As Scott said, it is a matter of realizing that the various words have different meanings. There is an entry with the answer to the buffalo one on Wikipedia. Basically it goes something like this:
buffalo=the animal aka bison
Buffalo=the town in upstate New York
buffalo= a verb meaning to bully
So..
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo (that other) Buffalo buffalo buffalo.
It is easier if you substitute alternative words:
Buffalo bisons bully bisons (that other) Buffalo bisons bully.
For the had one, it becomes a bit more contrived. Let's use the seven-had version. In this case I imagine one "had" could be one person's name, another can be another person, and another one can be a type of food. So let's imagine that the person is actually called Malcolm, another is called Billy and the food is called pizza.
Had Malcolm had pizza Billy had had? (..hmm, not sure... it seems wrong without a "the" in front of "pizza")
For the longer version I was thinking of something more like a short conversation...
A: Had Malcolm had pizza?
B: Malcolm had had pizza, had Malcolm.
A: Had Malcolm?
B: Malcolm had! (I said!)
Which with the originals subbed back in would of course look like this:
A: Had Had had had?
B: Had had had had, had Had.
A: Had Had?
B: Had had!
Aren't you all glad I shared this with you? And if you see any flaws in the above, and if you are still awake, shout it out. There is probably a better answer to the seven-had version, but I am too sleepy to think about it any more.
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Parse the sentence, please
The frequent references to Hadd keep reminding me of this sentence parsing problem that my Year 12 (or was it 11?) English teacher gave us all those years ago. You have to punctuate the following to form a semantically correct sentence (or sentences):
had had had had had had had had had had had had
I couldn't get it at the time and I'm not even sure if he ever gave us the answer. And...I think the original might have only involved seven "hads". But I can now think of an answer that works for all those hads, and I think that it is likely there is more than one answer.
I never really understood the concept, to be honest. But a couple of us came across one recently that, now I understand it, allowed me to nut out the had one. The recent one is:
buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo
Let me know if you can do either of them. Answers in a day or two.
had had had had had had had had had had had had
I couldn't get it at the time and I'm not even sure if he ever gave us the answer. And...I think the original might have only involved seven "hads". But I can now think of an answer that works for all those hads, and I think that it is likely there is more than one answer.
I never really understood the concept, to be honest. But a couple of us came across one recently that, now I understand it, allowed me to nut out the had one. The recent one is:
buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo
Let me know if you can do either of them. Answers in a day or two.
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