Page 40 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

The old man could not contain himself. Up he leapt and shouted:
“You lose, Lulu! You lose, Lulu! Loo use, you-you—uh.”
“—Elspeth’s missing pith helmet!” Lulu finished.
“Ha!” yelled Bob, pounding the table. “You interrupted her,
Uncle: she didn’t hesitate at all or scramble the phrase one bit. You
simply didn’t give her a chance to complete it.”
“I most certainly did,” said Bunster indignantly. “She simply
couldn’t do it.”
“It doesn’t matter, Uncle.” Lulu had regained her normal
schoolmarmish manner and lecturing tone of voice. “That might be a
matter of opinion, but is irrelevant in any event. The fact is that you
went right ahead and took your turn. And you failed to say ‘You lose,
Lulu’ three times correctly. Therefore the strong case is that you lost,
not I.”
“But—but: ‘You lose, Lulu’ was not on a card!” Bunster was
flapping his arms.
“Sorry, Uncle.” Bob was stern. “You gave us the rules before we
started. All you said was, ‘You must say your phrase three times at a
rapid clip without error.’ You did not specify that the tongue-twister
had to reside on a card or, indeed, pre-exist anywhere in physical
space. You picked your phrase, and you could not handle it. Lulu
executed hers perfectly.”
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