. . . for a bit of hinky (un)fun.
So you didn’t think 2016 could suck any more? Well, it’s time for another round of the tortures of the damned—our holiday round of hink pinks. For background and another set of these puzzles, see our August contest.
Again, as stolen from the master, Dylan Hicks of The Paris Review, a definition and rules: “Hink pink is a word game in which synonyms, circumlocution, and micronarratives provide clues for rhyming phrases. In the standard explanatory example, an ‘overweight feline’ is a ‘fat cat.’ Hink pinks on that babyish level aspire to lend vocabulary building an air of fun, but more sophisticated puzzles are sometimes mulled over on road trips, in trenches, and in other settings where boredom and tension might be mellowed, to paraphrase Dryden, by the dull sweets of rhyme. . . . A puzzle of disyllabic components is a hinky pinky, followed with decreasing dignity by hinkily pinkilies, hinklediddle pinklediddles, and hinklediddledoo pinklediddledoos. Even with longer puzzles, however, the goal, almost a mandate, is for each syllable to rhyme perfectly, though this perfection might depend on idiosyncratic stress.”
So—“Candle heist” (hinky pinky) would be “Taper caper.”
“First-year in a painterly inferno” (hink pink) would be “Bosch frosh.”
“Fawlty player’s sternutation” (hink pink) would be “Cleese sneeze.”
“Multitalented Jackson has mastered spotted Pacific salmon, too” (hinky pinky) might yield “Bo knows cohoes.”
Rhymes must generally be perfect, with the exception that an s—usually possessive—is allowed at the dead center. For example, “Undomesticated Donald’s Niagara plunge” would presumably be “Feral Trump’s barrel jump.”
Below are another sixty. As always, the first two people to submit forty correct answers get either a one-year subscription or a one-year extension of subscription . . . plus a free copy of the first title from our brand-new publishing imprint, Acre Books, A Very Angry Baby: The Anthology—due this spring.
- Ornamental cap for the gland that secretes melatonin (hinkily pinkily)
- Very poor job, colloquially, of hurling a carnival’s live-animal swallower (hinky pinky)
- Barmier chortling (hinky pinky)
- Wally Cleaver’s failed attempt to pass himself off as author of the Cultural Revolution (hinkily pinkily)
- Maltese Falcon actor’s anecdote about a Yankee shortstop (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Government payout after a Dadaist injured himself while hoisting a urinal in the British Museum? (hinky pinky)
- Hannibal native’s stint as Colombian rebels’ jefe (hinky pinky)
- Ingenious bug bedeviling Hannah Montana (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Literary whaler’s dig at a celebrity chef (hinky pinky)
- Feud between a pop icon and the author of Executioner’s Song (hinkily pinkily)
- Prison for promiscuous bovines (hinky pinky)
- Missile-riding actor, give a quick read to Bleak House! (hinkily pinkily)
- Verbal puzzle for Whedoniacs (hinky pinky)
- Germanic cube of rebaked bread (hinky pinky)
- Worldwide internet community clobbers Louisiana senator for his sex-play in a funeral-home vehicle (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Japanese general’s icy treat (hinky pinky)
- Depression-era president’s ice-cream-pastel blinds (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Barney Fife’s French witticisms? (hinky pinky)
- Would-be presidential assassin Fromme’s luau torch (hinky pinky)
- Maurice Gibb in Melanesia (hinky pinky—all rhyme)
- Mediterranean condiment is in favor of getting a Brazilian (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Cartoon superhero rodent’s mercurial marital partner (hinkily pinkily)
- Babylonian legal code namesake’s sidelight of experimenting with ionizing radiation (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Name for the occasion when a Fascist-friendly poet sprang for diet citrus soft drinks for all (hinkily pinkily–and with a slight rhyme cheat)
- Headline: Internet rumor clearinghouse confirms that the Vatican is now a nuclear power (hinkily pinkily)
- Campus jail in Blacksburg (hinky pinky)
- Psychiatrist of 20th-century American pragmatist philosopher Richard grabs a wee nap (hinkily pinkily)
- Policy analyst’s straightened Afro (hink pink)
- Fictive evangelist’s larder (hinky pinky)
- Little kitchen corner where the microscope’s inventor keeps his Ray Lewis jersey (hinkily pinkily)
- Sea herbivore’s self-regard (hinkily pinkily)
- 18th/19th-century German polymath’s state of Indian seclusion (hinky pinky)
- Classic TV kid’s dim captor (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Liza Bennet’s Bollywood suitor (hinky pinky)
- Apathetic island race of mythology’s welcoming committee for Michelle Obama (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- English diarist’s broken-down jalopies (hink pink)
- Jewel-encrusted aileron (hink pink)
- Roman magistrate’s cute car (hinky pinky)
- Bumbling inspector’s dowry (hinky pinky)
- Compulsively stockpilin’ hatcheter (hinky pinky)
- Recently retired Laker great’s smoothie-shop misadventure (hinkily pinkily)
- Terrible product idea: Small beanbag with glue on its underside (hinkily pinkily)
- What a manager (Domo arigato, sir!) had to do in 1983 when an arena-rock band jonesed for a crispy candy bar but none were available (hinky pinky, but all rhyme)
- Singer/Urban Cowboy club-owner’s shuddering fear of love bites (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Hootenanny featuring the Supremes (hinky pinky)
- Middle Brady sis is tryin’ for an inhalation high and a fiber-filled breakfast at the same time (hinkily pinkily)
- Post-dinger celebration failed to connect with Forrest (hinky pinky)
- Oddball list: Toothy present-day fish, toothy squeaky-clean songstress/star of the 1950s, toothy prehistoric meat-devourer (hinklediddledoo pinklediddledoo)
- Distaff soccer great’s Sorento fraud (hinkily pinkily)
- “Firework” diva’s milking operation, staffed by pirates (hinkily pinkily)
- Actor/Soulquarians’ rapper idly draws instant dorm-pasta (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Polka satirist quailed before 2001 computer (hinky pinky)
- World’s biggest-selling writer’s ululation on a workers’ holiday (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Underwood canned-meat-sponsored pageant winner’s unkempt Dracula creator, familiarly (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Outlaw Country icon’s verbal eruptions about a certain Grizzly Mama (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- A gathering of ten devout yellow henchmen (hinky pinky)
- Please outlaw Common Sense pamphleteer Tom’s sexist explications! (hinky pinky)
- What’s seen when a portly officer’s shirt rides up while securing an arrestee (hinkily pinkily)
- Plow inherited by John Scopes’ defense lawyer (hinklediddle pinklediddle)
- Beyonce’s husband upchucks country short-shorts (hinkily pinkily)
