I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with 'louse'.

It's not only Shakespearian quotes that end up in everyday use without many people knowing their origin. Note the first couplet of the last verse of To A Louse. On seeing one on a lady's bonnet at church. by the inimitable* Rab.

Ha! Whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly,
I canna say but ye strut rarely
Owre gauze and lace,
Tho' faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

...

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

Robert Burns

*Ok, imitable! See #11

Dou you live there?

//Love the idea of a verse Crambo! :D//

Proceeding from the Frenzied Crowd,
They ran their ladders through a score
Of windows on the Ball Room Floor;
And took Peculiar Pains to *****
The Pictures up and down the *****,
Until Matilda's Aunt succeeded
In showing them they were not needed;
And even then she had to pay
To get the Men to go away!

Ah, M Belloc. I never did like Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion. for obvious reasons!

Not: louse, scouse, house (twice)

//psst, I was thinking one less letter to "scouse", though that sounds delicious.//

Oops, typo. A scouse to me is someone from Liverpool. Not sure I'm comfortable about your 'delicious'!

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house

//hehee! It's also a stew dish from Liverpool.//

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

;)

//hehee! It's also a stew dish from Liverpool.// Yes, I know. That typo might just be the stupidest one in Crambo history!

It isnae a sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie.

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse

Years ago, I was pleased to see
A vanity plate at MIT
On a car outside the magnet lab.
It bore the name of this unit of measure;
Recalling it now still gives me pleasure.
A nerdy type of attention-grab!

Must have been a very wide vehicle to fit a plate with 'Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss' on it!

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse, Gauss

I will nae mane, I will nae wurn,
When capull coille, forest horse,
Trods doon with roarie feet the gorse
As waukrife by the runt I lie.

I will nae pleen, I will nae girn,
When muirhen crashing through the thicket
Waukens me with whinbuss ricket
To leme my loo-misrestit eye.

If a woman were a man she'd be wearing a shirt instead of this...

To plunge into water, as in a test for witches.

Could it be Pat Bergeson's former wife?

I am my wife's, and she is mine
Wish I could think of another line.

Oh, what sort of devilment's bound to befall
A man who skips prison to go to a ball?
He's in for lots of strange surprises,
Like his wife's and maid's disguises.
His wife tests his fidelity
Even though she's no purer than he:
Back in Act One, we caught her in bed
With the man who got taken to jail in his stead.
This opera's contorted yet simply sublime;
Its composer and title would both fit the rhyme.

You have to go to Gilbert, Texas to find the best one.

Goldsmith says somewhere, "(Tell them the one)
About Old __ __ __ __ __ __ in the Gun Room". -- Fun,
No doubt but not much of a hint
(For a non-Godsmithian); so, not to stint
You on clues: If used verbal-
-ly, it would enter oneʻs "Herbal
Of Earthy Verbs" as meaning "Complain..."
And probably wasnʻt used by Austen (Jane).

Morning, all!

11 - still thinking! I feel I should know this immediately, but it's not working for me.
12 - Or a pirate. A pirate could wear a blouse, I think.
13 - She turned me into a newt!... I got better. Douse her anyway.
14/15 - The lovely Krauss is his ex-spouse.
16 - Die Fledermaus by Strauss II? Nein!
17 - Or you could go to La Grange and find the real Chicken Ranch.
18 - A wee dram of The Famous Grouse while reading She Stoops to Conquer would be fine.

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse, Gauss, blouse, douse, Krauss, spouse, Die Fledermaus, Strauss, whorehouse, grouse

Buck, is 11 also grouse?

One of the decorations that you can get on a North Carolina license plate celebrates these structures that dot the Outer Banks.

With no knowledge and no research I'm just going to stab blindly: Not a lighthouse.

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse, Gauss, blouse, douse, Krauss, spouse, Die Fledermaus, Strauss, whorehouse, grouse, lighthouse

(Re #20) Yes, #11 was grouse. And I promise not to write any more poems in the style of Robert Burns, unless provoked.

No, it was beautifully done! What had me confused was the single Gaelic term "capull coille" amongst the rest of the Scots. Misrestit is a wonderful word that I remember my Grandmother using about my baby sister when she was grumpy!

While I'm here, UnrulySun's guess of 'mouse' shows an excellent example of Burns in everyday language. Note the third and forth lines of the second last stanza of To a Mouse: On turning her up in her nest, with the plough, November, 1785

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Tyger, Tyger burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

//Buck, your verse was amazing! I had a hard time placing it and google didn't help. Now I know why. ;) //

//Aw, shucks...thanks a lot, Jim and UnrulySun! And I appreciate the shout-out edited into #1.//

Sir Crambo set out to win fair lady's glance
So he mounted his mount and adjusted his visor
He shrugged at his armor and hoisted his lance
But his opponent was faster, and stronger, and wiser
And therefore the winner of today's horse-y dance.

>27 UnrulySun: I'm ruling out 'joust' which is an almost-rhyme! Still thinking about the Blake.

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse, Gauss, blouse, douse, Krauss, spouse, Die Fledermaus, Strauss, whorehouse, grouse, lighthouse, joust

There's another guess there in 27, a homonym of 25. I might have made it too vague though.

How doth the little omnivore
Improve his sleepy fun
To know this partier of yore
Is named upon a pun!

How cheerfully he drinks his tea,
How neatly he's contrived;
A child's glirid fantasy
Who's truly "sleep-derived!"

//I'm not parodying Isaac Watts; I'm parodying the writer who parodied Isaac Watts.//

Morning!

A parody of Carroll parodying Watts and referencing one of Carrolls's characters! That's the Crambo spirit! Sadly, after all that, it isn't dormouse!

Still nothing has sprung full-formed from my mind about Blake's Tyger or the horsey dance. I'll contemplate further on the train to work.

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse, Gauss, blouse, douse, Krauss, spouse, Die Fledermaus, Strauss, whorehouse, grouse, lighthouse, joust, dormouse

Could it be a girlie magazine or a fancy apartment on the top of a building?

Either a member of the genus Mus who might appear in Citizenjoyce's magazine in #32 or a small songbird with a short, stout conical bill?

(one guess only)

Not a titmouse in a penthouse. Clever guesses though.

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse, Gauss, blouse, douse, Krauss, spouse, Die Fledermaus, Strauss, whorehouse, grouse, lighthouse, joust, dormouse, penthouse, titmouse

The key words are "tiger" and "armor".

Hmmm, still thinking... possible connections just thrown in for interest... 'Tiger' comes from the Greek word 'tigris', which is possibly derived from a Persian source meaning 'arrow', and 'arrow' can be used in the field of arms and armour.

There used to be a so-called 'sabre-tooth' tiger, and 'sabre' can also be used in the field of arms and armour.

Just thinking out loud!

LOL! I'm sure these aren't Crambo since you haven't thought of them yet. Think "big wild cat" and "type of armor for the legs". Obscure words.

And, err... they are homophones, not homonyms. Boy I really did it up good this time.

Chausses is a plural word acting as singular (like trousers). There is probably, therefore, an obscure or obsolete singular like chause or chausse?

I can't see how it relates to large felids though!

What I do when I feel divine?

part of Billy Pilgrim's Dresden address?

Some say the world will end in blaze;
Some say in snow.
In my old hook-and-ladder days
I holed up here, 'twixt engine bays.
But if I had a second go,
I think a Miller lager, Aussie band,
Or freeze-lodge long ago
Is also grand
And worth a know.

//The original being parodied is, of course, part of the clue.//

There's currently a big fight, and soon to get bigger, over who will get to live here for the next 4 years.

Lots of houses, but they're not the abode of Crambo, whether church-, slaughter- (5 or any other number), ice-, or white-.

In fact Crambo's word scorns the letter 'h' entirely.

Oops, just re-read Jenni's #39 which is "What I do…", not "Where I go…". I'll think on that and the other outstanding ones some more.

I have a busy weekend coming up so major clues through today!

Nothing overnight? I got nothing on the ones I'm missing either.

To win this round you should add three letters to one of the words listed below. Not an 'h' though.

Not: louse, scouse, souse, house, mouse, Gauss, blouse, douse, Krauss, spouse, Die Fledermaus, Strauss, whorehouse, grouse, lighthouse, joust, dormouse, penthouse, titmouse, church-house, slaughterhouse, icehouse, white house

How about a word for divorcing. Oh, I guess that's 4 more letters.

Hint: Don't spare the rod!

(but I don't think there are enough letters)

Ex-spousing? Probably not.

Religious beatings? Scourge, flaggelate? Drawing a blank here as well!

It has been a large weekend and I'm tired. Will check back in the morning.

Where'd everybody go? You should lob a three letter word onto a word that really doesn't belong in the "Not list" and you'll win Crambo and an internet and make a sailor happy!

Sorry Jim, I'm drawing a blank.
My guesses before, FTR, were "chausses" (chainmail socks) and "chaus" (big cat).

Aha! The Jungle Cat. Big for a cat, but not a Big Cat! Got me on that one!

#46 was disespouse, but I can't come up with your magic 3 letters not connected to house.

'House' belongs in the 'Not list'. There's one in there that was never actually guessed but was a typo by me!

The ur-scouse, brought to Liverpool by nordic sailors?

prescouse, a Liverpudlian in utero?

On the right track now! I met this word shortly after I met Jack Aubrey.

Oh my goodness, is Crambo a variant of that typo-ed word, perhaps mostly found in fishing villages?

If so, I can't believe it took us 11 days to get from there to here!

Indeedy-doo! Crambo's word was 'lobscouse', a stew of meat, potatoes, onions, ship biscuit, etc which is often featured in the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian. There is even a companion cookbook to the series called Lobscouse and Spotted Dog!

You can see why I called the mistake in post #4 possibly the worst typo in Crambo's history!

Over to you UnrulySun; well done to all players.

Whew! Excellent word, Jim. :)

New game coming soon.

New game here.