All hints are in the comments!

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

April 8, 2020

|| || agent, proxy, mildew, darker, preordained.
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.

9 comments:

Ol' Man Keith said...

FLN: Misty ~ No, I am hardly a better poet. Maybe a persistent scribbler. Anyway, it's not something to be decided under these circumstances.
What you bring to this forum is what we all most treasure: You are w/o doubt the finest audience, the kind of appreciative reader the rest of us crave. Seriously.
I hereby dub you our Discerner-in-Chief.
We all have poetic talent in varying degrees, just as we vary in our Jumble decoding skills. Both tasks benefit from the same first step toward excellence, which can be summed up in the phrase: Free your chained imagination!
Good advice, I think (as well as my hint at today's solution).
~ OMK

Wilbur Charles said...

More hints:


It was only much later and after much travel
That Gandalf devined the plan and began to unravel
The webs and mildew of the dark Lord's deceit
And realized that hobbits were the agents of his defeat.

The Great Ring had been lost and Bilbo was the proxy
And in the mildewed cave by guile and by moxie
Pilfer Gollum's trinket, actually the Ring of power,
For it was preordained that it be destroyed in the Dark Lord's Tower.


WC

Wilbur Charles said...

The wargs will have to wait. OMK, as I alluded to at CC, when too much imagination is unchained I pinch myself awake. Kim Bassinger, ear your heart out.

Oh, the old days when it was only narcissisism not insanity.

These four J's and the riddle-solution came instantly though I did have to jot down the letters

Oh to be in Boston at that French-Chinese restaurant and dine on Beef d'or mein.

Ok, I'll stick to poetry and you handle the gloss.

WC

OwenKL said...

Erato wrote the first verse-and-a-half with all the words last night, but it was so utterly gloomy I refused to post it. This morning I extended it, hopefully making it a bit more upbeat and worthy to be read.

Satan sent his proxy as an agent of doom,
Covid-Nineteen, his crown-prince of the tomb.
To that death-place of mildew or cremation,
Darker than the despairing abyss of creation.

Death is ever predestined and foreordained.
Overpopulation of our orb it must contain.
But it should be timely, let each soul endure,
Have the chance to make its mark for sure.

And so we isolate, to foil Old Scratch's ploy
To send us early to the place devoid of joy.
We quarantine, we stay at home, and isolate.
Thus we thumb our noses at Satan's dire fate --
(But when you thumb your nose,
Don't make contact with your face!)

Misty said...

Well, I had trouble with the third and fourth Jumble word--tried and just couldn't get them. And so, of course, the solution was nowhere in sight, even though with my Catholic background, I felt I should surely get it. So, had to come to the blog for help. And it came. First Wilbur's poem gave me the third word, but not the fourth. Then, thankfully, there was Owen's poem, and that gave me the fourth. Now I had all the letters but tried and tried and still couldn't get the solution. Went to Ol'Man Keith's commentary, and there it was in his gloss--Yay! Yay! Thank you, everybody. What a relief that I got it, and of course, the solution was perfect for the cartoon.

And, of course, before all that, there was Ol'Man Keith's sweet message, which warmed my heart! My goodness, I even got a new title--Woohoo!--and I've never been a chief of anything. Will have to add that to my resume, which hardly anyone asks for anymore, these days. So, thank you, Ol'Man Keith, you are now my favorite DUBBER!

Wilbur Charles said...

I dropped the 'er' but made up for it by using the root twice. But the riddle-solution was in plain sight - Owen actually slightly disguised it.

But it marks success if as Owen put in his blog description: 'disguised hints' are less than obvious.

And if course it helped being raised Catholic and having a brother receive that Sacrament. I missed it in 1970 and we've postponed the 50th anniversary to September.

WC

I'll chalk it up to being so 'enthralled'* by the saga

* Yesterday's poem word

Sandyanon said...

Though the clues were easy, I had trouble with the solution: maybe tiredness took over. Anyway, gave up on it.
Enjoyed both poems -- Wilbur's pithy continuation of the story, and Owen's sobering depiction of today. I must admit, thuough, Owen, I most enjoyed your twist at the end.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Yes, Owen ~ I too quite enjoyed that unexpected final fillip to your cocky ode. Thank you!
~ OMK

Misty said...

I too enjoyed the clever last two lines of your poem, Owen, and liked your poem too, Wilbur.