The Taste of Words on the Tip of the Tongue

I read an amazing article in the New York Times (via Nature) about lexical-gustatory synaesthetes. People who have synaesthesia experience more than one sense at a time. In the most common form, they “see” numbers or letters or musical notes as colors. For example, a synaesthete might see the number 4 as dark green. The word synaesthesia comes from two Greek words, syn (union) and aesthesis (perception). Therefore, synaesthesia literally means “joined perception.”

Rare as grapheme-color synaesthesia is, there is an even rarer variation, says Julia Simner and Jamie Ward, cognitive neuropsychologists at the University of Edinburgh. Lexical-gustatories involuntarily “taste” words when they hear them, or even try to recall them. Magnetic-resonance imaging indicates they are not faking; the correct words light up the taste regions of their brains. Dr. Simner has yet to figure out any logic to the choices, as this quote from the NY Times article explains:

For example, the word “mince” makes one subject taste mincemeat, but so do rhymes like “prince.” Words with a soft “g,” as in “roger” or “edge,” make him taste sausage. But another subject, hearing “castanets,” tastes tuna fish. Another can taste only proper names: John is his cornbread, William his potatoes.

I wonder what Grammar Cracker would taste like to a lexical-gustatory synaesthete? Hopefully, it would be dark chocolate and raspberry.