With tax season is in full swing, the only posts likely to make it to completion are short recollections of random thoughts I had during the five-minute drive to work.

I don't remember what triggered it, but this morning I was contemplating the group defined as younger brothers whose elder siblings rhyme with each other but not with him. No, that's not a precise definition. They don't have to be siblings, just names that are routinely listed as a group.

I thought I was going for trios, but three of the four I came up with before arriving at work are quartets, and two of the quartets include another non-rhyming brother (Cottontail and Miney). The only trio I can think of is Wynken, Blynken and Nod.

I'm sure there are more out there. Who am I missing?

By the way, for those of my readers who were not teenage nerds in the early 1980s (and you know who you aren't), Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde are the nicknames of the four ghosts in Pacman.

Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter really are siblings, I think, in Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories. When I was young, my sister had a French translation of Peter Rabbit. I remember this only because I was amused by the rabbits' French names: Flopsaut, Mopsaut, Queue-de-Coton, et Pierre. I especially love "Queue-de-Coton", which tumbles so quickly from the mouth, like a triple-tonguing woodwind player. (Um, no, let me rephrase that....)

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