| | waver, enact, island, trough, rattled his cage.
Image 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.
17 comments:
This wasn't all that easy for me, especially the third clue, for some reason. I started with the wrong three-letter word in the solution, which delayed things, but I did get it in the end.
Thing is, I think it's a clever joke, but if it's a pun,I don't get any second meaning. Maybe it's an idiom I'm not familiar at with, about being upset or distressed??
Oh we!!.
I'm a little puzzled by it, too, Sandy.
While the cartoon is amusing, the only point I take from the 3-word solution is that it may be the literal origin of the expression we sometimes use figuratively. Not a pun, because the latter meaning is based directly on the first: i.e., there are not two ways of understanding the verb.
FLN. Wilbur ~ First we had Murray, then along came your Murphy!
Thanks for a tidy little character study.
I wouldn't care to know the wastrel personally. He'd be sure to hit me up.
Now if only a girlfriend would come along to provide some story development...
Maybe you could send him to sea, with my Bronsky chap. We could be sure there's no room in the lifeboats.
~ OMK
"(informal) To demand attention from someone; to nag, nudge, or remind someone. Nobody has corrected the problem yet, so it's time to rattle their cage. (idiomatic) To anger or to annoy. If you really want to rattle his cage, ask him about his family." Wickionary
What bugs is the switch in pronouns from gender-neutral in the clue the gender specific in the solution.
Maybe "it" isn't the hamster, but rather the event?
"A Rattling Good Thirst"
Gus staggered into the oasis,
an island of green--so gracious!
He encountered a trough.
Did he waver? Not 'arf!
But enacted inundation like aces!
~ OMK
I guess the "gag" here is the reversal of Who does the rattling.
The cat isn't doing it to get the little guy's attention. The hamster is initiating it, presumably to either scare the cat or draw some backup from its master or mistress.
Reminds me of my Tom & Jerry cartoons...
~ OMK
In her mind she never ever wavered,
The kitchen remodeling was a must!
She'd be disgraced to the neighbors,
If they ever saw the current stuff.
Her husband and kids didn't understand.
At a trough or TV tray they'd gladly eat.
She wanted a granite kitchen island,
And a fancy sink would be just great!
Her dreams she would enact without delay!
Her husband, mystified, went along.
What had rattled her cage he couldn't say.
He just knew to interfere would be wrong!
Sandy: yes you're probably right. "It" could also be the cat, but the event is most likely.
This one was exceptionally hard for me. First I couldn't figure out the simple 3rd word (probably thrown off by the silent letter in it). Went to an anagram site to cheat on it. But even that couldn't help me with the solution. I figured the middle word was a pronoun or article, and the correct 3rd word was at the top of my suspect list. But I just couldn't get that long first word! And the hint button is disabled for the final solution on this interface that they all use now that Flash is no more. I finally had to go to my phone and the ChiTrib app there, which could flag incorrect letters.
Maybe.
My earlier readings could be wrong. I picked up on the priority placement of the hamster as the probable subject and agent, but it could be the event as a whole.
The cat is the least likely rattler, and yet... well, take a look at what may be movement marks above the cat's paw. That paw is positioned to rattle, and the marks make it more likely.
Even so, that could coexist with the idea that the event is the main agent.
~ OMK
Sandy, I had the same problem with the third Jumble word (finally had to look it up) and also just couldn't get the solution. Now I'm enjoying your and Ol' Man Keith's discussion over the sense of the ending and the point of the cartoon.
Loved your brief verse on the cartoon, Keith.
And Owen, what an elegant poem you've made out of those complicated Jumble words this morning.
I admire both of your efforts--as you'll see, mine was a disaster this morning.
"Island Battle"
Isabel lived on an island,
next door to a troublesome neighbor,
who one day made the demand
that some conditions she should waver.
He wanted her to enact
getting her servant sacked.
The demand made Isabel cough
and throw it in a trough.
So on and on they battled
but Isabel refused to be rattled.
His demands from now on she would cage
and just let their conflicts rage.
In the end Isabel won the bout
and her obnoxious neighbor moved out.
So I couldn't stop thinking about what Owen said concerning pronoun gender change. Ok, here's what I thought lying awake with the Jumble going through my mind!
Change the caption to make more sense: "When the cat got too close to the hamster, it..." . So in one sense "it" is the cat and in the other "it" is the event.
Of course, the cat is gender neutral, while the hamster gets to be masculine. But whoever said life was fair!I
This is what happens when you can't sleep.
I gotta wonder why the neighbor wanted Isabel to axe her servant. I mean, was there some obnoxious behavior by Isabel's maid, personal assistant, or bodyguard that might have warranted such an unusual demand?
If it was merely a touch of casual lèse majesté, then we can appreciate Isabel's loyalty to her subordinate. She can tell the troublesome neighbor to stick to his own island--and reduce all contact to only when she stands on the shore and gestures (as an Hello-There "waver"*).
~ OMK
___________
* The best "waver" I ever saw was Queen Elizabeth. Decades ago, when I was a student walking in London one evening, I found myself outside a movie theater that happened to be premiering a Hollywood epic. I think it was Guns of Navarone.
The queen was arriving for the movie. She rode up to the theater entrance, sitting tall (for such a small woman) in the back of her limousine. She was dressed all in white with a sparkly queenly tiara. And she was indeed waving to the crowd with that characteristic backhand stirring movement.
What a waver!
Sandy I woke up in the early am, EST. Wide awake so I decided to knock off Saturday. Then I realized the riddle-solution to Friday hadn't been solved. And, I just found out why when I came here.
I had WEAVE/WAVER and was stuck with a V and no R.
Interesting tales of thirst, kitchen envy and the mysterious servant. I know all about abnoxious neighbors living in a retirement community not to speak of a mobile home park.
Perhaps that servant wasn't lily white.
If I wake up again at 3am I'll try a two day combo.
WC
Oh yeah, re. Saturday xword. It's not SDS. It's doable just needs lots of P&P
Well, I thought it was a pretty good idea for middle of the night. I mean, if you eliminate the verb "saw", you focus attention on what happened, not the action of "seeing". Though, of course, the hamster did notice the cat or he wouldn't have been rattled, would he?I
I'm no doubt belaboring this . . .
Okay, okay, the only reason the servant got sacked is because I needed a rhyme to go with theJumble word ENACT and if it was SACKED, somebody had to lose her job and I wasn't sure if Isabel employed anyone else. Maybe the verse should have read:
He wanted her to enact
signing a rigid contract.
The demand made Isabel cough
and throw it in the trough.
That way the poor servant is in no danger, but readers would have no idea what sort of a contract the jerk wanted Isabel to sign.
Poetry is tough, isn't it--when it's dictated by Jumble words.
Misty ~
You put your finger on the reason some of our poems grow to greater length that we intend at the outset. Sometimes a rhyme leads us to a place that demands further information.
Once a character gets "sacked," we may very well have to come up with two or even four more lines to account for such an unexpected turn of events.
I usually start by trying to cover the cue words in as few lines as possible--as in today's limerick. But that doesn't always work out.
~ OMK
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