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When I take the three words "boy", "meets" and "girl", the sentence "boy meets girl" is correct, but "meets girl boy" is not.

Could you think of three distinct words for which both expressions are correct and make sense?

Note to the downvoters: sorry if this question bothers you. This is my first one of the site. I first posted it on english.stack-exchange, but someone said it would be a better fit here. I agree that there is certainly many correct answers. I just would like one to illustrate a basic programming exercise (i.e., "rotating" the value of 3 variables).

Beastly Gerbil
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Aristide
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    I take it the words must be distinct, or else there are various trivial examples, such as "Buffalo buffalo buffalo". – paolo Oct 20 '16 at 15:43
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    Yes. I edit my question. – Aristide Oct 20 '16 at 15:43
  • Are words that form a question allowed? –  Oct 20 '16 at 15:51
  • affirmation -> question are lots of possibilities. – lois6b Oct 20 '16 at 15:52
  • Thanks. I would prefer not to need any punctuation. – Aristide Oct 20 '16 at 15:54
  • Downvoted since this is subjective and too broad. Puzzles should have one objectively correct answer. – Deusovi Oct 20 '16 at 16:09
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    Could be made open-ended by changing the challenge to find the longest pair of sentences A B C D ... W and B C D ... W A – humn Oct 20 '16 at 22:49
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    @humn Good idea, but in my opinion your exact suggestion would make the challenge easier (cf. Beastly Gerbil general answers). I think one could make the challenge harder in two distinct ways. 1. find the "De Bruijn sentence" of maximal length (ex. ABC, BCA, CAB would be valid sentences of length 3). 2. find two sentences ABC and BCA where each A, B, C have different meaning / grammatical function in their sentence. – Aristide Oct 21 '16 at 06:59

3 Answers3

5

The simple solution is to write

ADVERB, PRONOUN, VERB and then make it PRONOUN, VERB, ADVERB

For instance

Sometimes people think and People think sometimes

And

Slowly I drive and I drive slowly

Another example

Daily they read and They read daily

Another solution found by Jonathan Allan is

PRONOUN, PRONOUN, VERB and PRONOUN, VERB, PRONOUN

For instance

Anyone you know and You know anyone

And

Somebody we saw and We saw someone

Once again

Others he met and He met others

There can be words with multiple meanings which will work:

On right side (on the right hand side) and Right side on (the correct side is on)

Beastly Gerbil
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3

Aww sweet:

Someone I love; I love someone

Jonathan Allan
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2

A B C:

Half a cookie

B C A:

A cookie half

Beastly Gerbil
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halfmang
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