Is This The World's Hardest Tongue Twister?

Can You Say The World's Hardest Tongue Twister?

"Pad kid poured curd pulled cold."

It may sound nonsensical but this jumble of words may just be the most tricky tongue twister ever, leaving tongue-tangling classics like Peter Piper and the seashell seller on the seashore in the dust.

In a recent speech study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, volunteers were recorded saying different combinations of words (like "the top cop saw a cop top") which typically causes muddled speech.

The phrase "pad kid poured curd pulled cold" turned out to be the most challenging; so much so that "the test subjects couldn't even get through it," with some volunteers going mute altogether when they attempted to repeat the tongue-twisting sentence, according to a press release on the study.

"If anyone can say this [phrase] ten times quickly, they get a prize," said Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, an MIT psychologist who worked on the research.

Speech errors, such as the ones caused by tongue twisters, can be used to understand how the brain processes and plans speech, said Shattuck-Hufnagel.

"When things go wrong, that can tell you something about how the typical, error-free operation should go," she said.

Her team's research on tongue twisters will be presented Thursday at the 166th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in San Francisco.

Can you recite "pad kid poured curd pulled cold" ten times without stumbling over your words? Tell us below!

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