Well, some of the stuff's not that interesting. Here's a stack graph showing the number of limericks using the top hundred A rhymes and the top hundred B rhymes. To me it looks like a generic graph. There's no shocking pattern and no real difference in the way A and B rhymes are distributed.
In fact, there's not much difference between the way A and B rhymes are written. The two most common A rhymes are UW1, the elongated "o" sound used most frequently in "you", "do", and "screw"; and EY1, the long "a" sound used most frequently in "day", "way", and "say". On the other hand, the most common B rhymes are... EY1 ("day", "say", "way") and UW1 ("you", "do", "two").
This is a very disappointing conclusion, but with this knowledge I have been able to write the world's least clever limerick, statistically speaking:
After writing that, I went through the dataset and discovered a naturally generated limerick that comes very close to having minimally clever rhymes! Its only failing is it uses "way" (#3 word for the EY1 sound in B rhymes) instead of "day" (#1):
Here are the top twenty A rhymes and the top twenty B rhymes, each with the number of limericks they're used in and their top three words:
I think a comparison to a similar corpus of non-obscene rhyming poetry would be instructive.
While gathering this data I fixed a bug in my screen-scraper that was sometimes causing a B line to be treated as an A line, which of course screwed up the meter of some generated limericks. I've also changed the way limericks are posted to Twitter, so that if you go to the @DadaLimericks page the limericks in the archive won't seem to run into one another.
As a bonus/palate-cleanser from those unclever limericks, here's a very clever Queneau limerick that I don't think a human would have come up with:
Fri Jun 22 2012 09:20 The Least Clever Limericks:
One side effect of downloading 90,000 limericks is you have a lot of data. Actually, that's the primary effect. Given that Dada Da Dada Da Dum requires I classify the limericks by the sounds they use in the A and B rhymes, I thought it would be interesting to tabulate that data and see which rhymes are the most common.
Oh, hi, I was looking for you
I'm bored and there's nothing to do
I've been listless all day
So what do you say
We take off our clothes and we screw
In an earthquake, the best thing to do
Is to set about having a screw.
When you're done, you can say
In your nonchalant way
May I ask, did the earth move for you?
A rhyme limericks Word #1 Word #2 Word #3
1 UW1 2611 you do screw 2 EY1 2385 day way say 3 IY1 2146 me see be 4 EH1 D 1583 bed head said 5 AO1 R 1315 more door whore 6 AY1 T 1295 night right sight 7 OW1 1228 know go so 8 EH1 R 1228 there hair air 9 IY1 T 962 feet meat sweet 10 AY1 946 guy fly eye 11 IH1 T 903 it shit bit 12 EY1 T 820 great late fate 13 IH1 R 816 fear dear beer 14 EY1 N 803 pain brain jane 15 IY1 N 784 seen clean obscene 16 AE1 S 775 ass lass class 17 AH1 N 743 fun one done 18 IY1 Z 711 please knees ease 19 EH1 L 676 well hell tell 20 AO1 L 648 all ball fall
B rhyme limericks Word #1 Word #2 Word #3
1 EY1 2284 day say way 2 UW1 1890 you do two 3 IY1 1836 me see be 4 EH1 D 1684 said bed head 5 AY1 T 1319 night right delight 6 EH1 R 1213 there hair care 7 OW1 1137 know go show 8 AO1 R 1064 more door whore 9 AY1 1055 why high eye 10 IH1 T 1037 it shit bit 11 AH1 N 819 fun one done 12 AY1 Z 799 eyes thighs surprise 13 IH1 R 771 dear fear clear 14 IY1 T 767 meat feet sweet 15 AY1 D 761 inside wide died 16 AA1 T 743 hot not got 17 EY1 T 706 date great late 18 AE1 S 691 ass lass gas 19 EY1 N 596 pain brain explain 20 EH1 L 590 hell well tell
The North Pole is a little bit shy
And Air France? Just the pure l'eau de vie.
My question today
That this mortal clay
She was born just before World War I.
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