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- - - - C H A I N C H A I N C H A I N. October 22 A popular phenomenon amongst listless media professionals in my home town of London recently caught my attention: the "First-name-last-name" game. I'm not too happy with the title of this game—you have to admit that it is a bit prosaic—so for extra credit, entrants are encouraged to provide a more stirring, expressive moniker. But enough of that. The original rules of this game are simple enough: for each letter of the alphabet, find a well-known individual whose surname begins with that letter AND IS ALSO THE FIRST NAME OF ANOTHER FAMOUS PERSON. These people can be contemporary or historical. I draw the line at fictional characters, though. I don't know why. I just do. For instance:
Et cetera, and so far so ho-hum. But a natural extension of this is to create a "name chain" where the surname of the first person is then used as the first name of the second person, whose surname then becomes the first name of somebody else, etc.: A two-name chain: Horatio Nelson Riddle.
A three-name chain: Yvonne Craig David Cassidy
And so on. Now: the trick, and this week's challenge, is to build a chain of a given length from just the first and last name in the sequence. For instance, if you were given: Jessye ________ ________ Hawkins You would be looking for a three-name chain, and the answer (or perhaps one possible answer) would be: Jessye Norman Coleman Hawkins (Jessye Norman = impressively proportioned operatic diva, Norman Coleman = US Senator, Coleman Hawkins = jazzman) Of course, you may come up with a completely different answer, in which case all the better. Three more rules: A) The Untitled Rule:
B) The Not-Their-Real-Names Rule:
C) The Homonym Rule:
Okay, that's enough rules. Here you go: - - - - 1. Buck ________ ________ ________ Estevez 2. Lenny ________ ________ ________ Van Peebles 3. Ben ________ ________ ________ Dyer 4. Claude ________ ________ ________ McKay 5. Elizabeth ________ ________ ________ ________ Amis Keep in mind that there may be multiple solutions to each, but you only need to provide one. Send your answer by noon on Friday, October 24, to carltondoby@hotmail.com. The winner, chosen at random from all entries with the most correct answers, will win a McSweeney's book. - - - -
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