Forgotten the capital of Turkey or Spain?
Or what language they speak in Peru or Bahrain?
Who's on the back of a twenty pound note
or how many plays old Shakespeare wrote?
Can't remember the time zone you're in
when you arrive in Bali, Bangkok or Berlin?
How many bottles in a Jereboam
or how many lines there are in a Sonnet poem?
What was invented by Tim Berners-Lee.
Which countries border the Caspian Sea?
Who killed John Lennon? Who shot the Pope?
Who directed Psycho? Who starred in Rope?
Don't write all this down with indelible ink
just remember it all by Thinking a Link!
Thinkalink - Making the Forgettable Unforgettable?
There is nothing new about playing around with the meaning, sound or order of words. Shakespeare, after all, based much of his humour around puns and double entendres. Today, homophones continue to provide the ammunition for millions of the jokes - old and new - that routinely fill cheap Christmas crackers. The gag about a husband taking his wife on holiday to the Caribbean - "Jamaica? No, she came of her own accord" - is now hackneyed in the extreme, but is probably the best-known example of the convention.
Rather more highbrow use of the technique is regularly made by compilers of crosswords in British broadsheets. Solvers of cryptic crosswords in newspapers such as The Times and The Daily Telegraph, for example, will instantly be alerted by the words "we hear" to the use of a homophone as the basis for a clue.
"I have always enjoyed solving as well as compiling word-games such as cryptic crosswords," says Andy Salmon, the brains behind Thinkalink, a new concept in word-play. "But in exploring the potential use of puns and homophones, it struck me that creative word-play of this kind can do much more than form the basis for throwaway jokes or crossword clues." It was the potential for the use of word-play as an enjoyable educational tool, appealing to children and adults alike, that was behind the evolution and development of Thinkalink.
