Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

"Mount Sepsick! Mount Spittelboom!" cries the wicked brother in another story, groping for the magic words that will open the cave. "Mount Siccapillydircus!" he tries again in desperation.

Some may have been sudoku, tredoku or futoshiki freaks, who buy daily newspapers, extract the puzzle pages and throw away the rest.

Forgers nowadays typically favour 20th-century abstract and expressionist styles. Mimicking Jackson Pollock's drip-and-splatter paintings is easier than faking old masters such as Rembrandt.

Swamped with lawsuits, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation stopped authenticating works in 1996, four decades after Pollock's death. Lawsuits continued anyway. A court even entertained a suit from a man with a painting signed "Pollack".

A publicist who specializes in selling sauce to the tabloids.

Dante's complicated ABA, BCB, CDC, DED.

Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces elaborate sound for no particular reason.

Miss Lena Horne's producers once complained that she opened her mouth too wide to sing.

They meant it was a Negro thing.

If you want to get a message down into the soul of a God-fearing, native-to-the-earth, rural-thinking person, one of the surest ways is through traditional country music – anyone who wants to understand the world's most politically influential tribe – the people of Middle America, who pick most American presidents – should pay attention to country music. Country music has always been the best shrink that 15 bucks can buy.

You're not going to sit down and watch the BBC world news in 3-D.

A Hollywood executive is powerful and successful largely because he is viewed as being powerful and successful… A group of terrorists is planning to kill millions of Americans. Only one man can stop them: Jack Bauer. Unfortunately, he has been imprisoned in a secret facility. And tortured. Then decapitated and fed to boars. In a typical day, Agent Bauer is shot and stabbed more often than he takes bathroom breaks, but it never seems to slow him down.

That was a spoof of "24" by Dave Barry, a comic writer. All this is harmless fantasy, of course. Or is it? A disconcerting number of Americans take "24" seriously.

Introducing Huck Finn, Mark Twain gave warning: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.