Tintin Forums

Can you find three things portrayed in the Tintin books that match three different surnames of US presidents?

(Note that I'm asking for three different presidential surnames, not just three different presidents, so any surname shared by more than one president can only be counted once.)

Tintin, the professor and writer takes a Lincoln Torpedo to the hospital in Cigars of the Pharaoh.

When Tintin finally catches up with the stolen fetish he is aboard the ship named Washington in Broken Ear.

Unfortunately I can't find the third one.

Two good ones, Labrador. I hadn't even remembered the ship being called The Washington either so that wasn't on my list, even though he's the first and arguably the most famous president of the lot! A perfectly correct and valid inclusion of course, but it does mean that there are now two as-yet-unfound presidential names to choose from to make up the three required. And "Lincoln" can also be found from a different (though similar) vehicle to the one labrador identified, so an original and complete list of three is still achievable.

I think I got the two last ones:

- Johnson (The Shooting Star, p.23-A3) matches the surname of 35th US President Lyndon B.JOHNSON (1963-1969)
or 17th US Pres. Andrew JOHNSON (1865 to 1869)

- The FORD cars in the books (e.g. on the cover to Congo) match the surname of 37th US President Gerald FORD (1974 to 1977)

see http://www.presidentsusa.net/presvplist.html

There must be a bush or two drawn somewhere in the background?

What about grant? For example did indians sign some paper to give away the land?

Pierce is a verb I know, but does it count when we f.ex see a bullet pierce a hat?

Well done yamilah and mondrian! I hadn't spotted Johnson or Grant!

The three presidential names I personally had in mind when I set the question were:
Lincoln (the Lincoln Torpedo labrador spotted, and also Haddock's rather fine Lincoln Zephyr convertible)

Ford (the Model T yamilah mentions and various other Ford cars throughout the series)

and Bush (many shrubs and bushes in nearly all of the books. In my question, I asked for "things" that matched presidents' surnames, so - as Mondrian realized - they didn't have to be names or proper nouns.)

The extra ones I hadn't thought of, spotted by labrador, yamilah and mondrian, nearly all count as "things", and thus are just as valid as the three I had in mind.
The "Washington" ship is certainly a thing;
the name "Johnson" counts as a thing (since a person's name is a noun);
and a "grant" is a thing, simply defined in my dictionary as "a sum of money given by the State". I guess this could just about describe the 25 dollars offered to the Blackfoot chief to clear off his land. The man offering this money actually seems to be more of an oil industry business man rather than a government official (he's one of the men who rush up to offer Tintin money minutes after the oil geyser blows) but since the US army are seen a panel later driving the indians off their land, it seems likely that this dodgy oil baron has government connections too (unthinkable in this day and age of course!) So I'm inclined to allow "grant" as a just-about-valid answer (though a more definite example might be the government payment calculus recieves for his submarine design).

If "pierce" could be counted as a thing, mondrian would have put forward three presidential surnames as required, and thus would be the winner. However - as he points out himself - pierce is a verb not a noun, so on grammatical grounds I don't think this word can quite be allowed as a "thing portrayed in the Tintin books". The president's surname would have to have been "Pierced-Hole" for it to count! Hope that doesn't seem unduly stringent, mondrian. It was certainly an impressive try anyway.

As nobody got the required full three by themselves, I'm inclined to give labrador, yamilah and mondrian a point apiece for each putting forward two valid presidential surnames and for finding a very impressive six between them, if that's OK with ed. And I'd give the honour of setting the next question to labrador, since he was first off the mark with his entry. (Hope that's OK with yamilah and mondrian.)

Over to you, labrador road 26.

Well done all.

We could turn this into a list of sorts. I've found another Lincoln I'm afraid. The Navigation and Steamship Company in Shooting Star reports all is well with the "City of Lincoln"


I don't want a point though. No... honestly...really :-)

As nobody got the required full three by themselves, I'm inclined to give labrador, yamilah and mondrian a point apiece for each putting forward two valid presidential surnames and for finding a very impressive six between them, if that's OK with ed. And I'd give the honour of setting the next question to labrador, since he was first off the mark with his entry.

Sounds very fair to me. Over to labrador road 26 for the next question.

P.S. I think I might have a couple more, for completeness - but I will have to check before posting them. This was a great question, and could well run and run!

Ed

Excellent question, thanks Balthazar!

Grant & Bush we´re the two that I could think of instantly (although I´m not entirely sure what "grant" exactly means? Does the money have to come from government, and isn´t it a name for some official papers as well, signed to give away either a property or maybe also power and such things?)

I was then reading the list of presidents, and there are loads of names (f. ex. Taft, Coolidge, Polk, Tyler etc) that might have some exact meaning. I suppose no one has Oxford English Dictionary at home?

mondrian
I was then reading the list of presidents, and there are loads of names (f. ex. Taft, Coolidge, Polk, Tyler etc) that might have some exact meaning. I suppose no one has Oxford English Dictionary at home?
No, but I have access to Google… ;-)

Taft means someone who dwells in a croft;
Coolidge may mean the edge of a hill - presumably some sort of ridge or cliff-top;
Polk is a form of the Scots surname Pollack, meaning "from the pool or pit."; and
Tyler is “a variant of the English occupational name Tiler, a man who made and laid tiles in floors and pavements”.

So apart from that last one, the names seem largely to derive from locales, or at least indicators of where the ancestors lived, rather than being specific things in themselves.

However, most of the examples are things named after people of the same name (the Lincoln, the ship called Washington) rather than the general class of thing (bush), so you might find some more like that.