The Funniest Word in English

Even outside his plays, Neil Simon put forward the proposition that some words were funnier than others. A summation of this idea appears in a monologue in The Sunshine Boys.

Willy Clark:

Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say 'Alka Seltzer' you get a laugh … Words with 'k' in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland … Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny – not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.

He's saying that the "K" sound is funny, since I assume the character was not so poor at spelling. From the above examples, several have multiple "K" sounds.

Bugs Bunny may agree with this "kuh" theory. The trains that took off in his cartoons had as their destination: Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga. As Bugs explained when he became lost, somehow tunneling through to Antarctica or a Foreign Legion post in the Sahara: "I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque."

Even as curmudgeonly a writer as George Mencken subscribed to the K theory, listing such towns as Kalamazoo and Keokuk. Mencken was also responsible for one of my favorite flights of words in his description of the inauguration speech of Warren G. Harding:

    "Setting aside a college professor or two and half a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he    [Harding] takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati. That is to say, he writes the worst English I have even encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

There I go, being anti-Harding. A bold choice in these divisive political days.

Neil Simon was one of a famous group of writers for the classic Sid Caesar Your Show of Shows (writers for Sid Caesar included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, and Larry Gelbart). Those writers once came to the conclusion that the funniest number is 32. I would have gone with "gazillion," although 32 gazillion is damn fine.

Thomas Moore Devlin, writing for the linguistic journal, Babbel Magazine explored the subject of the funniest word. First he derived four rules for what makes a word funny.

    It should be an uncommon word.
    It should ideally have some kind of humorous use in the native language.
    It should have hard stops, especially "k" sounds.
    It should be a benign violation. [that is, it should be offensive or suggestive, but not very.]

From this he [somehow] came to the conclusion that the funniest word is "cucumber," one of the words that appeared on Willy Clark's list.

Long ago, I recall reading a magazine article on Monty Python coming to America. In this article the comedy troupe provided a longish list of words that are inherently funny. I remember not being stirred by most of them, but one did make me guffaw and stands out in my memory: batshit.

The word "batshit" no longer causes me to involuntarily laugh. Maybe it is overused, or maybe my tastes have changed. I think "guano" is funnier. On the other hand, I did chuckle when I read a political commentary that described our current state of affairs as bat-shittery. My own rule of what makes words funny: add an incongruous suffix like -ery or -orama. As Gordie commented in Stand By Me: "And Lardass just sat back and enjoyed what he'd created -- a complete and total barf-o-rama!"

This leads me to the conclusion that many of the funniest words are directed toward my inner adolescent.

Colonel "Bat" Guano from Dr. Strangelove. Played by Keenan Wynn whose father, Ed, famously said on his deathbed: "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."

Robert Beard of alphadictionary.com assembled a list of the 100 funniest words in the English language which he published with commentary in a book he imaginatively titled, "The 100 Funniest Words in the English Language." (Amazon sends me to Amazon.UK for this book. Maybe it is not available in American.)

The entries are a personal selection which he presents in alphabetical order which offends my antialphabeticalmentarianist views. The first word is abibliophobia, the fear of running out of things to read. He does include all-time greats like argle-bargle, collywobbles, and brouhaha, the last of which has a built in laugh.

This site, which extends on Wikipedia's entry on Inherently Funny Words, has a number of additional takes on different approaches to the funniest words as they appear in fiction.

George Carlin is cited as saying "kumquats," "garbanzos," "guacamole," and "succotash" have names that makes them too funny to eat.

Science to the Rescue

There are scientific studies into what is the funniest word because, of course, there are.

One study had a group of 821 English men and women rate approximately 5000 common words on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being the most humorous. The winning words?

Booty (4.32)
Tit (4.25) note: titmouse is inherently more funny than tit.
Booby (4.13)
Hooter (4.13)
Nitwit (4.03)
Twit (4)
Waddle (4)
Tinkle (3.94)
Bebop (3.93)
Egghead (3.92)
Ass (3.92)
Twerp (3.92)

Thankfully the study group recognized these two words were the least funny:

Rape (1.18) and Torture (1.26).

It should be noted that this study looked at the five thousand most common words, so kerfuffle was likely never a choice. Only tinkle had a K sound. A predominant theme was the dirty-but-not-too-dirty-word snort. As School Superintendent Chalmers on the Simpsons once said: Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my vacation at Lake Titicaca. Try to make a joke out of that, Mr. Smart Guy.

The people studying artificial intelligence are trying to make computers funny. In their journals are a number of studies looking at funny words. One such study performed a crowd-source review of 120,000 English words and "phrases." The phrases they list are word pairs like namby pamby or woo woo. It took English speakers from all over the word, with a fair number from India.

Of course each individual didn't rate 120,000 words. The words were divided up in chunks, rated and the top 216 were examined. From there, the funniest were selected.

The funniest words? 

1. asshattery
2. clusterfuck
3. douchebaggery
4. poppycock
5. craptacular
6. cockamamie
7. gobbledegook
8. nincompoops
9. wanker
10. kerfuffle
11. cockle pickers
12. pussyfooting
13. tiddlywinks
14. higgledy piggledy
15. kumquats
16. boondoggle
17. doohickey
18. annus horribilis
19. codswallop
20. shuttlecock

Fourteen of these have K sounds. Seven have multiple K sounds. My personal choice for funniest word is kerfuffle. The complete list of 216 finalists is included below.


I'll end with this tangential anecdote. Once in my pharmacology class, I thought I'd perform an ice-breaker. I asked students to write down their favorite name for a body part. For example, euphonic words like uvula, or my favorite: the zonules of Zinn. Reading through the selections I came across one answer that I accidentally read out loud before editing: my clitoris. At first I thought, this is a male student having a snickering joke at my expense. I reminded the students that the exercise was not about your favorite body part, just your favorite word naming a body part. Then a female student raised her hand and announced, "That was me. I really like my clitoris."


The complete 216 word list mentioned above in descending order:

asshattery, clusterfuck, douchebaggery, poppycock, craptacular, cockamamie, gobbledegook, nincompoops, wanker, kerfuffle, cockle pickers, pussyfooting, tiddlywinks, higgledy piggledy, kumquats, boondoggle, doohickey, annus horribilis, codswallop, shuttlecock, bejeezus, bamboozle, whakapapa, artsy fartsy, pooper scoopers, fugly, dunderheaded, dongles, didgeridoo, dickering, bacon butties, woolly buggers, pooch punt, twaddle, dabbawalas, goober, apeshit, nut butters, hoity toity, glockenspiel, diktats, mollycoddling, pussy willows, bupkis, tighty whities, nut flush, namby pamby, bugaboos, hullaballoo, hoo hah, crapola, jerkbaits, batshit, schnitzels, sexual napalm, arseholes, buffoonery, lollygag, weenies, twat, diddling, cockapoo, boob tube, galumphing, ramrodded, schlubby, poobahs, dickheads, fufu, nutjobs, skedaddle, crack whore, dingbat, bitch slap, razzmatazz, wazoo, schmuck, cock ups, boobies, cummerbunds, stinkbait, gazumped, moobs, bushwhacked, dong, pickleball, rat ass, bootlickers, skivvies, belly putter, spelunking, faffing, spermatogenesis, butt cheeks, blue tits, monkeypox, cuckolded, wingnuts, muffed punt, ballyhoo, niggly, cocksure, oompah, trillion dong, shiitake, cockling, schlocky, portaloos, pupusas, thrust reverser, pooja, schmaltzy, wet noodle, piggeries, weaner, chokecherry, tchotchkes, titties, doodad, troglodyte, nookie, annulus, poo poo, semen samples, nutted, foppish, muumuu, poundage, drunken yobs, yabbies, chub, butt whipping, noobs, ham fisted, pee pee, woo woo, squeegee, flabbergasted, yadda yadda, dangdut, coxless pairs, twerps, tootsies, big honkin, porgies, dangly, guffawing, wussies, thingies, bunkum, wedgie, kooky, knuckleheads, nuttin, mofo, fishmonger, thwack, teats, peewee, cocking, wigwams, red wigglers, priggish, hoopla, poo, twanged, snog, pissy, poofy, newshole, dugong, goop, whacking, viagogo, chuppah, fruitcakes, caboose, cockfights, hippocampus, vindaloo, holeshot, hoodoo, clickety clack, backhoes, loofah, skink, party poopers, civvies, quibble, whizzy, gigolo, bunged, whupping, weevil, spliffs, toonie, gobby, infarct, chuffed, gassy, crotches, chits, proggy, doncha, yodelling, snazzy, fusarium, bitty, warbled, guppies, noshes, dodgems, lard, meerkats, lambast, chawl.


My most recent novel, The Missing Floor, is available in paperback and ebook form. It is the second in my Skyline Mysteries series, the first being Floor 24, available in paperback, ebook, and as an audiobook. 

A dead dame. A psychotic mobster. Alan and
Lorraine Priest seek clues to a murder among Prohibition
gangsters, corrupt police, and Broadway stars.

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of six novels, and numerous short stories and poems. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

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Writing Companions, Suitably Stuffed

A time-and-a-half ago I decided to buy some dolls representing famous figures. These were offered for sale at our local art museum gift shop. Along with satisfying my scientific side (Einstein), and my wife's artistic side (Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh with a detachable ear, and Frida), I bought some literary luminaries including Shakespeare and Poe.

Right now Poe stares my way: his soulful sad eyes unblinking, a raven perched on his shoulder. I could initiate a staring contest, but maybe the raven is waiting for the opportunity to fly over and peck out my eyeballs, something Poe would approve of.

My modest collection inspired me to explore the world of literary figurines. In doing so, I have returned from my venture dizzied by the choices and coveting many of the wonderful creations. How has my writing survived without this plenitude of muses?

There is this Jane Austen action figure. It's poseable. Surely, Jane Kick-Ass Austin would inspire and transform my writing.

Jane Austen Action Figure
All the pride and 30% less prejudice!

The same company sells a Poe action figure, complete with raven on his shoulder, naturally.

On Etsy, the online shopping market for all that is artisan, CELEBRITYwithYOU sells this set of Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot. I am not a clothing fiend, my general attitude is just find something in the closet that doesn't smell funky, but these dolls are worth the price for their costumes alone. They also make custom-made dolls to order, in case you want to inspire yourself with yourself.

The people (person?) at UneekDollDesigns, also an Etsy site, lists 175 male author and 69 female author dolls. They include a wide range of writers. Some examples:

Here is Dorothy L. Sayers.

I doubt that it took nine tailors to make her outfit.

It is difficult for me to hold back from screaming out: I need a Jorge Luis Borges doll and I need it now!

Labyrinth-ific!

In case you need warning against writing too florid of sentences, perhaps you need an Edward Bulwer-Lytton doll. Or maybe it's Rasputin.

 A dark and stormy doll.

Paul Coelho. I enjoyed his book: Meditations on Being a Gazillionaire.

The Poe doll that I own. Made by The Unemployed Philosophers Guild.

And that Raven never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
On that woeful doll of Poe, full of cotton balls and gloom.
And its eyes, so darkly gleaming, held by stitches soon un-seaming,
While a teapot over-steaming, sounds its scream throughout the room,
And so imbued my squeamish dreaming thrills with chills from Usher's tomb.
Hill Ortiz - nom de plume.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

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The Tragedies of X, Y, and Z

With mathematical precision, the detective narrows down the list of potential suspects, placing each into a Venn diagram of motive, means, and opportunity, ultimately revealing the culprit.

          The notorious escape artist, famous for  telling detectives "Examine Your Zippers," and then fleeing while their attention is elsewhere,  is the culprit.

The subjects of this post matches the following three characteristics. They are two people who go by a singular name. They write mystery stories. Their name also happens to be the name of a prominent mystery magazine. There is only one pair of suspects who fits these descriptors: Ellery Queen.

(Alfred Hitchcock was a mystery writer via screen credits.)

Turning Venn diagrams into a lasso that also serves as a noose also happens to be the method by which Ellery Queen's detectives solve crimes.

Ellery Queen was or were the prolific writing duo of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee. Ellery Queen was also the name of their most-frequently-used detective (an early example of cross-marketing?) and the name of the mystery magazine that they started.

For me the joy of Ellery Queen mysteries are the small details of detection. Look, a letter in an envelope has the imprint of a paper clip on both sides while the envelope has a paper clip at one end. Did one paper clip disappear? No, then the envelope would also be marked at both ends. But, wait! The letter was taken from the envelope which had a paper clip on one end, read and then reinserted in reverse. Someone had steamed open the letter! An accumulation of these details, even if they are not perfect individually are cumulatively powerful and satisfying. Classic Sherlock: a world revealed by small details.

For me the taxing part of reading Ellery Queen is that some of conventions are strained. Murder victims leave baffling notes as to the identity of their murderers. The note has to be puzzling, both for the sake of the mystery. and because the murderer would scrub out a non-puzzling note. And so the gobbledy-gook message, when deciphered, solves the mystery. As a one-off notion, I suppose this is a fine clue. But after a few repetitions it feels as false as the victim muttering, "The killer is... gurgle," followed by the victim's one-way trip to the land of no more gurgles. (Meanwhile, a butler named Gurgle skips town.)

I've recently finished reading The Tragedy of X, The Tragedy of Y, and The Tragedy of Z, three Ellery Queen novels* each featuring the great, great Shakespearean actor, Drury Lane, as detective. Having retired from the stage after going deaf, Lane leads a monk-like existence, living in a castle where he is aided by his hunchback assistant, Quasey. Similar retirements await most all ex-actors. Lane lip-reads with perfect precision.


*Ellery Queen released the Drury Lane series (1932-1933) under the pen-name of Barnaby Ross, possibly because Queen already had four books coming out those two years.

Lane, with his magnificent voice shaking the timbers and fluttering the limelights, seems styled after the great, great Shakespearean actors famously lampooned by Jack Benny in Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be.

Still, like most well-seasoned hams, Lane makes for a satisfying, albeit not kosher, meal. I found The Tragedy of X  to be the weakest of the three in the tragedy series. Being a pharmacologist, I didn't buy the poisoning method. Okay, that's just me. The constant willingness of Inspector Thumm to cede the direction of the investigation to the amateur Lane seemed strained as did the who in whodunnit, the revelation of which takes the bulk of an hour's reading for the detective to convey. (Queen's explanations usually only take thirty minutes.)

I found The Tragedy of Y  to be the strongest and most worthy of a modern reading. You don't need to read the first to jump into the second. In this case, Lane investigates the murders of members of the vividly dysfunctional millionaire family, the Hatters. Their name conveniently allows for the pun, the Mad Hatters. In this case, the solution is still overly-complex, but only by half. Furthermore, the pathos of the family feels real and the finale is disturbing.

The Tragedy of Z fits on my list between the other two. In this case, the series is given a curveball. The narration is told in the voice of Patience Thumm, a new character, the daughter of Inspector Thumm. For the first two-thirds of the book, she does the job of detecting and Lane is relegated to the slow lane. She is an independent-minded, forward-thinking female who, sigh, occasionally faints. After she is stumped, Lane takes over the investigating. The solution isn't so-much contrived as the need to present it in the penitentiary's death chamber with the prisoner strapped in the electric chair and all the major suspects gathered round. Or maybe, I should say the setting for the solution is charmingly hokey. I enjoyed it. It had that William Powell (The Thin Man) level of pontification.

Why did I choose to read some classic Queen? I've recently finished reading the top 100 mysteries from lists composed by the Crime Writer's Association (Britain) and the Mystery Writer's of America. This left me with a void. No more checking books off a list, coming ever closer to my goal. So, I turned to the Mystery Writers of Japan who made their own lists of Best "Western" Mystery Story lists in 1985 and 2012. Ellery Queen is their top author, with seven and six entries in the two lists, respectively. Four of Queen's entries were written in the year 1932. The Tragedy of Y is their top novel on one list and second place on the other. The Tragedy of X places fourteenth and twenty-seventh.

The Tragedy of X, Japanese edition.

Now on to Drury Lane's Last Case, the fourth and final entry in the series. It takes discipline to create a memorable detective and then let him go so early.


----------------
Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

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War and Peace by Lee O'Tolstoy

I now understand why Russia is such a large country: the Russians need a lot of room to store their novels. Being a practical people, they also use their novels as furniture, stack them up as steps to make staircases, and employ them as barricades for whenever Cossack pirates attack.

When I was young I remember people talking about the scarcity of energy supplies. What will happen when we run out of oil to make electricity? Me, I was worried about what would happen when we ran out of electrons.

Upon downloading War and Peace onto my Kindle, I am certain I stripped an entire forest of its electrons. Maybe it was an Amazon forest, which would be ironic (Take that Amazon!). My Kindle weighed three pounds more.

War and Peace belongs to that class of classics that is fun to read, i.e., any book which you were not assigned in English class. (Silas Marner, I'm looking at you.)

The first half of the novel introduces us to hundreds of characters. The main ones are:

Count Pierre Bezhukov, bastard son, broods and searches for the meaning of life. He loves not wisely but too well—or, maybe well-enough: in the end, he gets the girl.

Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, cynical, he renounces his royal right to avoid action in battle, joins the army and becomes the Tsarist formerly known as Prince. He undergoes several reversals of fortune, or, as they say in Russian: enutяof. He learns that life is worth living, then dies.

Natasha Rostova. Impetuous, impulsive, and several other imps. After misadventures of the heart, she lives happily-enough ever after.

Princess Hélène Kuragina. Like Catherine the Great, she hungers for big C---asians. Rumor has it that she transformed Petersburg into the city of brotherly love. Pierre fights a duel for her honor which sends him into an existential crisis.

Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon is a petit-four (a petit five-foot-four), but no creme puff. Napoleon possesses one tragic flaw: he thinks he is Napoleon. This would get anyone else locked up in a loony bin, but somehow it works in his favor. He invades Russia with 600 million troops and leaves with two counts wearing perukes and a t-shirt saying, "I conquered Moscow and all I got was this lousy head cold." Vizzini mocks him. Tchaikovsky bombards him with cannon fire.

Other characters include the Kissoffs and their American cousins, the Kickoffs.

Altogether, War and Peace is a great, transformative read. Even now I am looking at a nectarine and asking, "What is this fruit thinking? Why is it here? Do I dare to eat a peach? Are you going to finish those fries?" I eat the nectarine, whether an act of free will or else necessity, I know not.

Footnotes:

1. In Russia, steps are called steppes.
2. The Tsarist formerly known as Prince. He was still known as prince, but I couldn't resist the joke.
3. In England, fries are called chips. In Russia, they are called chippes.
4. Free will for humans. Free Willy for orcas.

Vizzini: Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

  
Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Continue reading →

The War of the Sexes and the Blindness to Sexual Violence.

The recent appearance of Dr. Ford before the U.S. Senate inspired this mix of thoughts which I've been churning in the cement barrel of my brain.


Part One. General Psychological Mutterings.

#1. Individuals tend to see themselves and their actions as reasonable. This is due to the fact that they know what thoughts went into their decisions.

#2. People tend to see the actions of others as mysterious or wrong. They don't know what went into the decisions.

#2a. The exception to rule two is when the actions of others are similar to those we would make. Because of this, cultures tend to view their way of doing things as the reasonable one.

#3. Rule 2a extends to people who share similar looks or share the same background. Part of the reason for this is perspective: aspects of race, gender and background extend to culture, i.e., this is how we do things. Part of this is due to an ease and willingness to accept the viewpoints of ourselves and to separate out a group of "others."

Part Two: Applying this to Politics.

#1. The British Empire saw themselves as reasonable. They were a beacon unto the world and a civilizing force.

#2. The British Empire saw the Irish as ireful, war-like, belligerent, etc.

#3. During the 19th century the British Empire engaged in wars of acquisition and repression, including such crimes against humanity as the two Opium Wars and the invention of concentration camps in the second Boer War (1900).

#3a. In the meantime, the Irish had no foreign wars, only internal squabbles and were starved out of their homes by their absentee landlords, i.e., the British.

The point is not so much that the ruling class writes history, it's that the ruling class is blind to its own history. I suppose I should add a disclaimer that I am not suggesting the British Empire was all villain and that Ireland was all hero.

Part Three: Applying this to Male and Female Perspectives.

#1. In the United States, in cases where the culprit was identified, 90.3% of murderers are men. Not surprisingly, nearly 99% of the perpetrators of rape are men. For aggravated assault, the figure is 83%.

#2. In spite of this, men see themselves as the rational sex.

#3. Men hold most positions of power. Men dominate the national discourse.

#4. Ergo, men excuse their irrationality and even their violence. Even more than that, they are unwilling to see the consequences of their actions.

#4a. Although on a less grave note, I think a good example of this is in the film "Broadcast News." When the news ran an exposé on date rape, the otherwise sympathetic character Albert Altman (played by Albert Brooks) said, "You really blew the lid off of nookie." The women, in union, hissed at him: he didn't get it.

#5. As a general rule, men overlook and excuse their culture of violence toward women. This occurs for both large and small offenses.

#5a. Some men see it as a biological imperative. We as a species are hard-wired for war.


#5b. Some reflect back on their own actions and their own justifications.

For all the above reasons, men just don't get it.

It isn't merely hard-wired. It is also cultural. The United States has a homicide rate four times that of the United Kingdom. (5.35 versus 1.20 per 100,000).

We can change our culture, in fact, culture is always in flux. Homicides in the United States have dropped by 50% in the last twenty-five years. We can edit ourselves, to think beyond the prejudices of our narrow outlooks. Harm is not defined by the perpetrator; it is defined by the victim. We must use other eyes to see.

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Dial M for Murder, Wait Until Dark, and. . .

Frederick Knott wrote three plays during his career. These were clever mysteries, carefully plotted, with whiplash twists. Two, his first and his last, became all-time classic films: Dial M for Murder and Wait Until Dark. This left me with the question: what about the one in the middle?

Write Me a Murder began its life with great promise. It ran for a decent 196 performances on Broadway, starring James Donald, Denholm Elliot and Kim Hunter. It won the 1962 Edgar for Best Mystery Play.

Dial M for Murder was filmed by Hitchcock and stands at the lower end of his top tier films. It has been filmed repeated times in slightly variant forms.

Wait Until Dark was filmed by Terrence Young, a veteran director, best know for this film and three of the four original Bond movies, providing Audrey Hepburn with one of her classic roles.

Write Me a Murder never made it beyond television productions, the first for BBC's Thursday Theater in 1964, and a second by the Australian Broadcasting Company in 1965. Neither have gained the minimum five votes to be rated on IMDB.

From time to time it gets revived in small and moderate-sized theaters, and, coincidentally, there is a current staging going on at Person Playhouse in Pacific Palisades. (Probably produced by Peter Piper.)

And that's it. It has never returned to Broadway or off-Broadway as far as I can find. This intrigued me. I had to investigate, so I ordered a copy of the acting edition.

The story plays out as follows (no major spoilers).

Although the Rodingham estate has been in family hands for 500 years, financial pressures force the heir, Clive Rodingham, to sell. The buyer is a crass businessman, Charles Sturrock, who has secret plans to chop-up the estate and convert the acreage into suburban housing.

Clive's brother, David, writes mysteries. David discovers that Sturrock's wife, Julia shares this and–soon enough–other passions. Together David and Julia write a story about the perfect murder. When they decide to use the plot to kill her husband, they burn the drafts.

Of course there are some twists between the murder plans and the murderers living happily ever after.

So, what's the verdict? Is this play the poor relation of its famous siblings or is it equal in quality?

Write Me a Murder is only available for reading as a stage play. This relegates the action to stage directions. Being a clockwork mystery I found myself struggling to visualize "cross to chair A," while wondering if this direction was significant to the murder. It wasn't.

That aside, Knott has a distinct and economical way of drawing characters. Consider the line "world's champion blind lady" from Wait Until Dark and you know deep down she is tougher than the killers. When Julia tells David she has written twenty stories over seven years and not one was published, David remarks that she must be a real writer: anyone else would have given up.

The story is compelling, richly plotted. There was one major coincidence/twist that drove the plot that I felt was deux ex machina and a couple of minor plot holes which could easily be fixed in an adaptation. I haven't read the play treatments of Dial M for Murder or Wait Until Dark. Maybe minor glitches were repaired in the screenplays. 

Those are quibbles. My final verdict is that Write Me a Murder is worthy of a major revival or a screen treatment. For those who love clever mysteries it is an unjustly neglected masterpiece.

Kim Hunter and Denholm Elliot, original Broadway production.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Continue reading →

The Low Degree of Violence in U.S. - Mexican Border Cities

U.S.-Mexican border cities have been experiencing a historically low rate of violent crimes, at least through 2016, the most recent year with statistics available from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.

In my previous analyses, I looked at the recent rate of violent crimes versus the peak year. In that study I used statistics through 2014 which were the most recent numbers compiled into the city tables. Since then I discovered that the 2015 and 2016 annual reports included information for major cities.

So: this post includes the years 2015 and 2016 and rather than look at single year peaks, I compared the peak five consecutive years to the most recent five consecutive years. Being a different analysis, and less reliant on single year peaks, the numbers come out a bit differently, and are less prone to error.

To be clear: these data, the most recent available, represent crime through the end of the Obama administration and this is not a commentary on subsequent changes.

The five cities chosen were those U.S. cities that had over 100,000 in population and which border Mexico: Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, El Paso, all in Texas, and San Diego, in California. The statistics used were total violent crime rates, murder rates and the rate of rapes, available in the FBI city tables beginning with the year 1985.

Of the cities/measurements, all 15 show lower crime rates in recent years: in most cases, dramatically lower.

Brownsville Violent Crimes. Down by 76.5%
" " Murders. Down by 88.3%
" " Rape. Down by 49.1%

McAllen Violent Crimes. Down by 83.2%
" " Murders. Down by 67.6%
" " Rape. Down by 68.8%
 
Laredo Violent Crimes. Down by 37.7%
" " Murders. Down by 75.7%
" " Rape. Down by 6.1%

While all other city statistics show a 30% drop or more, rapes in Laredo had a negligible drop.

El Paso Violent Crimes. Down by 64.0%
" " Murders. Down by 68.1%
" " Rape. Down by 33.7%


San Diego Violent Crimes. Down by 66.7%
" " Murders. Down by 76.9%
" " Rape. Down by 32.8%

United States. Violent Crimes. Down by 49.3%
" " Murders. Down by 48.6%
" " Rape. Down by 33.7%

Four out of five of the border cities had violent crimes drop at a greater rate than the U.S. as a whole. Five out of five had murder drop at a greater (much greater) rate than the U.S. as a whole. Three out of five of the cities did equal or better in improving their rape statistics. (El Paso tied, San Diego less than one percent behind, and Laredo not doing well.) In total, according to the metrics, the border cities outperformed the U.S. as a whole in 11 out of 15 measures, with one tie.

So, here are the graphs.

Brownsville.

Brownsville, Violent Crimes per 100,000 population. The pink bar represents the average crime rate in the city's peak years of violent crime, which are shown individually in the leftmost bars. The green bar is the average for the five most recent years. FBI UCR statistics are compiled back to 1985.

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Brownsville Murder Rates. The legend corresponds to the one described above.

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Brownsville, Rate of Rape.

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McAllen, Violent Crime Rate.

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McAllen, Murder Rate.

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McAllen, Rate of Rape. The 2012 statistic of 2.2 per 100,000 seems an anomaly. The 2016 numbers are disturbingly high.

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Laredo, Violent Crime Rate.

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Laredo, Murder Rate.

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Laredo, Rate of Rape. Among the 15 sets of city statistics this one has shown marginal improvement and would even be higher if only the last two years were considered.

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El Paso, Violent Crime Rate.

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El Paso, Murder Rate.

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El Paso, Rate of Rape.

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San Diego, Rate of Violent Crimes.

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San Diego, Murder Rate.

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San Diego, Rate of Rape.

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Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Continue reading →

The Low Crime Rates in U.S. Cities along the Mexican Border.

In a previous post, I looked at the rates of violent crimes in border states. Those states bordering Mexico have had a huge drop in violent crime over the past 20-some years, from the time at which violent crime peaked in the United States in 1992 through 2013, the latter year being the latest data available at the time of my analysis.

The four Mexican border states and the drop in their rates of violent crimes.

California:  -63.3%
Arizona: -40.8%
New Mexico: -35.6%
Texas: -50.1%

These findings are based on the the Uniform Crime Reporting statistics. The UCR stats have been assembled by the FBI going back to the 1930s. In recent years the FBI has put their data online allowing analyses of crime rates according to standardized criteria. The annual data are, for the most part, nine months behind with the year 2016 information appearing at the end of September, 2017. In 2017, the Trump administration decided to provide much less detailed information (70% fewer tables) in comparison to previous years and this will affect future assessments.

Looking at Border Cities.

Alright, states are large and changes in crime in Northern California might not reflect activity closer to the border. So I decided to examine crime rates in another way. The FBI also collects crime statistics for cities. There are five cities on the United States-Mexico border which have a population of over 100,000.

Let's get out of the way two problems with the city statistics. First of all, as of now, the statistics available for these cities is through 2014. Secondly, in 2014, four out of five of these cities switched to the new rape definition and did not report the legacy definition numbers. This leads to an artificial bump in both rape and, to a lesser degree, total violent crime statistics for the final year of this analysis. Using national statistics over a period of four years where both definitions are used, the new definition shows a 38.1% higher incidence of rape.This figure should be reliable represents over 400,000 rapes reported with both definitions.

Violent Crime in Border Cities.

I came to this analysis with an open mind. Would I find an increase in violence? On the one hand, national violence statistics have sharply declined since the nineties. On the other hand, the city of Matamoros, on the Mexican side across the border from Brownsville, gets its name from Mata (Spanish for kill) and Moros (Moors). It did have a death cult causing havoc back in the eighties. So, is violence along the border a spooky fact or spooky myth?

The United States as a Whole.

Violent crime in the United States peaked in 1992. Percent down from peak: -51.8%.

Murders. Peaked: 1986*. Percent down from peak: -54.1%.
Rape. Peaked: 1992. Percent down from peak: -38.3%.

The United States Drop in Violent Crime.

US Decline in Violent Crime Rates

US Decline in Murder Rates

US Decline in the Rate of Rapes, Legacy Definition

A Tour of the Five Border Cities with 100,000 or more in population.

Brownsville is on the Texas-Mexican border near the Gulf of Mexico. In 2014 it had a population of 183,433.
Violent crimes. Peaked: 1988. Percent down from peak: -77.3%.
    Adjusting for legacy definition of rape: -78.5%.
Murders. Peaked: 1986. Percent down from peak: -82.9%.
Rape. Peaked: 2006. Percent down from peak: -30.0%.
    Adjusting for legacy definition: -49.3%

Brownsville Decline in Violent Crime Rate

Brownsville Decline in Murder Rate

Brownsville Decline in the Rate of Rape, Legacy Definition

Conclusion: Brownsville was a dangerous place that has greatly decreased its violence. A concerning recent uptick in rape, but still half of its peak.

McAllen.

Moseying up along the Rio Grande, 60 miles to the northwest, we come to the city of McAllen. In 2014 it had a population of 138,122.

Violent crimes. Peaked: 1994. Percent down from peak: -83.2%.
    Adjusting for legacy rape definition: -84.7%
Murders. Peaked: 1986. Percent down from peak: -56.6%.
Rape. Peaked: 2006. Percent down from peak: -75.7%.
    Adjusting for legacy definition: -82.4%.

McAllen, TX, Decline in Violent Crime Rate

McAllen, TX, Decline in Murder Rate

McAllen, TX, Decline in Rate of Rapes, Legacy Definition

Conclusion: McAllen, also, is a much safer place as is shown by its graphs.

Laredo.

Another three hours up the Rio Grande and you come to the streets of Laredo, once the capital of the Republic of the Rio Grande. In 2014, it had a population of 250,994.

Violent crimes. Peaked: 1989. Percent down from peak: -57.0%.
    Adjusting for legacy rape definition: -58.2%
Murders. Peaked: 1986. Percent down from peak: -68.2%.
Rape. Peaked: 2006. Percent down from peak: -11.9%.
    Adjusting for legacy: -36.2%.

Laredo, TX, Decline in Violent Crime Rate

Laredo, TX, Decline in Murder Rate

Laredo, TX, Decline in Rate of Rapes, Legacy Definition

The results are not quite as dramatic as they are for Brownsville and McAllen, but Laredo has also lowered its crime rate. This city had one high year (1989) in overall violent crime and if the comparisons are made to its established high in the 1990s, the decline is closer to a 40% drop. The rape statistics show a marked increase during the 1990s (prior under-reporting?).

El Paso.

The largest city along the Texas-Mexico border is El Paso. In 2014, it had a population of 680,273.

Violent crimes. Peaked: 1993. Percent down from peak: -64.4%.
    Adjusting for legacy rape definition: -65.6%
Murders. Peaked: 1986. Percent down from peak: -67.4%.
Rape. Peaked: 2006. Percent down from peak: -3.1%.
    Adjusting for legacy: -29.9%

El Paso, TX, Decline in Violent Crime Rate

El Paso, TX, Decline in Murder Rate

El Paso, TX, Decline in the Rate of Rape, Legacy Definition

El Paso has dramatically reduced its violent crime and murder rates. As with Laredo, much of the recent higher (but not highest) rate of rape is due to the revised definition.

San Diego, California has more people than the other border cities combined: in 2014, 1,368,960. They have only reported using the legacy rape definition, so there is no distinction necessary when making comparisons.

Violent crimes. Peaked: 1992. Percent down from peak: -70.3%.
Murders. Peaked: 1991. Percent down from peak: -84.4%.
Rape. Peaked: 1992. Percent down from peak: -35.6%.

San Diego, CA, Decline in Violent Crime Rate

San Diego, CA, Decline in Murder Rate

San Diego, CA, Decline in  Rate of Rapes

San Diego has shown a remarkable decrease in violent crime over the past two-plus decades.


Overall Conclusions.

Each of the border cities have shown a drop in violent crime and murder rate greater than that of the nation as a whole. While the U.S. as a whole saw a greater than 50% drop in the rate of violent crimes and murders, rapes only dropped by -38%. Each of the border cities has a lower rate of rape, with McAllen showing an -82.4% decline, and El Paso showing the least, with a-29.9% decline.

In Perspective.

In Nazi Germany, Jews were labelled as criminals and rapists. Typical is a speech of Goebbels wherein he said he does not deny Jews are humans. Neither did he deny the humanness "of murder[er]s, child rapists, thieves and pimps."

Dylan Roof, who gunned down nine African-Americans in a South Carolina church, declared the day before his attack: "you rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go."

The local head of the Ku Klux Klan clarified this sentiment: "A better target for him would have been these gang-bangers, running around rapping, raping, and stealing." [Both statements referenced here.]

Birth of a Presidency.

The same week as the comment quoted immediately above, Donald Trump, when making his speech announcing his bid for the presidency, said:

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best — they're not sending you. They’re not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."


These hateful fantasies have no basis in reality.

A Couple of Statistical Notes.

"Down from peak" is potentially a problematic statistic. It can present artifacts as findings. It works great to define what's going on when you are currently at the peak, or when the peak and trough represent consistent findings. "Down from peak" also does address whether peak violence is occurring. To account for some of its potential bias, the graphs of each year reported in the database are presented.

Legacy Rape. Rape was redefined in 2013 to include more than just forcible rape. In most cases, the legacy definition numbers are included using the older definition which allows for direct comparisons. Overall, the legacy rates compared to the newly defined rates (overall, U.S., per 100,000):

           New  Old (Legacy)
2013  35.9   25.9
2014  37.0   26.6
2015  39.3   28.4
2016  40.4   29.6

Over those four years the revised definition has a 38.1% higher rate than the legacy definition.

The U.S. had its absolute peak in murders in 1980. I chose the year 1986 to be in line with information available from the cities, from 1985 to 2014.

The UCR statistical data tool has been out of service (or just not responsive to my attempts to access it) for about a week and this prevented me from following up on some of the above questions.  Fortunately, I had already downloaded the most relevant data. I hope to write a follow-up piece, soon.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Continue reading →