use of reverse dictionary

I've just opened up my Reader's Digest Reverse Dictionary to let you see a worked example of its use to comedy writers.

The book has opened at a page which has a table of 'Leaders and Rulers.' the table has 40 or so types of leader from royalty to military to mafia.

All we have to do is to run our eye down the listing, looking for any word or phrase which sounds like something else, rhymes with something else or is a pun... or sounds like a pun.

Straight way, I can pull out:

capo - Mafia divisional leader
Mikado - Japanese
mandarin - Chinese
shogun - Japanese military
Sultan - Muslim
Tsar - Russian king

The basis of the gags, unformed, is a follows:

capo - a device for raising the pitch of a guitar
Mikado - unhappy garage customer 'Me car don't go'
Mandarin - A Chinese official formerly known as a tangerine but changed his title out of embarrassment
Shogun - very similar to the word 'shotgun'
Sultan - very similar to 'sultana'
Tsar - very close to 'star', in sound and as an anagram.

My next post will concentrate on fine-tuning sdomeof these into full gags.

All the best, Marc