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Sherlockian wordplay & "SH" puzzle.(Sherlock Holmes)(Critical essay)

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From: Word Ways
Date: 20080801
Author:Tanaka, Tomoyuki

How much wordplay is in the "Sherlock Holmes" stories by Arthur Conan Doyle?

Karen Murdock has been studying the various figures of speech and rhetorical techniques in the 60 Holmesian tales, collectively called "the Canon". She notes a use of zeugma when Watson reports in The Hound of the Baskervilles: "All afternoon and late into the evening he [Holmes] sat lost in tobacco and thought." ("Lost in Tobacco and Zeugma", Canadian Holmes, Summer 2004, p. 3).

Murdock notes that puns and other humorous forms of word play are not found in the Canon. ("Sound and Sense: ...