All hints are in the comments!

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Dec. 29, 2019 Sunday

|| title, essay, squall, iodine, liquid assets.  || accept, timely, outbid, swerve, outage, magnet, drawing to a close.
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.

11 comments:

OwenKL said...

Little Robert Reese
Had to write a piece.
The title on his essay
Was, "An Antiseptic Way."

He wrote how iodine
Was discovered frying
Seaweed with acid.
Chemists grew avid.
A squall broke out
Over who figured out
What this stuff meant --
It was a new element!

Then a liquid mixture,
Of iodine a tincture,
Came to be an asset
With a sterile cachet
In the surgeons' quest
To operate the safest!

[Discovered by Bernard Courtois in 1811.
Identified by Joseph Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy in 1813.
Used as an antiseptic by Antonio Grossich in 1908.
It was tested on a mass level during the Italo-Turkish War of 1912.]

OwenKL said...

Oberon, the fairy king, a bet did enter in
With Pythagoras, the proto-mathematician.
Oberon claimed magic would rule the day.
Pythagoras said science would lead the way.
The wager was accepted, with their shades
Judging progress, thru the centuries made.

Science and magic jockeyed thru the years.
Magic would outbid with superstitious fears,
Then a timely swerve would bring about
Awesome discoveries science would find out.
Magic had the lead throughout the Dark Ages
Science seemed to falter, suffering outages.

Then, with coils and magnets, came electricity
And science surged ahead with new technology!
Approaching our day, and drawing to its close
The wager is ending, will it be magic by a nose?
No, the ghost of Oberon cedes, for now, defeat,
And the spirit of Pythagoras feels his inner geek!

OwenKL said...

I don't know about the papers, but the online J4s are all blank where the cartoon should be. I was able to figure out the answer without the riddle, and it was easy to find another cartoon with the same punchline.

Misty said...

So, my LA Times has the second Jumble, and I had trouble with two of the items. Owen, I loved your second poem--this will be one of my favorites. And It got me the two words I needed. But the solution still eluded me, and I had to look it up--even though I later saw it in your delightful poem. I was a little disappointed to see the bright yellow hair on the young woman--it looked darker in the black-and-white cartoon. And I don't quite get the bright red cup on the seat--if that's what it is--or the strange little image under the seat. Oh well, still fun for a Sunday, and Owen's poem made it a special treat.

Wilbur Charles said...

I managed to suss the six J's but the riddle-solution evaded me. I guess I have it now. I was missing the D as I jotted down the letters.

Pythagoreans were somewhat of a religion. I wonder how much of his work was lost from 300bc onwards.

Loved that poem.

WC

OwenKL said...

Misty -- the flashing red light on top of the TV camera was signalling time was running out, and the TV show was drawing to its close.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Just a quick visit, as I try to take Sundays off. But today's solutions were too challenging to pass up.
Here goes:

My friend breeds and trains hunting hounds, dogs specially adapted to tracking hares in the densest of forests, his Thick Wood Bassets.

Louie, our little Yorkie, is fond of grooming larger dogs, especially their faces.
Some of them are quite shaggy, and Louie must spend time pawing through a nose to know precisely with whom he is dealing.
~ OMK

Wilbur Charles said...

Got it. I thought Owens key word was WAGER. I have a problem transposing key letters from the J's. After solving the J's I should use the illustration to jot down the letters.

I was wondering how you were going to rhyme WAGER.

WC

Ol' Man Keith said...

"Wager," Wilbur, "Wager"?
Please check my rhymes. Do you see "cager" or "pager"? How about "taser" (see, I'm trying to help--really).
~ OMK.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Or even a reference to Pete Buttigieg. Er, did I spell that right?
~ OMK

Misty said...

A TV camera! That never would have occurred to me without your explanation, Ol'Man Keith--but of course now I see that that's a person holding a camera. Many thanks for that help--and for your fun playing with the solution,