Wordplay Spin-offs & Extended Cuts

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Beyond Wordplay

9 min readMay 26, 2022

Streaming some of our favorites on “ABC-TV”

It’s been a while since we’ve posted in this space, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been enjoying our own brand of alphabetical entertainment. Here is some fun we’ve engaged in recently, with loyal readers on our Twitter feed (@BeyondWordplay) and other social media.

TV Spin-offs

We challenged the faithful to:

Make a TV show way more interesting by adding 2 letters.

Our example was based on pure self-amusement:

GG Allin … with Chris Hayes

…which simply puts a GG before the MSNBC program All In with Chris Hayes.

Now, for those who have heard of GG Allin, this is straight-up absurd. He was possibly the most depraved and extreme figure of the punk rock movement — which is saying something — and the details of his exploits and demise are not for the faint of heart (so much so, we will forego the customary blended meme). As Chris Hayes is about the most buttoned-up establishment pundit on TV, the combination would certainly spice up this show, to say the least.

We did receive a number of fine replies — our intent was that the two letters should be inserted next to each other, and though we didn’t explicitly state this, below are examples which stick to this constraint (we’ll call them “TV spin-offs”). These include:

Mad Women @slugbiker
Manure of Easttown @thegridkid
The Mary Tyler Moore Shower @searchlight5

Yes, that is actually a Mary Tyler Moore shower curtain

Of course the Show ➜ Shower extension can be used elsewhere, as in The Daily Shower, The Muppet Shower, Your Show of Showers — the mind boggles.

Who Wants to be Chamillionaire? @fixities

Hakeem Temidayo Seriki aka “Chamillionaire” — a portmanteau of “chameleon” and “millionaire”

Soup…with Chris Hayes @joestynes
Gamete of Thrones @dietsch
The Bookie of Boba Fett @guitarmike

Here’s an actual Star Wars bookie — Ohn Gos — who you’ll no doubt remember from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens novelization:

Other “spin-offs” from @XenoXTA included: Family Gummy, No Friends, Squalid Game, The Good Placebo, and The Tax Files — though we’re not sure the latter meets the “more interesting” requirement.

David Murchie (@dmurchie) noted an actual TV show which can be “spun off” into another — a very nice find: Cheers ➜ Che-AT-ers.

An interesting bit of TV show wordplay has been noted by others — namely that starting with Breaking Bad, you can move the RE to form…Baking Bread.

Well, they did have the cooking skills.

Or, fitting our challenge, insert an RE to make Breaking Bread.

Amazingly, the RE can go after either or both B’s to form a common phrase.

We found one very fertile TV show title, where two letters could be appended or inserted in any of the 8 possible slots to form exciting new spin-offs:

The Real — Four girlfriends dish on the real issues of the day!

Spin-offs include:

Sit Here, Al! — On this reality dating show, the girlfriends vie for the attention of R&B crooner Al B. Sure. (In development: Joss Whedon’s… Aethereal)

Tap Here, Al! — Quarantined during a COVID outbreak, the wooing continues, but on iPads over Zoom.

Thy Cereal/The Cereal! — Talk about dish! These companion shows on CBN and the Food Network feature the girlfriends dishing about a healthy bowl…of breakfast y’all!!

Thera Seal! — On this Travel Channel show, the girlfriends welcome a barking pinniped, to help them dish on the real issues going down on the Greek island of Santorini. Arp, arp, girl-friend!

There’s Val! — The girlfriends welcome actor Val Kilmer to dish on the real issues facing former heartthrobs going through tough times. Hmm…maybe too real.

There, a URL! — The girlfriends finally learn how to use that Internet — and browsing for brow singeing will never be the same!

The Real Me ☹ — The girlfriends let down their guards to talk real problems. It turns out life isn’t just one big dishfest after all. Warning: displays of authentic human emotion may be seen.

TV Spin-offs Quiz

See if you can guess these hypothetical shows from their descriptions, each consisting of a real show with 2 letters inserted or appended contiguously. Shows have been ordered from newest to oldest as a solving aid. (Answers at end of this post.)

A weary cowboy from the States tries to teach a ragtag bunch of UK footballers about rodeo, but his roping doesn’t have the pep it once had.
A fully predictable reality competition show where each week it turns out that — yet again — the disguised contestant wrote The Catcher in the Rye.
The junior pals of the Justice League superheroes — Cyborg, Robin, Raven, and Starfire — face retirement by hitting the links for a relaxing round. Not as exciting as in their younger days, but it keeps them active.
She loves to eat those hard-to-chew tendons —and she’s adorkable! How will her neurotic male vegetarian roommates ever get used to her?
Improv’s biggest stars act out unrehearsed scenes to determine the owner of this darn cat.
Beverly Hills’ Bravest form a unit of first responders dedicated solely to putting out blazes at this oh-so-fashionable Wolfgang Puck restaurant.
Each week celebrity guest stars set sail with a certain type of lynx, for wild romantic adventures on the Lido Deck — this week Charo! Rreww!
A cantankerous widowed junkman is constantly bickering with his bovid roommate from the Great Plains, whose half-baked get-rich schemes he swears will one day give him that coronary he calls “the Big One!”
The actress playing Aunt Esther in #8 gets her own series — a police procedural with a catchy musical sting, in which each week a fry cook tries to decipher what she wants for breakfast.
A lovable collie becomes Emperor of Ethiopia and a mystical heroic figure to a new Jamaican religion, while never losing focus on who’s fallen down the well.

Extended Cuts

John Malkovich and Joe Pantoliano — somewhere in China

Since TV shows worked, we decided to try movie titles, with an added constraint:

Make a movie more interesting by inserting two *consecutive* letters.

The letters should be consecutive in the alphabet and together in the word. Our example:

BEIJING JOHN MALKOVICH

Which of course inserts an IJ into the surrealistic cult classic Being John Malkovich. This might have been an epithet for the film Empire of the Sun, set in China and featuring Malkovich, though in fact the story took place in Shanghai. This title proved very fertile, as Be-EF-ing John Malkovich, Be-ST-ing John Malkovich, and others could also be viable titles.

Here are examples for each bigram AB to ZA, a combination of homegrown and sourced from our faithful readers:

AB —Scarabface @coryscalhoun; The Man Who Knew Taboo Much @poitevin; Home Abalone @nedfairlie; Drab, No? @johnmullahy; Drab, Strange Love @EmulsionMike; Mi Casaba Es Tu Casa

BC — Mr. 3000 B.C.
CD — Jack the CD Ripper; Ready CD Player One @dc_scrabblegram
DE — Ferris Bueller’s Day of Def @DeAraujoAndre; Mr. Modem @dc_scrabblegrams; As I Delay Dying @leslieelman; Burden after Reading @qwrty
EF — Brokedown Paleface; Harry Potter and the Chef, Amber, of Secrets @somsram
FG — Shallow Half-G
GH — Ought to Kill

HI — Hi, Jackass!(or Hijack: Ass Forever); Sh-t, Elmo’s 🔥! @dc_scrabblegrams; The Lion Hiking @DannyReichertNY
IJ — Beijing John Malkovich; Caddy’s Hijack @dc_scrabblegrams
JK — It’s a Wonderful Life…jk! @LukeTheRunner; J.K. Simmons on Vinyl @kayeu
KL — Lost in Spackle; Office Spackle; Spackleballs
LM —Tango and Calm (Sh…); Balmy Watch
MN — Damn!
NO — Nomad Max @MenacingBanjo, @DeAraujoAndrew (@MenacingBanjo adds NomadMax: Fury Abroad for the AB insert)
OP — Whoop! Framed Roger Rabbit; She’s All Top Hat @dc_scrabblegrams; Batman Op Begins! @AnuragA58646450, The Wallop; Illegal Entropy @coryscalhoun
PQ — Kung Fu PP: Q and A
QR —The Da Vinci QR Code

RS — Stand By Mrs. E @scottlearns; RSSSSSSSS (the scary newsfeed film)
ST — Whitest Christmas @MenacingBanjo
TU — Stupiderman! @MenacingBanjo
UV — UV Ray @somsram; Texas Chauvin Saw Massacre; Scan Duval
VW — The VW Love Bug @PuzzleTrip
WX — This Film Is Not Yet “W” (X-Rated)
XY — Life of Pixy @dc_scrabblegram; Sexy — A Biscuit! @schandelman
YZ — Goyz! @scottlearns; Coryza
ZA — MC Cabeza & Mrs. Miller; RZA: Aging Bull; Giza Jane; Charlie Chazan; Die, Hazard! @dc_scrabblegrams

Certain bigrams are especially hard to use, and some of those were used in ingenious ways by our readers: Jack the CD Ripper, It’s a Wonderful Life…JK! (i.e., “just kidding!”), The Da Vinci QR Code, and The VW Love Bug among them. (Note that two films were titled The Love Bug, while the 1982 TV series was Herbie, the Love Bug.)

@WriterlyRyan noticed the real film “spin-off” All About Eve ➜ All About Steve.

In the ZA slot are:

MC Cabeza & Mrs. Miller — East L.A. rapper falls in love with his old high school science teacher.
RZA: Aging Bull — Wu Tang Clan’s tough leader looks back on his career.
Charlie Chazan — a Hawaiian detective becomes his shul’s cantor, but what will he eat at the luau since everything’s tref?
Giza Jane — (not to be joked about at the Egyptian Oscars).
Die, Hazard! —Golfers through the years are lured into an ominous sandtrap…never to be seen again.

In the YZ slot, we quickly decided to forgo any potential in the “analyze” direction.

Along the way we noticed that:

Being John Malkovich includes 9 consecutive letters — GHIJKLMNO,
Being John Malkovich.PDF (the well-known surrealistic document) spans the 16 consecutive letters ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP,

while the following “note to self”…

…is a tight 34-letter pangram, only repeating consonants H and N along with some vowels.

But we digress.

We also noticed that A Nightmare on Elm Street contains 3 consecutive letter pairs, each removable to form another movie…

- GH = A Nit, Mare on Elm Street — A small bug and female horse find companionship in the suburbs.
- LM = A Nightmare on E. Street — When Clarence disappears before the Stone Poney reunion show, will Bruce, Nils, Patti, Max, and Little Steven have to go on without him?
- ST = A Nightmare on El: Mr E. & ET— Ernie Banks teams up with a cute alien to fight crime on a Chicago train.

…and in keeping with the current exercise, it also has an“extended cut”:

+KL = A Night, Markle, on Elm Street— Duchess of Sussex reads scary bedtime stories

Photo Synthesis

Another challenge came from Ben Zimmer in Yogesh Raut’s Only Connect Questions Facebook group (not affiliated with the UK game show). The following are the first 4 images in a series — see if you can identify the commonality and extend the series. We’ll show results in our next post.