All hints are in the comments!

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Aug. 28, 2019

|| || pivot, grind, defuse, dilute, studied up on it.
Image from the Internet.

The opening poem contains all the words (or variations of them) from today's Jumble.
Comments are welcomed!
Do not explicitly reveal any of the actual answer words until after closing time, but embedding them surreptitiously in comment sentences is encouraged.

8 comments:

OwenKL said...

The Mortar and the Pestle were a happy man and wife.
Whatever got between them suffered from their strife!
Mortar sat her ground, and Pestle he would pivot,
And grind and grind away, till powder reached its limit.

Together they'd defuse many excess concentrations,
Helping many healers with their ministrations.
Their grinding on and on, so very resolute,
Yielded helpful potions chemists could dilute.

Learned men of ancient times studied with this couple.
They could depend upon them sans excess kerfuffle.
Intruder 'ware to intervene between a husband and his wife,
Who are prepared to grind away, every day and night!

Sandyanon said...

Well, it seems to be a slow day for solvers, doesn't it, Owen?I

And when you wrote such an entertaining poem, too. Although I'm not sure I get the last line -- though probably I do.

The jumble itself was not difficult, especially the clues. I did go off in the wrong direction for the solution at first, having assumed that the middle two-letter word would be "to". Giving that up let the first long word appear and voila! Not sure the pun is all that inevitably a real pun, but it's interesting.

OwenKL said...

I think the pun revolves around up on / upon, and the one they picked was the less punny one.

I'm disappointed with the picture. Mt. Rainer has an iconic appearance (my daughters both live within sight of it) that is nothing like anything in the cartoon.

Sandyanon said...

They were probably just going for something generic and then picked a well-known name.

What I found incongruous was their clothing in light of the temperature mentioned. Shorts and not even sweaters, brrr!

Or did I miss some sort of inside joke?

Ol' Man Keith said...

OSA, the mama bear was washing the family laundry when she came across the item that reminded her of her most mischievous little one.
She had dressed her little boy and girl in brand new hats last week and then had taken them out to teach them how to scale trees. It was hot, tiring work, but Osa was determined to rear them properly. From half way up the first tree she turned back in time to see her naughty daughter take a header into a cooling mud hole!
Oh, Osa was mad. She spanked the little girl & sent her to bed without supper.
And now she had to pre-treat the muddied cub bonnet before she could put it in with the other clothes—the little seersucker summer suits and the ranger hat for the boy…
~ OMK

Ol' Man Keith said...

A terrific poem, Owen, truly your "A" game. The metaphor works beautifully--in both humdrum and erotic ways. The meter doesn't balk, and the rhymes serve well, esp. "kerfuffle." Thank you for it.

I agree that "Rainier" seemed out of place w/o a recognizable icy crown. If they were willing to settle for a generic mountain, they didn't need to use that name, or any name at all. Strange...
The "climbers'" inappropriate clothing underscores the idea that they haven't finished their "studies" yet.
~ OMK

Ev. said...

Owen - just completed the jigidi (?) that you mentioned on CC's blog. Lovely!! beautiful poem. (First jigsaw I ever did on line. Fun.)

OwenKL said...

Ev., Welcome!