The sublime art of the daft headline

Tech webzine The Register has really surpassed itself this time, with this line to kick off a piece about a German innovation which makes bicycle helmets smell when they need replacing after an impact:

“Skid-lid bonk-stink crack tech cracked in Germany”

Connoisseurs may take issue with the repetition of ‘crack/cracked’ but I reckon it’s sheer headline genius. Just as good if not better than famous tabloid newsletter efforts such as The Sun’s “Obama Lama ding-dong”, fronting an article which implied a geopolitical rift over the US president’s meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader. Although that was surely a headline that had been sitting in a drawer somewhere just waiting for the flimsiest pretext to be used.