O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships

By: © Nelson Taylor 2008

Festival Location: Austin, TX, USA

Festival State: Texan Festivals

Festival Type: Bizarre Festivals

A pun is a play on words, either on different senses of the same word or on similar senses and sounds of different words. Here and there they can be rather amusing, but take the joke to the extreme and it can be downright pun-ishing. Case in point is the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships, held every May in the backyard of the O. Henry Museum, located in the heart of downtown Austin. Since 1977, would-be word butchers from around the world have been ensuring that this carnival of corn is one of the punniest shows on earth. See what I mean?

Anyway, Francis McGrath, who got into puns quite by accident, is such a woman. In 1991, she was still in college, a University of Texas senior, sick in bed the week before her final exams. "I turned on the TV and found the Pun-off from the year before," she says. "I don't know if it was the Pun-off or the fever, but I thought it was one of the funniest things I ever saw." But it took phonetic Francis six more years to gain the gumption to enter. So, in 1997, she competed in a High Lies & Low Puns match, which pit her against a former champion. The topic was big business. "My best was, 'Did you hear they are minting a new 1 cent piece with the image of Jesus Christ on it? It's called the J.C. Penney." Sadly, with doozies like that, she didn't win. But in 1998, she came up with a great idea for the Punniest of Show competition, which is a 90-second freestyle event. What did Francis do? The week before the show, she wrote a medley of songs, one for each letter of the alphabet. Some of the best include: "Let it B...Oh say can you C...H she sweet...K sera, sera...Another reason for making woop-P...V-va Las Vegas..." you get the drift.

While Francis is having a hell of a lot of pun, she says, "I try to keep it under control. Most punners keep a notebook by their beds. I'm not typical for the event, but I do pick a topic and practice occasionally to myself when I'm on the bus. I might pick a topic like cars and try to dodge distractions, ford gaps in my thinking and practice tirelessly."