Thursday, May 09, 2013

Why no chicken?

No peeking now, sports fans. The Red Wings are playing Anaheim in the first round of the NHL playoffs. One of these heds from the hometown fishwrap commemorates a Detroit win; the other, a loss. Can you tell which is which?

Need another hint? In one, the Wings won 3-2 in overtime. In the other, the Wings lost 3-2 in overtime. Getting warmer?

 Yes, yes, we should all pause and give thanks that Pavel Datsyuk's play has yet to produce anything on the order of "DATS THE TICKET!!!!!" Notwithstanding all that , let us suggest that if your audience cannot tell at better than chance levels whether your preferred cliche means that the Ducks or the Wings won or lost, you should either find a new cliche or -- let's get radical here -- consider writing headlines that tell people why today is different from yesterday.

Should you be scoring along at home: "Quack in their armor" was a Wings victory, "quack in the wall" was a Wings loss. Now please log in to the comments and tell me why you should continue writing stupid pun heds.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Brian B said...

They could at least try for some variety.

WINGS' PLAY FITS THE BILL

DETROIT S-TEALS A WIN

WINGS DOWN ANAHEIM

WINGS HAVE A MERG-ANSWER FOR ANAHEIM

ANAHEIM IS DUCKLING UNDER THE PRESSURE

See, it's not that hard.

12:04 AM, May 10, 2013  
Anonymous Ed Latham said...

The trouble is in tabloid-dominated Britain that they become rather expected.

I remember a while ago that someone on the radio was doing a roundup of the newspaper headlines a after a Wolverhampton Wanderers defeat, and it was 'Thrown to the Wolves, "Howl to the moon' 'Bite the silver bullet' etc etc all the way down, and then my paper came up with 'Wanderers fall to sixth straight defeat' and the presenter stopped and said: "Oh. That's a bit ... dull."

In fact, I fear to report, for a while Match of the Day would decorate its goals-and-scores round-up at the end of the show with an actual ragout of a ripe tabloid headline from the match report as a sort of caption to the action. So you can feel the pressure to come up with something. (But don't worry - I'm not going to ... quack.)

2:59 AM, May 10, 2013  
Anonymous the next Prescott Niles said...

Also problematic, I'd say, is that the template "Another [NOUN] in the wall" is (assuming an average reader of roughly middle age) at this point the exclusive property of Pink Floyd, Ltd., and so whatever crappy pun you come up with pretty much has to be on "brick," and not on "crack" or anything else that might in other contexts be understood as a part, feature, or attribute of a wall.

11:25 AM, May 17, 2013  

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