{"id":191,"date":"2008-11-06T14:49:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T21:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/?p=191"},"modified":"2008-11-06T23:44:57","modified_gmt":"2008-11-07T06:44:57","slug":"snowclone-a-maze-of-twisty-little-x-all-alike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/06\/snowclone-a-maze-of-twisty-little-x-all-alike\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowclone: A maze of twisty little X, all alike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Language Log likes to talk about snowclones. In fact, they popularized the term “snowclone”<\/a> (though they did not coin it, as you can see by the entry).<\/p>\n

Here’s one I don’t think they’ve looked at, even though they have used it<\/a>, which has an intriguing distribution:<\/p>\n

You are in a maze of twisty little X, all alike.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the original phrase, the X slot was filled by ‘passages’. It’s from the text adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure<\/a>, and while it’s clear that this phrase is a full-blown snowclone (anything can fill the X slot, though the rest of the phrase is mostly still fixed), it’s one with limited distribution: the main usages are clearly computer-related or otherwise nerdy (or geeky if you prefer).<\/p>\n

(I know the phrase, but I’m actually not familiar with Colossal Cave or similar games as such. I actually thought the passageways line was from Zork, but the Google Meme Observatory<\/a> corrected me. Shows what I know! The computer games that I played when I was younger all had graphics, albeit simple ones like flat green buffaloes and pink H’s surrounded by green blocks.)<\/p>\n

Here are 22 interestingly representative examples of the snowclone:
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little paragraphs<\/a>, all alike.
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little injokes<\/a>, all alike…
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little corporations<\/a>, all alike…
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You are in a maze of twisty little emoticons<\/a>, all alike.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nIn the limiting case, just because I install a Python parser, it shouldn’t force other modules into a maze of twisty little whitespace<\/a>, all alike.
\ncode that seems to be a maze of twisty little bitShifts<\/a>, all alike, follows.
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little tabs<\/a>, all alike.
\nA maze of twisty little standards<\/a>, all alike
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little weblogs<\/a> all alike.
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little classes<\/a>, all alike.
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little menus<\/a>, all alike.
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little boxes<\/a>, all alike
\nYou are in a little twisty maze of think-tanks<\/a>, all different.<\/i>
\nYou are lost in a maze of twisty little filesystems<\/a>, all alike…. <\/i>
\nYou are in a maze of twisty subroutines<\/a>, all alike. You may be eaten by a deadline.<\/i>
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little APIs<\/a>, all alike\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\nAnyone who’s worked in a maze of twisty little cubicles<\/a> (all alike) will be able to relate to the situations presented here.<\/i>
\nWhen considering the rules mentioned above, plus some other rules about tax-treatment on pre-IPO stock options, the whole mess might be paraphrased as: “You are in a maze of twisty little rules<\/a>, all alike.”
\nyou are in a maze of twisty little header files<\/a>, all alike…
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little accounts<\/a>, all alike (2007\/3\/30)
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little config files<\/a>, all alike
\nA maze of twisty little railroads<\/a>, all alike
\nYou are in a maze of twisty little offsets<\/a>, all alike<\/p>\n

And for the final touch, a link to Language Hat!
\nI live in a part of Berkeley build up in the 1920s, which for drivers is a maze of twisty little streets<\/a>, all alike.<\/p>\n

(Sadly, Mr. Language Hat did not use it, just one of the commenters.)<\/p>\n

The variations show that the phrase is either a tad flexible, or difficult to remember with perfect accuracy. And indeed the wiki page explains that there were both a maze of passageways all alike, and one of passageways all different, which was described in several variant ways.<\/p>\n

I’m rather fond of this snowclone. I think my favorite is the “maze of twisty little whitespace all alike”, but that’s just because I hate Python.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language Log likes to talk about snowclones. In fact, they popularized the term “snowclone” (though they did not coin it, as you can see by the entry). Here’s one I don’t think they’ve looked at, even though they have used it, which has an intriguing distribution: You are in a maze of twisty little X, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}