Page 45 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

“Agreed.” Lulu concentrated. “The first one, oddly enough, starts
with ones, a couple of them. That could be ‘eleven’ or maybe ‘one
and one’ or ‘two ones’—or, if we stretch it, ‘twin ones,’ referring to
us. I don’t know what else.”
Bob watched her write down these possibilities. “But you sort of
said it first: ‘ones’. That could have an implied apostrophe, making it
‘one’s’. Or, with a bit of pronunciational license, ‘once’.”
“Very good,” begrudged his sister. “Then there’s an animal. Maybe
one you just ate and we’ll never know what it was.”
“Oh, nonsense,” chided Bob. “It’s quite recognizable, therefore
among the extant. It’s a sheep. In fact, it’s not a ram: no nasty horns.
So it could be—”
“‘Ewe’! Or ‘you’. Now I see how to do this. Next is a can of peas:
‘canopies’? Or just a generic can? Uncle can be tricky! Now what is
‘(2+2)’? ‘Tutu’?”
“The answer is ‘four’. But it is linked to the next picture,” Bob
pointed out. “And that, my dear sister, is something you might not be
acquainted with: a catcher’s mitt.”
“Don’t be so snotty. I’ve got a better grasp of the national pastime
than you do. And my sign-stealing intuition tells me that this
compound is ‘add’ plus ‘mitt’: ‘admit’.”
“And mine says ‘U’ is ‘you’ again. ‘1/2’ could be ‘one over two’ or
‘one slashes two’—or even the obvious: ‘half’ or ‘one half’.”
“Now where’s your license?” Lulu was scribbling at speed. “What
about ‘have’ or ‘halve’? And the next has three parts: the numeral ‘4’
plus some sort of deity plus the numeral ‘10’’”
“No problem,” smiled Bob. “It has to be one word, right? So it’s
‘forgotten’.”

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