10:54PM
Different category of "birds"-
nurse/curse, nanny/canny, hooker/cooker...which leads to other (less respectful) terms for birds...slapper/clapper, whore/chore, tart/cart. And there are many sub-species, such as Jan/can, Jane/cane, Maddie/caddie, Sandy/candy...
I briefly looked at female family members and other relatives, but good taste prevents posting the results...
Boniface — 17 January at 09:59AM
And now a bird in the answer!
Drake - crake.
** Good taste warning !! **
A shame I couldn't include a close relative of the finch on my list - some nouns just don't convert to verbs.
JT — 17 January at 11:09AM
Two more (relative) rarities:
flicker
grouse