ABOMINABLE
NOBLE
It helps if you say the words slowly. And think of the two images as a comic, representing two sequential moments in time.
I know I didn't get it from Mike. I've had this pun in my head since elementary school.
Maybe I got it from The Hodgepodge Book? Somehow, I don't think so.
I think that if I saw the original illustrations, I'd recognize them. But where?
10 comments:
A bomb in a bull. Oy.
(Incidentally, I was a little confused about the identity of the
animal at first. A nose-ring might help its legibility as "bull"
rather than "earless cow.")
And no, you didn't get that one from me!
AWFUL, but in the best possible way. I got "Abominable" pretty quickly, and that helped me figure out "Noble," which was harder. (There was no bull in the drawing, you see.)
I just found this page by searching for the key words abominable and noble, because I had the same question: where have I seen this before? Did you ever figure out the answer? I think it may have been an old lithograph reprinted in a Martin Gardner book, but I'm not sure.
Same, may be different book but the one I saw with this but slightly different also had a riddle about Harry and two barbers, some kind of "I swallowed my toothbrush" and "what's a tarantula look like" things... a bunch of stuff. Wish I could find it.
I recall this graphic pun from a book of cartoons and humor in the early to mid-1970's. I don't believe it was the Hodgepodge book which seems to have a later copyright date.
I too remember seeing this in a paperback book in the 1970s. The book included various puzzles and brain teasers.
One showed a boy looking at a truck in front of an overpass that was a fraction of an inch too low for the truck to pass. It said that the boy told the truck driver how to pass the overpass, and that it just took a few minutes and no great effort. The answer was to deflate the tires a bit.
Another was a story about an inventor who told the king that he'd created a substance that would dissolve anything, and that he had it in the bottle he was holding. The king had the guy put in prison for lying; why? (It should have melted the bottle.)
I think the same book also had various match-stick puzzles, where you had to rearrange the sticks to form different shapes.
The "abominable" picture showed a bull who'd just eaten the contents of a box marked with danger/explosive symbols on it. The "noble" picture resembled the one from this article.
Found it: Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers by Martin Gardener.
Excellent, thank you! I also had the book as a kid, forgot the title, and was haunted by this pun. Finally the case is cracked. Now, if I could only find the graphic...
I read that book as a kid too. The Hodgepodge Book does come to mind as a possible candidate.
Thank you, Anon from June 20, 2018! - I ended up here by searching "abominable" and "noble", looking for the book title. It absolutely was Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers by Martin Gardener. I had that book in the '70s.
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