{
  "dataset": "The entendre test, applied",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0",
  "as_of": "2026-08-16",
  "test": [
    {
      "id": "T1",
      "name": "Co-location",
      "rule": "The readings must sit in one phrase at the same time. Three puns in sequence are three puns."
    },
    {
      "id": "T2",
      "name": "Thematic coherence",
      "rule": "Each reading must make sense with what the song is about. A reading that is technically available but thematically inert is a coincidence, not a layer."
    },
    {
      "id": "T3",
      "name": "No derivation",
      "rule": "Layer N may not be a consequence or connotation of layer N-1. If reading three follows from reading two, that is one layer described twice."
    },
    {
      "id": "T4",
      "name": "Words, not numbers",
      "rule": "Numerical and date collisions are not entendres. Numbers coincide far more cheaply than words do."
    },
    {
      "id": "T5",
      "name": "A frame is one device",
      "rule": "A conceit that is switched on for a whole project, such as a persona or an album-length theme, is one device. It does not add a layer to every line underneath it."
    }
  ],
  "cases": [
    {
      "case": "C.R.E.A.M.",
      "artist": "Wu-Tang Clan",
      "year": 1993,
      "claim": "A two-word phrase read three ways: a sexual sense, a criminal-lifestyle sense, and a money sense.",
      "verdict": "SURVIVES",
      "why": "The three readings are co-located in one phrase, each is coherent with a song about money and survival, and none of the three follows from either of the others.",
      "fails": []
    },
    {
      "case": "Won't Back Down",
      "artist": "Eminem",
      "year": 2010,
      "claim": "A two-word phrase read as injections, as a generic insult, and anatomically.",
      "verdict": "SURVIVES",
      "why": "Co-located, all three independently coherent, and the medical sense does not derive from the insult sense.",
      "fails": []
    },
    {
      "case": "Light Up",
      "artist": "Jay-Z",
      "year": 2010,
      "claim": "Announced in the bar itself as a triple entendre, built on a homophone.",
      "verdict": "FAILS",
      "why": "The homophone yields one substitution, not three simultaneous readings. Complex stated in 2012 that it is not technically one and then declined to apply its own cited standard. This is the founding claim of the entire format and its own audience rejected it.",
      "fails": [
        "T1",
        "T3"
      ]
    },
    {
      "case": "6:16 in LA",
      "artist": "Kendrick Lamar",
      "year": 2024,
      "claim": "Five or more readings stacked on a date and a set of numbers.",
      "verdict": "FAILS",
      "why": "The readings are numerical collisions rather than word collisions. Numbers coincide cheaply, and a stacked date reading is a different phenomenon from a phrase carrying several senses at once.",
      "fails": [
        "T4"
      ]
    },
    {
      "case": "Figaro",
      "artist": "Madvillain",
      "year": 2004,
      "claim": "A proverb substituted at the rhyme position, a drug-purity sense, and a literal iridescence sense.",
      "verdict": "CONTESTED",
      "why": "The genuinely hard case, and we are not resolving it by fiat. The proverb and the drug sense are clearly independent. Whether the literal shine is a third layer or simply the etymology of the drug sense is exactly what T3 was written to ask, and reasonable readings differ.",
      "fails": [
        "T3?"
      ]
    },
    {
      "case": "Beef Rapp",
      "artist": "MF DOOM",
      "year": 2004,
      "claim": "Layers accruing from the album-length food conceit.",
      "verdict": "CONTESTED",
      "why": "The food frame is switched on for the whole record. Under T5 that is one device rather than a layer credited to each line beneath it.",
      "fails": [
        "T5?"
      ]
    }
  ]
}