I wanted to create a cartoon with three animals deprived of hearing, seeing and speaking. The former two were easy to come up with suitable candidates, but the latter was a tad more difficult. I mean, is it possible to be born without a mouth? Well, yes it is, if you are the gnat of the glow-worm. The humble glow-worm starts its life as an egg (3 weeks), it then becomes a larvae (9 months – as the glow-worm), followed by a pupa (2 weeks), to finally emerge as a gnat. And the gnat doesn’t have a mouth! This probably explains why it only lives long enough to lay eggs and that’s it (about 3 days).
Congratulations to GD from GD Konstantine’s blog for winning the second cartoon caption competition for the year!
Many thanks for all your generous entries. Click here to see the runners up and other entries.
I received this definition from a friend’s website newsletter, Talking About. It listed the results from the Washington Post’s 1998 Mensa Invitational competition, which involved the creation of new words, by playing with combinations of other words. To see the original list, click here (it also explains the interesting history behind this). If you like playing with words, the website also has an annual competition to create new words. You can view their 2010, 2011 results as well as entering for 2012.