Clever Clogs

People have played all sorts of games with limericks, including one person who wrote one reading from bottom to top. When I was at school we had a prize for solving mathematical connundrums (connundra?) which I never won. We had a clever clogs in the class who always did, and went on to get a first. This limerick is by a British mathematician who would also no doubt have won.

12 + 144 + 20 + 3√4  + (5x11) = 9² + 0
               7

Or in English:

A dozen, a gross and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more

Another from the same Wikipedia source makes fun of the difference between pronunciation and spelling, in this case of the Scots name Menzies.

A lively young damsel named Menzies
Inquired:"Do you know what this thenzies?'
Her aunt with a gasp
Replied "It's a wasp
And you're holding the end where the stenzies"

Two more of the same, the first from me this time and the second modified from Brownielocks:

A girl who was dressed all in taupe
Was considered a bit of a daupe
Her parents despaired
Of getting her paired
Said her mother "there isn't a haupe"

An elderly bride from Port Jervis
Was quite understandably nervis
As her much younger groom
With three wives in the toom
Was insuring her during the servis

The next two were collected by Bennet Cerf, who, in his own words revised, dry cleaned and annotated them. The second one is particularly complicated, hence splitting the first line in two. It illustrates the incredible problems people learning English must have with pronouncing -ough, and that's not the only one!

There was a young girl in the choir
Whose voice went up hoir and hoir
'Till on Sunday night 
It vanished from sight
And turned up next day in the spoir 

The wind was rough ...
... and cold and blough
She kept her hands within her mough
It chilled her through
Her nose tuned blough
And still the squall the faster flough

And yet, although ...
... there was no snough
The weather was a cruel fough
It made her cough
Please do not scough
She coughed until her hat blough ough