Minimal Pairs between FOOT and GOOSE vowels

When I said you could send your questions to Schendo's Bad Grammar by finding me at a bar, I didn't think anybody would take me up on that offer. But my friend B. A. Bob challenged me during a Happy Hour to think of a minimal pair between two vowels in English that can both be spelled "OO": IPA /u/ as in "boot" and IPA /ʊ/ as in "cook."

A minimal pair is two words that differ only by only one sound.  For example: "peat" and "pit," which are the same except for the vowel. Minimal pairs are important in linguistics because they provide proof that two sounds are meaningful language-sounds, or phonemes, and not variations of the same sound. The vowels in "peat" and "pit" are meaningful because if I substitute one for the other, I also change the meaning of the word.

The best I could come up at the bar with was "hood" and "who'd," but B.A. Bob also offered "kook" and "cook."  The time had come to implement a research methodology more rigorous (though no less traditional) than thinking of words while drinking beer for several hours.

As it turns out there are very few minimal pairs between these two (and Scottish speakers may not have them at all).  Certainly less than between other vowels (/i/ vs. /I/ for example).  Here's a list complied by John Higgins (with much appreciation for all the work he has put into his website).

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Well, that's another notch in the bedpost of Schendo's Readers' Question Mailbag Spectacular. Do you have a burning question about language? Send it via eMail or by visiting the Schendo's Bad Grammar Facebook page. Seriously, I'm on a freakin' roll here.