WRITING NERDS

by Mike Selinker and Kaitlyn Chantry

Solution: KNOBBY-KNUCKLED

As in the title-a rhyme of "Fighting Words"-each Shakespearean speaker's insult has been replaced by a rhyming word. (The articles "a" and "the" have all been replaced by "duh.")

Kent (King Lear)
"A stone-cutter or painter could not have made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade."

Nurse (Romeo and Juliet)
"What saucy merchant was this, that was so full of his ropery?"

Oberon (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
"Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?"

Brutus (Julius Caesar)
"What should the wars do with these jigging fools?"

Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing)
"Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such a face as yours were."

Young Siward (Macbeth)
"Thou call'st thyself a hotter name than any is in hell."

Katharine (Love's Labours Lost)
"No, I'll not be your half. Take all, and wean it; it may prove an ox."

Nym (Henry V)
"I will cut thy throat, one time or other, in fair terms: that is the humour of it."

Ulysses (Troilus and Cressida)
"O heavens, what some men do, while some men leave to do!"

Caliban (The Tempest)
"What a pied ninny's this! Thou scurvy patch!"

Katharina (The Taming of the Shrew)
"Asses are made to bear, and so are you."

Leontes (The Winter's Tale)
"My wife's a hobby-horse, deserves a name as rank as any flax-wench that puts to before her troth-plight."

Emilia (Othello)
"Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil."

Dick the Butcher (Henry VI, part 2)
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

The acrostic of these speakers is KNOBBY-KNUCKLED.