# Does Anyone Know 8,9 and 10? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 29, 2006, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662 "2006-08-29T13:59:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Catch\_22](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed655f/32.png) [@Catch\_22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catch_22)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/1 "2006-08-29T13:59:57Z")
One time I was told that on the Tonight Show a guest challeged Johnny Carson with repeating ten phrases verbatim. The phrases I remember are: one duck, two hens, three squakiwing geese, four coupulent proposies, five limirick oysters, six pairs of Don Alvardo’s tweezers, 7000 Macedonian soldiers dressed in full battle array. Would anyone know 8, 9 and 19? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/2 "2006-08-29T14:20:05Z")
Here’s a link to the full ten: [http://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2003-December/001001.html](http://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2003-December/001001.html) The link says it is an old vaudeville routine called the Tibetan Memory Trick. I also remember Jerry Lewis occassionally mentioning this list when he was a guest on various talk shows. ---
**Author:** ![Puzzler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d07c76/32.png) [@Puzzler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Puzzler)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/3 "2006-08-29T14:24:36Z")
[From the official Jerry Lewis Commedy Museum and Store](http://www.jerrylewiscomedy.com/announcer.htm) ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/4 "2006-08-29T14:25:25Z")
For those that want the list posted here: • 1 hen • 2 ducks • 3 squawking geese • 4 limerick oysters • 5 corpulent porpoises • 6 pair of Don Alverso’s tweezers • seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array • 8 brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt • 9 apathetic sympathetic diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity for procrastination and sloth • 10 lyrical spherical diabolical denizens of the deep who all haul around the corner of the quo of the quay of the queasy at the very same time I’ve also heard that this was a test for radio announcers. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/5 "2006-08-29T17:13:06Z")
When I briefly pledged a fraternity at university, one of the brothers used this ritual to torment the pledges. I have heard the list put to music and sung, but I can only remember the tune of the “seven thousand Macedonians…” line, which sounds like it was lifted from _Rule Britannia_. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/6 "2006-08-29T17:24:36Z")
I do know that 10 is afraid of 7 . . . ---
**Author:** ![Stringer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Stringer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringer)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/7 "2006-08-29T17:36:04Z")
[QUOTE=wolf\_meister] I’ve also heard that this was a test for radio announcers. [/QUOTE] Wikipedia [confirms this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Announcer's_test) as well. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/8 "2006-08-29T17:45:06Z")
I first heard this on the Flo & Eddie album _Illegal, Immoral and Fattening_ and assumed that it was original with them. It certainly _sounds_ like something they’d make up (especially the part about “denizens of the deep”–shades of “Mud Shark”). I was shocked, then, when I was sitting in a cafe one day and heard a little girl, who must have learned it in the Girl Scouts, reciting it. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/9 "2006-08-29T17:57:10Z")
I don’t know if this is a completely different thing, but the one I used to know goes something like: \* One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five French females, fixing for a fight, six Sicilian seamen sailing the seven seas, seven sheet slitters, happily slitting sheets, eight sock cutters, cockily cutting socks, nine: I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son, and I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes. ten: Mrs Puggy Wuggy has a square-cut punt – not a punt cut square but a square-cut punt.\* Ah ha - [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Fat_Hen) knows everything. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/10 "2006-08-29T20:17:51Z")
[QUOTE=Eve] I do know that 10 is afraid of 7 . . . [/QUOTE] Naughty Eve, introducing sex to an otherwise straight-laced thread! Oh, _that_ “eight.” Nevermind. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/11 "2006-08-29T21:04:32Z")
I learned this as a drinking game, but it started “One white horse; couple of ducks; three brown bears; four flying hares; five fickle females.” I can’t remember the rest, but “eight” was “eight elevated elephants, elevated on an elevated elevator.” ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2006, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/12 "2006-08-29T22:54:37Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] nine: I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son, and I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes. [/QUOTE] I think you’re confounding that line with another old tongue twister. And speaking of other such, who remembers the Smothers Brothers singing “My Old Man’s a Sailor”? ---
**Author:** ![Phrontist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/839c29/32.png) [@Phrontist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phrontist)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/13 "2006-08-30T00:10:21Z")
What on earth is a “quo” ? ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/14 "2006-08-30T02:23:19Z")
**Mathochist** I remember their version of “My Old Man’s A Sailor”. A few years ago, a friend just started singing the “regular” rendition and said he learned it as a camp song. Little did he know I had learned the _tougher_ version. BWA-HA-HA !!! So, I sang “My old man’s an anthropologist, whatta you think about that?” and “My old man’s a refrigerator repairman”. … and every Saturday evening he reads the “Refrigerator Repairman’s News”. Of course my friend said, 'where the Hell did _you_ go to camp?" 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/15 "2006-08-30T03:02:33Z")
[QUOTE=Jodi] I learned this as a drinking game, but it started “One white horse; couple of ducks; three brown bears; four flying hares; five fickle females.” I can’t remember the rest, but “eight” was “eight elevated elephants, elevated on an elevated elevator.” [/QUOTE] I knew a similar version. Let’s see, time to dredge through old summer camp memories: One fat hen And a couple of ducks Three baby brown bears Four rapid running hares Five fat fidgety felines Six simple Simons selling salt in Siam Seven slimy sailors sniffing snoose Eight elongated elephants elevating up and escaltor Nine nasty nose nimbryoes nibbling on the noses of nine nasty nose nimbryots Ten two-ton two-tone transcontinental trucks (with trailers) travelling from Tallahasse Tenness to Tyler Texas on two tanks of Texaco and twenty-two terrible tires! Whew. I know 9 makes no sense whatsoever, but it seemed so logical when I was like 7 years old. ---
**Author:** ![danceswithcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/16 "2006-08-30T05:47:03Z")
[QUOTE=Phrontist] What on earth is a “quo” ? [/QUOTE] It’s a type of status, as in status quo. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-8-9-and-10/370662/17 "2006-08-30T10:14:45Z")
[QUOTE=wolf\_meister] Of course my friend said, 'where the Hell did _you_ go to camp?" 🙂 [/QUOTE] “My old man’s a cotton-pickin’, finger-lickin’, chicken-plucker, whadda ya think about that?” “I think you better be careful on this verse.. this is a _family_ show!”