Initial confusion

When you are on the phone with an airline company, or any other outfit that requires confirmation codes, sometimes you need to spell out a six letter nonsense word, like DMXRFU or ZYTPSW. There is no great way to do this, so most of us resort to saying things like “D as in Denver, M as in mammoth, …”

But sometimes this doesn’t work as planned. A friend told me recently that she was on the phone with an airline representative who was trying to give helpful hints.

The representative explained how you could choose words that made the process easier. “For example,” she said, “you could say Q as in ‘cucumber’.”

My friend was too polite to correct the nice lady on the phone, but hearing that story got me thinking. What are the various ways that people might screw this up?

So here are some helpful suggestions for how one might sow chaos and confusion, in the course of trying to helpfully spell out the letters of those mysterious six letter codes:

        A as in eight
        C as in sea lion
        E as in Igor
        G as in jeep
        I as in eyeball
        K as in candy
        Q as in cucumber
        S as in ace
        U as in pew
        X as in accent
        Y as in wine
        Z as in peas