The Advocate [Baton Rouge, LA]
6 February 2018
Smiley Anders
An easy A
"The discussions by your readers of big
words," says Loren Scott, "reminds me of an ad that appeared in the
Kansas City Star back in the early '70s.
"It was in the classified section under
'Personals,' and it read: 'insidious, innocuous, annihilate, extrapolate,
fratricide, audacious, euphemism, ludicrous, euthanasia, and fastidious.'
"It was signed Mark Johnson. When the editor of
the paper saw that ad, he called in his crack cub reporter and said, 'I want to
know who Mark Johnson is and why he put those 10 words in my newspaper.'
"The cub reporter did his job well. As it turns
out, Mark was a sophomore at Shawnee Mission High School in Shawnee, Kansas,
and his English teacher had told the class if anyone could find those 10 words
in the newspaper that semester she would give them an A in the class."
~~~~~~~
La Crosse [Wisconsin] Tribune, 14 March 1958, p. 1.
“KANSAS
CITY, Mo. (AP)--The classified ad in the Morning Kansas City Times read simply:
‘Infallible, intrinsic, amity, minimize,
blazon, scrutinize, emulate, compunction, deride.’ Puzzled newsmen discovered
it had been inserted by Mrs. Mildred Beal. She explained that her 17-year-old
son Terry received as an English assignment two weeks ago the task of finding
10 specific words in a newspaper. He found only one – contemporary. The
deadline was at hand so she inserted the ad – in the personals column. Mrs.
Beal said she did not know whether her son’s teacher would accept the idea, but
even at an outlay of $1.36 for the ad she thought it was worth trying.”
