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?
A bomb in a bull. Oy.
ReplyDelete(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.)
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteSame, 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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteI too remember seeing this in a paperback book in the 1970s. The book included various puzzles and brain teasers.
ReplyDeleteOne 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.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, 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...
ReplyDeleteI read that book as a kid too. The Hodgepodge Book does come to mind as a possible candidate.
ReplyDeleteThank 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.
ReplyDelete