How to play with students' minds

It happens at about this time every semester: to give my composition students some exercise in using the MLA guide, I take a pile of books to class and give each to a group 0f students, who then have to figure out how to write a Works Cited listing for that source. I give them books with multiple authors or no author or an author and a translator or odd configurations of titles and subtitles, and I always include a book by Calvin Trillin called Deadline Poet: My Life as a Doggerelist. The group working on that book almost always leaves off the subtitle, which gives me a chance to add it to their citation, and then the class discussion proceeds something like this:

"Does anyone know what a doggerelist is?"

Dead silence.

"Nobody knows what doggerelist means?"

Silence.

"Does it help if I tell you I am a doggerelist?"

Silence accompanied by a few uncomfortable coughs and shuffles.

"Come on, what does doggerelist sound like?"

Finally, some brave soul says, "It sounds nasty."

This is when I smile broadly and explain what a doggerelist is--or not. Sometimes it's more fun to leave it to their imaginations.

I wonder: how many complaints would end up on the provost's desk if I just instructed all my students to go out and become doggerelists? It would almost be worth the experiment just to find out.