Stinky Pinky Stands in for the Odd Man Out

Yes, my small coterie of constant readers, I realize this is not an Odd Man Tuesday, but, rather than leave you in the lunge (or, as some purists would insist, the lurch), I have decided to provide you with a bit of mental calisthenics: a game of French or British origin, known as Stinky Pinky.

The idea is to form a set of rhyming words (involving a noun and an adjective) to match a definition. For example, a doctor performing a prostate exam might end up with...well, the name of the game. Another example: A badly-running car that was filthy on the outside and chock-full of trash on the inside would be...a sloppy jalopy. Do you get the idea? Of course you do; you are not an idiot! Well, not so far as anyone can tell, at least. Are you ready to play? Too bad, because, here we go.

1. A burglar of art collections who made off with several Leroy Nieman paintings, but overlooked a Monet and a Picasso, would be guilty of...

2. At the end of every clash with Peter Pan, his rival would end up as...

3. If the CIA were to pick up that Al Qaeda operatives were exchanging brownie recipes, they might classify it as...

4. A stuttering confidence man might be said to suffer from...

5. Quinbus Flestrin's lawyer could boast that he had...

6. Adolph Hitler's expression of thanks to Mussolini for sending combat troops to the Russian Front would have been...

7. A place that tried to sell you un-pasteurized milk that had been sitting out in the sun for two weeks would be ...

8. A kitchen device that only had enough capacity to puree one spaghetti noodle at a time would be...

9. A small ceramic figurine of Tom & Ray Magliozzi would be...

That should be enough to hold you for this week, should it not? Rhetorical question: zip it, Einstein. Now all that remains is for you to write the answers on the palm of your hand and blurt them out the next time you get to address a crowd or an envelope.

Oh, speaking of answers, here are the ones to last month's Biblical quiz, Know Your False Prophets. I'm sure you all did very well, but just to confirm your dazzling success, here they are:

1) c; 2) b; 3) b; 4) a; 5) d; 6) d; 7) d; 8) d; 9) d; 10) d; 11) d; 12) w; 13) d; 14) d; 15) ravioli; 16) d; 17) d; 18) some of the above; 19) d; 20) withheld by order of the Entergy Czar. And the answer to the essay question was: Ogden Nash, who is credited with having written the shortest poem:

Fleas

Adam

Had 'em.

Before we move on, your narrator feels compelled to warn you, in your hasty zeal to demonstrate your vast storehouse of knowledge, not to confuse this game with an apostate version, known as "Smelly Digit," where the object is to find a combination that does not rhyme. For example, a bight, clean toilet would not be a spiffy biffy but, rather, a sanitized commode. The officer who pulls you over for speeding would not be a county Mountie, but a cop in a Smokey-the-Bear hat. That, you may rest assured, is not the game we are playing, despite its wild popularity among your canasta crowd throughout the not-so-nifty fifties.

Now that you're up to snort (not snuff, which, we have learned, is hazardous to your health, to say nothing of second-hand snuff), let us put some stink on those pinkies.

1. A burglar of art collections who made off with several Leroy Nieman paintings, but overlooked a Monet and a Picasso, would be guilty of...

a plunder blunder.

2. At the end of every clash with Peter Pan, his rival would end up as...

an irate pirate.

3. If the CIA were to pick up that Al Qaeda operatives were exchanging brownie recipes, they might classify it as...

batter chatter.

4. A stuttering confidence man might be said to suffer from...

a scammer's stammer.

5. Quinbus Flestrin's lawyer could boast that he had...

a giant client.

6. Adolph Hitler's expression of thanks to Mussolini for sending combat troops to the Russian Front would have been...

a Nazi grazi'

7. A place that tried to sell you un-pasteurized milk that had been sitting out in the sun for two weeks would be ...

a scary dairy.

8. A kitchen device that only had enough capacity to puree one spaghetti noodle at a time would be...

a slender blender.

9. A small ceramic figurine of Tom & Ray Magliozzi would be...

a Click-Clack knickknack.

And that, my friends and roamin' countrymen, is how you play the Stinky Pinky. If you want to see another addition sooner, rather than never, it would help to send many suggestions via private message. If, on the other hand, you want to see far less of this game, keep up your excellent work of withholding ideas altogether.

Hasta la pasta

Sources

Ogden Nash

Own study of punmanship.