1. 'The old man the boat.

Besides sounding like a rejected Ernest Hemingway title, this deceptive

sentence is indeed grammatically correct thanks to some well-placed homonymsmultiple
words that share the same spellings but have different meanings. Homonym #1 here is 'old,' in
this case being used as a noun meaning 'old people' (like how you might say, 'youth is wasted on
the young'), not as an adjective modifying 'man.'Homonym #2, as it happens, is 'man,' used here
as a verb, meaning 'to serve in the force of.' With that in mind, heres what the sentence is
actually saying: 'The old people serve on the boat.' May they take this sentence and sail far, far
away. (Speaking of homonyms, can you guess the three-letter word that has 645 meanings?)
2. 'The horse raced past the barn fell. Everything is going hunky-dory until that 'fell' at the end,
huh? At first glance, youd be right to think that 'raced' is the main verb of this sentence. But its
not. The simplest form of this sentence is actually, 'The horse fell'; confusingly, 'raced past the
barn' is being used as a sort of adjective phrase to tell us which horse were talking about was
it the horse tethered behind the barn who fell, or the horse raced past the barn? Of course, this
sentence would make way more sense if it was written 'The horse that was raced past the barn
fell', but the quirks of English allow us to remove certain conjunctions like 'that' and still
maintain meaning, the way you might say 'the person I love' instead of 'the person that I love.'
Long story short, the horse fell (hopefully on top of whoever invented this sentence).
3. 3. 'The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. Similar to 'the old man
the boat,' the trick of this sentence is figuring out which word is the verb, and which is the
subject. At first, it seems like 'houses' is the subject and 'married' is the verbthen you get to
'and single,' realizing too late 'married and single soldiers' is a big adjective phrase. Even more
confusing, 'complex' seems to be an adjective modifying 'houses,' which makes sense logically
and linguistically to us. But it turns out 'complex' is meant as a noun here, as in an 'office
complex' or 'sporting complex', and 'houses' is the verb, meaning 'to shelter. So, the non-
confusing way to write this sentence would be: 'the building shelters married and single soldiers
and their families.' Or, to cut out the redundancy, 'The building shelters soldiers and their
families.' Basically, a needlessly complex way to describe on-base housing.
4. 4. 'The prime number few. Here 'prime' is being used as a noun representing 'prime people,'
the same way 'the old' represented 'old people' up above. 'Number' is our verb, meaning
'amount to.' But our brains are so used to seeing 'prime number' as a noun that its hard to
separate the two on first glance. In other words: 'There are few prime people around.' (The
same goes for linguists.)
5. 5. 'The man who hunts ducks out on weekends When you see 'hunts ducks' your mind
probably jumps to duck hunting. But actually, 'ducks' is the main verb here, telling you what 'the
man who hunts' does on weekends. In other words: 'The man who hunts (animals) ducks out on
weekends,' or, 'The hunter sneaks away on weekends.'
6. 6. 'Until the police arrest the drug dealers control the street. An invisible comma belongs
somewhere in this sentence, but its hard to know where. (Can you pass this comma quiz?) Your
first inclination is probably to take 'until the police arrest the drug dealers' as a single clause, but
that leaves no subject in the remaining 'control the street.' The answer: 'Until the police (make
the) arrest, drug dealers control the street.'
7. 7. 'Fat people eat accumulates. Come on, youre practically an expert at solving these now!
'Fat' is the subject, 'accumulates' is the verb. Simply put: 'The fat that people eat accumulates (in
their bodies).'Thanks for taking a stroll down the garden path with us.