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Frequency Illusion
When something new to you pops up again
I once watched a repeat of a Derren Brown experiment. in which he set up a pretend game show, the premise of which was that the audience held the power to vote on whether they wanted something good or bad to happen to an unsuspecting dupe.
The name of the show was Remote Control and, being a writer and always chewing over possibilities in my mind, I noticed that removing the initial letter R from the title would leave Emote Control.
This play on words could be used to describe someone who controls the emotions of another, and I thought it might be a handy phrase to keep in stock. I Googled it and, as is often the case, discovered that it has already been used by others. So that was that.
Coincidence in the Smallest Room
Next morning, I was sitting in the smallest room with The Times Crossword Book 10 balanced on my knee, and I puzzled over the following clue:
Made a scene, given inferior status first off (6)
I rattled the pencil between my teeth as I pondered (I do apologise for the imagery here), and then it came to me. Given inferior status could be demoted, and with the initial letter removed (first off), that would become emoted, certainly a word that could be used to…
