That's not really punny enough to be a proper Tom Swifty. The fun in a swifty comes from having the manner of Tom's speaking be non-standardly appropriate for what he's saying, in a way that involves some wordplay. E.g., the one Avi quoted from Scott Alexander's page earlier: “My karate instructor died,” Tom said, desensitized. To make it appropriate you have to read that last word as de-sensei-tized.
With annoying/irritated there's no wordplay. It's perfectly reasonable descriptive prose but it's not a Tom Swifty.
Yes. I gave a couple of hopefully-useful links earlier, one to the Wikipedia article about swifties and one to a few posts on the Slate Star Codex blog that are full of (mostly excellent) swifties.
Explanations of some of mine above (not because I think they're especially excellent but because it's my own that I most clearly have the right to ruin by explaining them :-)): aspiringly = [grade] A spire (-ingly); aspirationally = aspie rational (-ly); slowly = slow [Robert E] Lee; pathetically = Pathé-tic (-ally); reprovingly = re-proving (-ly); articulately = Art-ICU-late (-ly); eirenically = Eire nickel (-ly).
@North Something about "post" in the sense of a wooden post, similar to a tree. You used "tree" and "post" almost together in your question; it seemed like a glorious missed opportunity.
(and, to be clear, the fact that the "ungratefully" one works "straight" as well was entirely deliberate. "Reprovingly" too, but that one is less satisfactory because the straight and wordplay-y meanings are too closely related.)
I am trying to improve my logical thinking and I came across this puzzle problem. I need some help solving the puzzle below.
Two weeks ago, four enthusiasts made sightings of objects in the sky in their neighborhood. Each of the four reported his or her sightings on a different day. The FBI c...
As in McMagister, an absolutely brilliant user who developed a reputation for breezing in to solve riddles that had stumped the community for weeks or months.
It should be noted that even though this answer was posted almost 3 months after I posted the puzzle, McMagister had been inactive and hadn't seen the puzzle until I contacted him on another forum on August 12. It took him only one hour to solve this puzzle! — pacoverflowMay 11 '16 at 22:44
A Tom Swifty (or Tom Swiftie) is a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is attributed. Tom Swifties may be considered a type of wellerism. The standard syntax is for the quoted sentence to be first, followed by the description of the act of speaking. The hypothetical speaker is usually, by convention, called "Tom" (or "he" or "she").
== Origins ==
The name comes from the Tom Swift series of books (1910–present), similar in many ways to the better-known Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, and, like them, produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. In this series...
This is my first riddle - I think it is probably quite an easy one. I'm interested to see how quickly it gets solved. There is an overall theme with four elements to be identified.
The Red Army marches
All throughout the land
Distributing their supplies
So that their lord may stand
...