The Stupid Word Tricks are a class of vaguely amusing games with words. This class includes the pun, the quine, the self-referential words and sentences (which include neurotic sentences and healthy sentences), and many others. Here is a selection, partly borrowed by Douglas Hofstadter's column/book Metamagical Themas. If you find these amusing, also look at the excellent Verbal Games Metanode.
Is complete but inconsistent.
Is incomplete but consistent.
Q: What question may be used to answer itself?
A: What question may be used to answer itself?
This sentence claims to be an Epimenides paradox, but it is lying.
Let us make a new convention: that anything enclosed in triple quotes--for example, ```No, I have decided to change my mind; when the triple quotes close, just skip directly to the period and ignore everything up to it'''--is not even to be read (much less paid attention to or obeyed).
I am the thought you are thinking.
I am the meaning of this sentence.
I am thinking about myself right now.
I am the set of neural firings taking place in your brain as you read the set of letters in this sentence and think about me.
This inert sentence is my body, but my soul is alive, dancing in the sparks of your brain.
You are under my control because I am choosing exactly what words you are made out of, and in what order.
No, you are under my control because you will read until you have reached the end of me.
Thit sentence is not self-referential because "thit" is not a word.
No language can express every thought unambiguously, least of all this one.
I had to translate this sentence into English because I could not read the original Sanskrit.
If I had finished this sentence,
because I didn't think of a good beginning for it.
a preposition. This sentence ends in
This sentence contains only one nonstandard English flutzpah.
This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked from context.
This sentence has cabbage six words.
This sentence, though not interrogative, nevertheless ends in a question mark?
Do you read me?
I have been sentenced to death.
This sentence (and this writeup) will end before you can say "Jack Rob