Friday, May 09, 2008

Anagrams, or the shattering of any illusion that I could ever be remotely cool

I think reading Ada, or Ardor by Nabokov was the first time I'd ever thought about anagrams. His writing floors me, particularly when I think about the fact that his writing and word play is so amazing in English, which was not his mother tongue.

And it turns out I love anagrams! I had no idea until the other night, but I do. It makes sense, though, because I love crosswords and logic puzzles.

If you don't know what an anagram is, it's taking a word or words and rearranging the letters to make other actual words. Like, "Lemon Gloria" could be "melon oil rag." The more letters in your names, the more fun.

So there we were, sitting at the bar at Rustico the other night drinking delicious beer. And one of us suggested doing anagrams. Anagrams! Cool!

We love Rustico more than is reasonable. Greg, the beer guy there, always has fantastic suggestions. You can tell him what you like and ask him to choose something new. It's an excellent little beer adventure.

So it was late on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the bar was close to empty. We had space to spread out our napkins and compare.

Because we discovered that the easiest way is to write down the full name and then cross off letters as you go. Which eventually requires writing the names over and over and over.

The best I could do with Nick's name was "I hold down sofa lice." I was rather pleased with myself.

Neither of my names are terribly long, so there's not a lot to work with.

We got to working on Greg's names, and were determined to use "orgy," but didn't quite succeed before it was time to stop with the beer and head home to bed.

Anagrams! Super fun! Try it! Let me know!

13 comments:

  1. You and nick need to go visit my nick for beer next time you're in the area! :-)

    And I love rustico for the mac and cheese. So wrong but so good.

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  3. Given the post, you will appreciate this:

    http://www.genecowan.com/blog/images/dc_metro_anagram.pdf

    If I were giving people directions to my place, I would actually have to tell them (with a straight face, no less) to get off at Ball Mounts...

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  4. Lemon Gloria = Moon Ale Girl

    So very fitting...

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  5. Mayhaps you might like to challenge yourself by seeing if you can come up with as many as this site?

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  6. Jo - We do, absolutely! Maybe we'll try to get there tomorrow, actually. I haven't tried the mac and cheese - have been resisting. But that sounds perfect for cold grey day like today. Yum.

    WiB - Ohhh, I love that, I truly do!

    Amateur de Fromage - That is perfect!

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  7. Dagny - So fun! Your name draws a TON of good ones!

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  8. Lisa! Making me think hard on a Friday! I don't know the rules, I think I cheated:

    Jill Heather Wendling = H will lighten dear Jen

    I tried to include Hell or Glad but failed.

    My name is already a small collection of words

    Heather = He at her or Heat her

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  9. Heather! You are lucky for all the vowels. I used Dagny's site and this is one of the results: Enthrall Hiding Jewel!

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  10. I have a long name! But not enough time to play with anagrams while desperately trying to get all my work done. This will obviously be what I do while drinking tonight, haha.

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  11. Oh, I like that one! Cool site, Dangny. Yes, vowels help and I needed all the help I could get.

    Highlander Jewel Lint made me laugh.

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  12. There are no real anagrams of my name... :-\

    On the other hand, Accident and Error has some fun ones:
    Reincarnated Cord
    A Darned Incorrect
    Cicada Render Torn
    Cardiac Nerd Tenor
    Anticancer Red Rod
    ...lots more

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  13. Everyone knows Nick holds down sofa lice. Something less known is he's also sofa king we Todd it.

    Sorry, best I could do. I don't even know the guy.

    I got nothing.

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