Tintin Forums

In The Castafiore Emerald, Tintin has to cross a language barrier to solve an enigma (he explains Italian 'Gazza Ladra' = 'Thieving Magpie', on page 60-B4).

In which other album does a similar pun explain a mystery?

Please quote pun, book and page.

The clue is this similar pun explains a mystery that is somehow similar to the 'Thieving Magpie' enigma.

Does it have anything to do with the eagle at the foot of the statue in the end of Red Rackham? Haven't the book available right now so I can't check exactly what it says.

labrador road 26
I can't see an explained pun in connection with St. John's eagle, and it's time to give the answer:

In The Broken Ear (p.15), there's such a pun on 'omelette' & 'tortilla', that gives the name of the invisible passenger aboard the 'City of Lyon'.
Just like the magpie, Tortilla is a thief connected with a jewel, the diamond supposed to be inside the fetish.

p.15-C3: the passenger isn't a man isn't a woman, but ... an omelette!
p.15-D1: D'you know why? Because he's called Tortilla, and in Spanish tortilla means... ... an omelette.

But neither example is a pun, surely? A pun is “a deliberate confusion of similar-sounding words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious.” The two you give are just people using translation to find out what words or phrases mean.

I think labrador road 26 should get the point for providing a much better answer than the supposedly correct answer to what was a vague, ambiguous and inaccurate question from yamilah.

Yamila says that there's no pun in connection with St. John's Eagle, and it's true, there isn't. But by the same criteria, there isn't any pun connected to her question's example either! Rossini's "La Gazza Ladra" meaning "the thieving magpie" is a straight translation from Italian to English (or to Tintin's French in Hergé's original book, of course). A pun involves one word with two different meanings. A language translation involves precisely the opposite: two different words with the same meaning.

(And, in case anyone's wondering, La Gazza Ladra in the context of Rossini's opera does literaly refer to an actual thieving magpie, not to any punning phrase. The plot device is similar, with a servant girl being blamed for the theft of a silver item stolen by the bird. Maybe the girl is called a thieving magpie in the opera before the literal truth is revealed - I don't know - but even so, that would be a metaphor, not a pun. A similar metaphor, incidentally, to calling St John "the Eagle".)

So presumeably having noticed that yamilah didn't actually know what a pun was, labrador road 26 ignored this word in yamilah's question and clue and focussed on the part of the clue which talks about a similarity to the Castafoire Emerald enigma. And labrador's answer is based on some quite neat parallels to the the Castafoire Emerald denoument - the cultural reference to a bird (in the Castafoire Emerald's case a reference an opera, in the Red Rackham case, to a biblical Saint, St John); the appearance of the birds at the place where the jewels are found (the magpie hovering by the round nest, the stone eagle next to the nest-like opened stone globe); and of course the fact that Red Rackham's treasure hoard actually contains emeralds.

Labrador road 26's answer isn't an absolutely precise match for the question, I grant you, but it's a pretty good attempt to find an answer to what, as I've demonstrated, was a very imprecise question! When I read his answer, I thought he'd definitely got it right, and thought "Fair enough, yamilah; your question was worded badly as usual, but that is quite a neat bird-jewel-enigma parallel you've asked us to find, so fair enough."

I think Yamilah's actual answer, however, is a bit weaker than labrador's. If Yamilah's criteria for the answer was indeed that it must contain a pun, then again, "Tortilla equals Omlette" isn't really much of one! Given that Mr Tortilla is a Spanish-speaking person, it's as weak a pun as saying an English-speaking man called Mr Cheese isn't a man but a cheese. A pun would need the playful use of one word with two meanings, ie: "Here comes Mr Tortilla. Don't egg him on." Or, "Here comes Mr Cheese. Better tread Caerphilley."

Admittedly, yamilah's answer involves a language translation, which labrador's doesn't, but the wording of yamilah's question only hints, rather than specifies, that a language translation should be a component of the required answer. The only thing yamilah's actual question does specify is that we're looking for a pun, and, as I've said, it's apparent from her question (and now from her answer) that she doesn't really know what a pun is.

So I think labrador road 26 should be awarded the point for giving an answer that is no less inaccurate than the "real" one, and possibly better. If labrador can't be given a point, then I think yamilah should have a point deducted for posing a meaninglessly phrased question that no solution, including her own, could ever meaningfully answer.

I think unless the moderators/quizmaster can clamp down firmly on impossible and meaninglessly phrased questions being set, people are going to start drifting away from participating in the quiz altogether, which would be a real shame.

Yamilah, some of your questions are clearly phrased, really interesting and have proper answers. Please restrict yourself to these!

(Edit: Looks like jock 123 and I posted simultaneously. I think his dictionary definition of "pun" supports my point.)

I agree jock.

An example of a pun at a restaurant may for instance say: Get a steak in our business [stake] My definition reads: the humorous use of a word or words, which are formed or sounded alike but have different meanings, in such a way as to play on two or more of the possible applications.

In the first example given this might be more appropriate:
Omeletting you know the passenger isn't a man or a woman [I'm letting] It doesn't strictly work but I couldn't resist!

Thanks for your comments. The question was based on data that show there are different types of puns!

About homographic puns that exploit the difference in meaning of words which look alike (and usually sound alike)
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pun
and Spanish tortilla = English omelette
versus Tortilla = the thief's name.

About a pun being 'a humorous play on words'
see http://www.elook.org/dictionary/pun.html
and the three characters (Alonzo Perez, Ramon Bada & the stewart) laughing after the omelette pun.

I'm afraid the eagle's pun is noways explained, but maybe 'labrador road 26' deserves a point for that, after all....

To go along with the points made by jock123, Balthazar and Ranko, the use of 'tortilla' is not a pun by the accepted definition. Neither does the name Tortilla actually explain anything of consequence (knowing that it means 'omlette' does not help advance the plot - it is purely a linguistic aside).

labrador road 26 certainly deserves a point for providing an answer which better fits the criteria of a 'pun', and for the sake of convenience, he may set the next question.

Balthazar said:
I think unless the moderators/quizmaster can clamp down firmly on impossible and meaninglessly phrased questions being set, people are going to start drifting away from participating in the quiz altogether, which would be a real shame.

My official brief is only to keep track of the scores. As issues crop up I am happy to try and resolve them, but really my involvement in the process should be minimal. Often we can't tell whether a question is 'misleading' or 'impossible' until the answer has been revealed! It is up to those who set the questions to make sure that they are as unambiguous as possible.

Over to you, labrador road 26!

Ed

(Posted in response to yamilah's last post, before I read Ed's verdict.)

Yamilah, as we've all patiently explained, a pun is a quite specific type of humourous play on words involving a quite specific type of double meaning. You can't just call anything you like a "pun" because it involves some difference of words, and because three characters are seen laughing! You're out of your depth and you made an error. Why don't you become less defensive about it? Then you might learn something.

yamilah
I'm afraid the eagle's pun is noways explained
Yeah, nobody said it was! I agreed that "the eagle's cross' referering to a saint's nickname isn't really a pun. The reason why it's as good an answer as yours when judged on the pun criterion, is that your question and answer don't contain any proper puns either. Try to keep up!

yamilah
but maybe 'labrador road 26' deserves a point for that, after all....
Sorry, yamilah; didn't quite catch that! It sounded almost like an admission that our criticisms of your question and answer may actually be valid, but your tone was so grudging that it's kind of hard to tell.

I think the phrase you were actually looking for goes:
"Sorry everyone for once more wasting everyone's time with a meaningless question, a situation arising purely from my insistence on writing sentences composed of ludicrous misuses of words in a bizarre attempt to seem intellectual. Congratulations to labrador road 26 for managing to come up with a reasonable answer in spite of the lousy question. A point to him please, scorekeeper, and take a point from me while you're at it. I'll write in English from now on. Sorry once again."

But I expect a paragraph like that is a bit too straightforward for you to ever consider writing!