On Quote and Competition by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

The word " jargon" is used in various ways. Sir Ernest Gowers, in The Complete Plain Words, applied it to technical terms and conventional phrases that were understood by the initiated, but which were unintelligible to outsiders.

The use of a characteristic language, technical, legal or otherwise, which aids communication between members of a trade or profession, is perfectly respectable and is probably necessary for concise thought and expression, although the definition in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary implies that it is usually used contemptuously.

In the Jargon of Professions, Kenneth Hudson suggest that jargon should contain four essential elements:
 -  It reflects a particular profession or occupation.
 -  It is pretentious, with only a small kernel of meaning within it.
 -  It is used mainly by intellectually inferior people , who feel a need to convince the general public of their importance.
- It is, deliberately or accidentally mystifying.

The following example seems to meet all the criteria of Mr. Hudson:
" The symptom pattern previously delineated as the stress response in mental health setting was hypothesized to be useful in conceptualizing reactions to a traumatic event in a non-psychiatric population."

Yes, that was written in all seriousness by a supposedly educated person, a physician, in the Journal of the Medical Association( 5 October, 1979, page 1499), and the editor let it be printed. Even allowing for the peculiarities of medical communication, this is the worst piece of jargon that I have met for many years, the veritable nadir of medical writing.

I assume it means that the symptoms due to stress in normal people are similar to those in psychiatric patients in similar circumstances and, therefore, experience with those who are mentally ill can be used to predict responses in those who are not. Well, why didn't he say so?

On Competition:

Here are some of the opportunities for the mental gymnastics of creative thinking; they really do ask you to unlock your mind and get an answer the "wrong way around". A clue: in this set a lot of the solutions lie in the sound of the words. Pretend you are a CNN announcer as you read the puzzles aloud. 

1. Time Travel
 Early one morning Dan checks that his watch is correct and then leaves his home to visit his friend Ben. On reaching Ben's house, Ben points out that Dan's watch is one hour slow and so Dan puts it right. When Dan arrives back at his home later on in the day he sees that his watch is again showing the wrong time. But without any assistance whatsoever, he puts his watch exactly right. How is this possible?

2. Catnap

The sheep at Sleepy Farm sleep under a tree, the cattle sleep in the barn, the horses sleep in the stables and the dog sleeps in the farmhouse. By the sound of things, the cat will sleep where?

3. Silence her!

An off-duty police officer is walking past a motel room when he hears a man's voice in the room call out: "Quickly , silence her!" Without hesitating the officer pulls out his gun and bursts into the room, where he find two unfamiliar men, each clutching a revolver, standing at one end and a woman lying dead at the other. Surprised by his sudden entrance both men instinctively put up their hands, and while neither of their guns is still giving off any telltale smoke, the officer immediately knows who shot the victim. How come?

4. Down Payment
A wizard pops into his local magic store to buy a new pet toad. Unfortunately he only has $2 on him and the toad costs quite a bit more than this, so he asks the shopkeeper if he can pay $1 now and the rest the following week. The kind shopkeeper agrees to this and the wizard leaves the store happy with $1 in his pocket and a toad. How much does the toad costs?

5 Reported speech

This is Emily's account of puzzling conversation she recently overheard between two of her college pals:
Mandy: Lucy, how old is your sister Sarah?
Lucy: She's between 13 and twenty inclusive.
Mandy: Could you be a little specific?
Lucy: If I tell you she's not 18, you'll know just how old she is.
Can you figure out Sarah's age?

6. Start over

Which three consecutive letters of the alphabet can be placed in front of these letters, in alphabetical order, to form an English word?
------ghnut

Possible answer (or maybe you think impossible)

1. Ben lives in a time zone that is one hour ahead.

2. In the barn. The phrase "the cattle sleep in the barn" sounds like "the cat'll sleep in the barn."

3. One of the men's guns had a silencer (silence her).

4. $9 because the "wizard leaves the store happy with $1 in his pocket and a toad" which sounds like "eigth owed".

5. 20. Lucy actually said that Sarah's not "a teen". Emily misheard her.

6. duo, which is nop upside-down.