EGGMANIA

You say potAHto, and I say potAto; you say eGGzactly and I say eXactly.

You’re wrong, eggcept maybe if you’re from BAHston. OK, we’ll let you slide on the potato, but we have to call you on the “GG.” This is most definitely an amuse-as-you-instruct application from Maysonave, embedded with plenty of definitions of words such as umpteen, Chinook, perused, caviar and ransacked. There are also quick but complete fun facts—“Female crows typically lay a clutch of three to seven eggs”; “A nocturnal mammal, the fox only hunts for its food at night”—and other interactive features that are minor (often maddening) adventures to find and deploy. It’s not much of a story, per se, more an associative exploration of sound. The gist of the matter is to pronounce “ex” like “x,” and not like “egg”: exactly, extraordinary, exuberant, exemplar and exceptional, for starters. It is set in a kingdom of waxy pastels with a kind of Yellow Submarine kookiness, and the interaction is vigorous without being frantic. The characters have a static feel that lend a dreamy quality to the proceedings, as does the general psychedelic tone, but this is far from solely eye candy, though it does go on for a very long time.

Here’s one e-book that doesn’t lay an egg.