From the Economist‘s 2/20/21 issue, p. 39 “Tree trade: Coconut shy”, beginning:
Zanzibar: Why palm trees are driving property moguls nuts
The island of Zanzibar has more than 4m coconut trees, and each one has an owner
There’s a simple and obvious pun in this: in the noun nuts referring to plant products vs. the adjective nuts ‘crazy’. But then there’s the N + N compound coconut shy (a specifically British item that I was pleased to have recognized), which bears every mark of an Economist playful allusion to a carnival game, but with a play on shy (adjective? the aversive verb?) that bears somehow on fruit tree ownership on Zanzibar. Here I can only report that I don’t get half of the joke.
