1. If smother fruit is BURY BERRY, or vital wharf is KEY QUAY, can you crack these other sound-alike pairs?GOOSEBERRY has nix to do with geese. The bittersweet fruit comes from German, where beere is berry and Krause means curly. (Seems a leap from goose, right? But words undergo such distortions over time.) Far more deliberately, the Chinese gooseberry was renamed the KIWIFRUIT, a ploy by New Zealand growers in the 1960s to make a catchier label.
CRANBERRY is a second curveball. A favourite in sauces, the fruit links to the German Kraan (or crane, the bird). But again the fruit has no bird connection. Instead, it’s believed, the plant’s outstretched stems resemble a crane’s neck.
Getting back to berries, BOYSENBERRY salutes the fruit’s failed inventor. During the 1920s, a Californian farmer named Rudolph Boysen tried to pioneer a red blackberry, but ran out of money. His plants were later cultivated, and named in his honour.
As for blackberry—that’s obvious. But BlackBerry the smartphone owes its name to a think tank, again in California. According to a 2011 New Yorker article, Lexicon Branding (the professional name inventors) dismissed ProMail and MegaMail for something snappier, and sweeter. The fruit solution also embodies the gadget’s oval keys, mimicking seeds.
1. If smother fruit is BURY BERRY, or vital wharf is KEY QUAY, can you crack these other sound-alike pairs?
(a) At the pub (2,3) _ _ _ _ _
(b) Gobbled tentacles? (3,5) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(c) Lazy hero (4,4) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(d) Sick of eggs? (4,3) _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(e) Tree planter (5,6) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(f) Satisfy requests (6,5) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(g) Taboo poet (6,4) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(h) Taboo musicians (6,4) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(i) Bantam (6,7) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
2. With no goose link, gooseberry is a misnomer. Can you find two seven-letter words in MISNOMER—both M-words appear in plural form—as well as mixing in another letter to make a non-berry fruit?
