More and more intrigued that nobody so far has made the connection between "out of whack" and "whacky", I begin to suspect this is deliberate, to conceal the whackiness of the debate.

I suspect that no from the States has made that connection, because here we spell that word wacky. So for me to have
made that connection, I would have been wackified (hi, Tsuwm).

But, speaking of across-the-pond differences, that reminds me of whine and whinge. I think they have essentially the
same meaning, but very different pronunciations.