full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Catherine Mohr: How I became part sea urchin

Unscramble the Blue Letters

My story starts in the northern Galapagos Islands, under 50 feet of wtear and a big school of sharks. I'd been scuba diving with a gorup of fidrnes for about a week, and it had been glorious: manta rays, whale sharks, penguins and, of course, hammerhead srahks. Today's dive was particularly tricky. The surge was terrible. You had to have your camera rig tight in and your arm out, because the surge kept throwing you into the rocks while you're scanning up for that beautiful phtgoroaph. It was going OK, until ... not OK. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. I pulled my hand back, and I had long, black sea urichn snipes all the way through my gloves, which meant all the way through my hand.

Open Cloze

My story starts in the northern Galapagos Islands, under 50 feet of _____ and a big school of sharks. I'd been scuba diving with a _____ of _______ for about a week, and it had been glorious: manta rays, whale sharks, penguins and, of course, hammerhead ______. Today's dive was particularly tricky. The surge was terrible. You had to have your camera rig tight in and your arm out, because the surge kept throwing you into the rocks while you're scanning up for that beautiful __________. It was going OK, until ... not OK. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. I pulled my hand back, and I had long, black sea ______ ______ all the way through my gloves, which meant all the way through my hand.

Solution

  1. urchin
  2. sharks
  3. group
  4. spines
  5. water
  6. photograph
  7. friends

Original Text

My story starts in the northern Galapagos Islands, under 50 feet of water and a big school of sharks. I'd been scuba diving with a group of friends for about a week, and it had been glorious: manta rays, whale sharks, penguins and, of course, hammerhead sharks. Today's dive was particularly tricky. The surge was terrible. You had to have your camera rig tight in and your arm out, because the surge kept throwing you into the rocks while you're scanning up for that beautiful photograph. It was going OK, until ... not OK. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. I pulled my hand back, and I had long, black sea urchin spines all the way through my gloves, which meant all the way through my hand.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
sea urchin 5
urchin spine 3
absolutely insane 2
love story 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
sea urchin spine 2

Important Words

  1. arm
  2. beautiful
  3. big
  4. black
  5. camera
  6. dive
  7. diving
  8. feet
  9. friends
  10. galapagos
  11. gloves
  12. group
  13. hammerhead
  14. hand
  15. islands
  16. long
  17. manta
  18. meant
  19. northern
  20. penguins
  21. photograph
  22. pulled
  23. rays
  24. rig
  25. rocks
  26. scanning
  27. school
  28. scuba
  29. sea
  30. sharks
  31. spines
  32. starts
  33. story
  34. surge
  35. terrible
  36. terribly
  37. throwing
  38. tight
  39. tricky
  40. urchin
  41. water
  42. week
  43. whale
  44. wrong