Pack your pouch Peter Piper, a new tongue-twister’s in town

If you can say this phrase 10 times fast without your mouth seizing up, you might be in a special minority:

‘Pad kid poured curd pulled cold.’

That’s the tongue-twister that American scientists found most often stumped their study group.

Many of the people taking part clammed up and stopped talking altogether when they tried it, according to Dr Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

The study was carried out, not to provide a few cheap laughs, but to help understand the brain’s speech-planning processes.

“When things go wrong, that can tell you something about how the typical, error-free operation should go,” Dr Shattuck-Hufnagel said.

Many of the people taking part clammed up and stopped talking altogether

Some combinations of sounds appear to make people lose control of their mouths when spoken too quickly, and often one sound seems to replace another – for example, when “toy boat” becomes “toy boyt”, and when “top cop” becomes “cop cop”.

The scientists studied two categories of tongue twister – simple lists of paired words, such as “top cop”, and whole sentences.

In the paired-word list, tongue twisters produced a preponderance of “t’kop” type errors. In contrast, the full sentences produced more “tah-kop” mistakes that included a short vowel after the initial consonant.

So, did the scientists discover the world’s new toughest tongue-twister?

If you’re feeling confident (and no-one else is listening), give these devilish phrases a go, including one of our own:

She sells seashells on the sea shore

Is the government's sat fat attack falling flat?

Send toast to ten tense stout saints' ten tall tents

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday

I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop.
Where she sits she shines, and where she shines she sits.