How can you not name it Nantucket? I think there may be laws about that.

May 12, 2015 10:12 PM

Amorite and the Girgasite
And the Hivite and the Arkite
    and the Sinite And
    the Arvadite and
the Zemarite and the Hamathite
                    —Genesis 10:16–18

Nantucket: An accidental limerick detector
posted by nebulawindphone (22 comments total)

Dostoevskyan limerickry is pretty awesome.

are children of twelve years old who
have a longing to set fire to
something and they do
set things on fire too
Its a sort of disease Thats not true
posted by threeants at 11:09 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

Is this a dagger which I see
Before me? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not now,
Fatal vision art thou,
Bloody business, thou marshall'st me.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:30 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

The scansion here is unspeakably unpleasant.
posted by lumensimus at 12:09 AM on May 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

'Tis but a clumsy algorithm at present.
posted by scrowdid at 12:48 AM on May 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

Seems like rhyming on "and" or "the" should be disallowed.
posted by zompist at 1:20 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

There was a young geek girl named Sucher
posted by Major Tom at 1:38 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

These shits don't scan
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:23 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was sad when I realized it was an algorithm for finding accidental limericks, and not an algorithm that by pure accident detects limericks.
posted by ymgve at 2:52 AM on May 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

Huh. So they finally sent a poet.
posted by Etrigan at 4:49 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

though my algorithm has no sense of rhythm, I'll publish it anyway - fuck it.
posted by flabdablet at 5:44 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

A limerick-finder that counts syllables and ignores stresses is like a haiku-finder that counts words and ignores syllables. If this occasionally finds an actual limerick, it is by pure accident.

Not all limericks are anapestic, but they do all have the same pattern of stressed syllables per line: 3/3/2/2/3.

That is:

There was an old man from Peru
Who dreamt he was eating his shoe.
He awoke in a fright
In the middle of the night
And found it was perfectly true

or

Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
And down he run
Hickory dickory dock

or

I once told a Metafilterian
"I don't mean to be a contrarian
But this limerick finder
Is like wearing blinders.
It just isn't utilitarian."

(You might note that none of these fit the pattern looked for by the detector at hand. I didn't plan that, but it doesn't surprise me either.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 5:49 AM on May 13, 2015 [11 favorites]

(Okay, "utilitarian" is forced, but I haven't had my morning cuppa tea yet.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 5:50 AM on May 13, 2015

He needs to run this on all the books on the list that white men own.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:20 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

(Yeah, I agree the scansion here is weak. To be fair, scansion is hard — much harder than just determining which syllable in a word would be stressed in isolation, since we're sometimes happy to treat an unstressed syllable as stressed, or vice versa, in order to make the meter work.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:08 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Worst limerick ever written:

There was a young man from Dundee
Who was stung on the knee by a wasp
Asked "did it hurt?"
He said "not very much,
He can do it again if he likes."
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 8:46 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also of interest: Pentametron
posted by the_blizz at 8:55 AM on May 13, 2015

The scansion here is unspeakably unpleasant.

While examining lit'rary segments
To see if a limerick's present,
Mefites were delighted
That in texts thus cited
The scansion's unspeakably pleasant!
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:25 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Worst limerick ever written:

I'd always heard this version:

There was an old man of St. Bees
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
I'm so glad that it wasn't a hornet.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:27 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

He needs to run this on all the books on the list that white men own.

She.
posted by ch1x0r at 4:20 PM on May 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

There was once an algorithm from Leeds
whose limericks were indistinguishable from prose.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:40 PM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

My mother used to tell me of a young man from Tralee who was stung in the neck by a wasp; when they asked if it hurt he replied "Not a bit! It can do it again if it likes".

This tale has a great deal in common with the one that Greg_Ace just related; the account from Dundee's very like it as well, which is odd because wasp stings are awful.
posted by flabdablet at 10:11 PM on May 13, 2015

How to tell if your poem is stupid:
If a computer program can write that type of poem, your poem is stupid.
posted by rankfreudlite at 7:47 PM on May 15, 2015 [1 favorite]