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Today I learnt that "[bald tug of war
championship](http://www.sportbible.com/funny/weird-bald-head-tug-of-war-
might-be-the-greatest-sport-ever-invented-20180916)" was a thing in Japan, and
came across some weird kana that I can't figure out (in the top left corner,
underlined in red) :

[![weird
kanas](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iyBBK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iyBBK.jpg)

Is it simply `しい` ? That's what seems the most likely to me, but I'm not a
hundred percent convinced. Could it by any chance contain one of the "kana
iteration marks" ?
CC BY-SA 4.0
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question
kana puns
Are those kanas "しい" ? (text found on a banner)
Yes, it is しい. There is a bit of a play-on-words happening here.

[禿]{は}げ means "bald(ness)", but is being written in katakana on the top line
(ハゲ[頭]{あたま}). The entire bottom row says ハゲ〜しい[熱戦]{ねっ・せん}. Here, the しい is
being used in conjunction with ハゲ (written in katakana) to represent the
adjective [激]{はげ}しい, which means "intense" or "fierce". So 激しい熱戦 is like
"fierce contest/competition". Also note the elongation mark `〜` used for some
emphasis.

So they're making a connection between the baldness and the intensity of the
competition by writing ハゲ in katakana in both spots. However, the しい is still
written in hiragana to make it obvious that it's 激しい. I suppose they could
have written it all in katakana as ハゲシイ, but then it might not be as obvious
and the meaning could have been lost.
CC BY-SA 4.0
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answer