Another Bizarro with three puns:
The thing about imperfect puns — those where the punning expression and the one punned on are not phonologically identical, as in all three of these examples — is that the punner can get away with considerable disparity between pun and model if the context (in a formulaic expression of some kind, with visual reinforcement, etc.) is rich enough.
Trolls for scrolls is moderately distant, /t/ for /sk/ — but it’s a rhyme, and rhymes make the pun relationship easy to perceive; the onsets of the accented syllables in the rhyming relation can be pretty much anything.
Wrestler’s for Whistler’s is more distant: /r/ for /(h)w/ in the onset plus /ɛ/ for /ɪ/ as the accented vowel. But there’s support from the formula and the picture.
Goth for Gogh is a snap orthographically, but quite distant phonologically, if you use the most common English pronunciation for Gogh: /aɵ/ for /o/. Or moderately distant if you use a reasonably faithful approximation to Dutch: /gaɵ/ for /xax/, where /x/ is a voiceless velar fricative not ordinarily appearing as a phoneme of English. Only if you use the mixed pronunciation /gax/ for the painter’s name (an alternative given by AHD4 in addition to the other two) does the pun resolve to something really easy, /g/ for /x/ in the offset.
Probably Piraro was thinking about the relationship orthographically, with T for G.
And that’s the Sunday puns.
