from crackers to slipperozin to dropsy to snide

“from crackers to slipperozin to dropsy to snide“

This phrase or something like it was what I heard a couple of friends saying to each other years ago, in high school. I didn’t question them further, but just filed it away. My impression, as they quoted this phrase back and forth to each other, was that it sounded like a sports announcer following the path of a ball (in baseball) from player to player as they threw the ball around the bases. I guess it should be written with some caps (for the names) as, “From Crackers, to Slipperozin, to Dropsy, to Snide.” And I guess you should expect someone to say, “and they’re out,” to complete the phrase.

So I had not thought about this phrase for many years, although it would come to me sporadically through the years. And tonight, because it is still a little before midnight, the phrase came to me again while I was in my bathroom. As far as I can tell, there is nothing that triggered me thinking about the phrase again.

This is an odd night because I usually do not go to bed this early. I probably went to bed before 9 pm, and then awoke to go to the bathroom. But, tonight after I thought of this phrase and repeated it to myself, I decided to google it to see if there was actually a phrase similar to this out in the Public view.

Almost immediately I realized the what sounded like “slipperozin” might be spelled differently, but I valiantly pressed on. The next question that came to mind was, “Does the phrase start with ‘from Crackers,’ or is it just ‘crackers to slipperozin.”

To my surprise the phrase, or something like it, actually came up in my Google search. And another comforting thought was that I saw “Mad Magazine” referenced in one of the search results.

Yes, “Mad Magazine” would fit. The two friends were also interested in motorcycles and I would hear them talking about a “Moto Guzzi.” And for the longest time, I thought the “Moto Guzzi” was just a made up name they had come up with. It wasn’t, it’s not.

And to solidify their quirkiness, these two were part of an intricate plot to confuse an elderly school librarian. Now this remembrance I was just reminded of recently. I came across a very old “high school reunion” pamphlet. In it, one of the above perpetrators recounted the group antics that got them all suspended from library use for a year. Seems that about five boys took it upon themselves to check out over a hundred books, using various names (some made up), over a short period of time… and then to finish the prank they brought all the books back in at the same time. The result was the confusion of the library staff, and the suspension of the boys.

Oh my gosh, this search just took an odd turn. “Magersfontein Lugg is a fictional character in the Albert Campion novels, written by Margery Allingham (1904-1966). Lugg, in The Fashion in Shrouds (originally published in 1938), is the originator of the curious sentence, “It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide”. Mad Magazine just hijacked it.” — and another — which is hardboiled British slang for “it’s crazy to bribe a police officer with counterfeit money.” However, this comes across as a total Word Salad in American English, and was used as a Running Gag in MAD for many years.

Without looking it up further, Campion was a fictional British aristocrat that had sleuthing tendencies.

“It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.”

The sentence means, “It’s insane to try and bribe a policeman with fake money.” But no one knew that. It was just a funny-sounding phrase that a Mad writer discovered in a British gumshoe novel. Margery Allingham wrote a series of books featuring detective Albert Campion. His trusty sidekick was Magersfontein Lugg, a colorful character who coined the phrase in one of the stories.