Jeff Davis tipped me off to this Ikea walk-through. Frustratingly, the walkthrough doesn’t include any cheat codes. Even though Ikea was founded by a Swede, its company colors match the Swedish national colors, all its product names are Swedish, and it is clearly associated with Sweden in the minds of everyone, it is in fact headquartered in Denmark. Probably for tax reasons. The name of the plastic stool Förby has provided me much entertainment. At first, it was amusingly similar to the name of the annoying toy Furby. And it turns out it’s also amusingly similar to the Swedish word “förbi” which means “gone past”. (German “vorbei”.) During an evening of sore hands trying to drive screws into wood using a tiny little hex wrench, some friends and I came up with new Ikea product names. Here are a few:

• Frusträt
• Flims
• Instabil
• Brøkken (okay fine this is Norwegian, not Swedish; I hadn’t started studying Swedish yet)
• Kräp

And, of course, the complimentary twine for tying your packages to the top of your car:

• Strink

Some of these might even be better than the actual name they came up with for a children’s bed.