All hints are in the comments!

Monday, January 3, 2022

3 Jan. 2022

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|Smiley face| _shyly, quilt, weasle, picket, with "e s".
Image(s) from the Internet.

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

11 comments:

Sandyanon said...

As opposed to presidents?

Ol’ Man Keith said...

Sandy ~ Isn’t it monarchists and anarchists who are opposed to presidents?
~ OMK

Ol' Man Keith said...

”A Tease with Ease”

At the pet store,
an ermine swore!

Another mink looked out shyly,
saw the same picket,
and, being a union weasel,
Quit.
~ OMK

Sandyanon said...

OMK: but only presidents with an "i" for constitutionalism.

Misty said...

"Complex Guy"

Willy was thought to be wily,
like a weasel, acting shyly.
But although some actions he'd picket,
his intentions were never wicked.

After his girlfriend he did jilt,
he felt sad, and bought her a quilt
because his act made him feel some guilt.

She thanked him, and gave him a squeeze,
and now they've quickly re-united with ease.

Ol' Man Keith said...

But I thought he “did jilt” her, Misty!
I guess the moral of the story must be,
“Never give quilts to someone you wanna dump.”
~ OMK

Misty said...

Ol' Man Keith,

The problem is that my poems' ethics
come from the need to find rhyme words,
and that's what makes them pathetic.
If I didn't have to rhyme 'quilt'
Willy would never have had to jilt.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Yes, I understand.
I truly do, as I am under the same constraints.
I don't really object to the jilting. But the tense formation raises that old klutzy villain.
I appreciate that you take on an extra burden, wanting to place the J-words in the rhyming positions (making it easier for hint-seekers to spot them).
But remember, as Owen points out: you can use different forms, tenses, of the key words.
I think I remember he prefers that, the better to "embed" them.

It isn't a great leap for instance, to do "quilted/jilted" to avoid a "mill" and gain a better tense to serve your purposes.
(She can't exactly buy a "quilted," I know, so she would probably have to take the time to have
quilted a nice bedspread,
which might work better instead
to change heart & head
toward her.)

I'm afraid you must get tired of having to drum it into my thick head that you have to follow wherever the rhyme leads you.
You probably think I forget your "ethics."
No, I do understand,
and I only hope to offer suggestions that make your task easier--
to let you take charge of the words, like Humpty-Dumpty, instead of having them boss you about.
~ OMK

Misty said...

Thank you for your kind explanation, OMK.

Can you remind me (again, I know I've asked you before) what a "mill" is?
I should write it down somewhere so I'll remember it.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Any awkwardness of language (where words just "mill about").

But especially the practice in dated (Victorian-era) poetry where in order to cram a verb into a rhyming position, they often reversed the usual verb/subject position by using a "helper" word.
Instead of writing "... he jilted his girlfriend," which wouldn't place "jilt" at the end of a line, you wrote "...his girlfriend he did jilt," an uncommon & clumsy way to talk, one that's isolated to old songs and victorian ditties.

What is the solution? There is never a direct answer. We just have to re-think the approach to what we want to express.
It's the same challenge to us all, not to let the words take over. I often find myself re-wording entire sentences, checking the rhyme zone for other options, checking for synonyms to find other words I can use, &c. &c.

I know, it's a *#@! chore.
~ OMK

Misty said...

Good grief--I'm not sure I can write poems with rhyming words without using the "mill"
That also explains why you're not rigid about rhyming words, OMK: it's a way of avoiding "mills." I'll have to think about how to handle this. I hate to give up writing Jumble poems, but don't think I can work in all the Jumble words every day without "mill"s.