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| _image, thick, equate, teacup, quit it.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.
At the highly likely risk of being very boring, I'd like to explain some of my general negativity - or at least try.
ReplyDeleteMost of the puns the jumble writers come up with are homophonic, i.e., sound-alike words or phrases that can mean two different things. My problem is that when the two don't perform the same grammatical function, and are thus not totally parallel, I get very uncomfortable with the result. There's still a pun, but it doesn't seem very elegant, very well constructed. That's my personal reaction, of course.
Now, today's pun is the homographic type: same word, but two legitimate different meanings. This one today works pretty darn well, I think.
Alice came round to the Hatter's, again.
ReplyDeleteThe party was still going -- off the deep end!
The treacle she was served was thick as cake!
The sweeteners offered were Splenda or Equate.
She was given a teacup, and told not to lose it.
The supply was growing short, so best to not use it.
The Hatter was accused of a caffeine addiction more.
He said he could quit it, like seven times before!
Alice was charged with kitchen clean-up duty.
No cooking was in sight. No veggies, nothing fruity.
But the frightening image was a sink full of cups --
Piled to the ceiling, all awaiting her washing up!
Sandy, I think Hoyt has given up on puns, or humor at all. This puzzle has been going on for 67 years, and he is tapped out! All he's trying for is a platform for his solution to fit with. When a good joke comes up, it's happenstance, not design!
ReplyDeleteSandy ~ I agree with each of your points. I am especially with you about puns that work technically but may still be faulted as inelegant.
ReplyDeleteI am just not as fond as you are about today’s solution. Yes, it has two meanings, and each works literally. I don’t see humor in them, though—just a chance to witness the utility of language.
Misty ~ FLN, Glad you saw my explanation of yesterday’s haiku. My apologies for the obscurity.
Now, unless I take Saturday off, I won’t be able to make up for working on last Sunday’s “day off.”
Then I better take this Sunday off too.
Two days in a row! Will I lose my touch?
I will check in both days.
~ OMK
"No Longer Thick"
ReplyDeleteHe tried to debate:
should he try to lose weight?
How would this equate
with a new-found state?
He put down his teacup
and said, "I'm going to quit.
If I work to become fit,
my new image will be a hit."
That was some tea party, Owen, and poor Alice ended up with the cleanup duty!
ReplyDeleteI did a year‘s tour as Lewis Carroll in Virginia back in the ‘70s, & I never—not even once— thought to ask who might be responsible for the Mad Hatter’s good order & hygiene.
Bless you for your thoroughness of detail as well as for the clever rhythm & rhymes!
Thank you, Misty, for revisiting an all-too-common dilemma—whether and how to lose weight!
“Should I or shouldn’t I?” A challenge facing (as we see from many magazine covers) thousands, maybe millions, of obese Americans.
Your verse offers poetic ambiguity: Does he put down his teacup because he is swearing off of the caloric cream and overload of sugar—or merely as a gesture of firm determination?
Or both?!
Whatever his purpose, we thank you for bringing us inside his transformational moment, and we wish him well as he works to become a fit hit.
~ OMK
Why is TEACUP universally one word, while COFFEE CUP is two words?
ReplyDeleteIf you glance and the cartoon and see the solution before you solve the 4, do you move on ot go back?
Thanks
Lemonade
Owen, I guess Alice was told not to lose her teacup because there were no more clean ones available to her. But looks like a tough dish-washing job for her.
ReplyDeleteBoth, Ol' Man Keith. Am looking forward to your verse tomorrow. Don't want Sundays to keep getting lonelier and lonelier.
Lemonade, sometimes the English language is really puzzling, isn't it? I presume that's because a lot of usage arises gradually and accidentally, not according to a specific system. It seems as though the most common words or phrases are often the most irregular.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Lemonade, I always like to solve the jumble clue words, no matter what.
ReplyDeleteLemonade, I tried to guess the riddle first, and skipped the side clues. But coming to this blog, I had to do them all to see what people were talking about.
ReplyDeleteRight, the game is to do all the words, Lemonade--and the solution--regardless of the order of solving.
ReplyDeleteThe expected order is J-words first, but sometimes we leap ahead. In that case, the solution can help in UN-anagramming the words!
Misty ~ No! Please read my note again. I won't be doing a verse tomorrow. I get two days off.
Let's hope one of the others posts a poem, so you won't have to go all alone.
~ OMK
Well, I have a family meeting on Zoom tomorrow, so I'm not sure I'll be able to do a Jumble either. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed that Owen and Wilbur will come through.
ReplyDelete