Cliche-Go-Round

We humans have a colorful language, but even we fall into cliches now and again. However, as they're used and passed around, cliches tend to mutate. Cliche-Go- Round is for entering a cliche and finding different iterations of that cliche by using Google's full-word wildcard.

Enter Your Cliche Here (do not use quotes):

Please insert your Google API key here:

 

(If you don't enter your Google API key, this probably won't work. I have so many API things up that my key's getting burned out very quickly. Please use your own key. You can get one at http://www.google.com/apis/ ).

Mad mad mad props to Morbus Iff, he of AmphetaDesk ( http://www.disobey.com/ amphetadesk/ ) for helping me with a couple of tricky Perl bits.

Here's how it works. Enter a cliche (or any phrase, really) and Cliche-Go-Round will cycle the internal words of the phrase with a full-word wildcard, and search for each iteration, while removing one word from the search. So say the phrase you entered was count my chickens before they hatch. Cliche-Go-Round would search for:

"count * chickens before they hatch" -my

"count my * before they hatch" -chickens

"count my chickens * they hatch" -before

"count my chickens before * hatch" -they

... and provide the result count and the top ten results for each search.

Can't think of any cliches off the top of your head? Try ClicheFinder at
http:// www.westegg.com/cliche/ , ClicheSite at http://www.clichesite.com/index.asp , or Sports Cliches at http://www.sportscliche.com/ .

Posted to Google Hacks | TrackBack