| token, milky, gyrate, beheld, take (a) hike. |
| switch, indigo, breach, opaque, donkey, fallen, bag of "pediatricks".
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.
12 comments:
Ah, Sunday !
The famous Day of Rest. This is when I'll give myself that overdue break.
No poetry today, not from me, Gang.
I will check in now & then to see how others are doing. Have a wonderful day.
The solution to today's J6 strikes me as moderately funny; let's call it a child-oriented case of humor.
~ OMK
And the J4 solution works for me. It is a familiar expression of disdain based on a favorite scouting weekend past time. A scoutmaster's literal command that's become a common phrase of dismissal.
~ OMK
"Teaching Twins"
Jack and Jill were twins easy to switch,
and their parents were sadly not rich.
With an income so low,
how to help their kids grow:
a problem as opaque
as an indigo snake.
But they finally quit stalling
as ideas began fallen.
No rules they would breach
but good speech they would teach:
proper spelling for 'donkey'
to rhyme with the word 'monkey.'
Soon all these verbal picks
played like a bag of tricks.
And so their parents' good will
made life fun for Jack and Jill.
A wise poem, with parents as sharp as Shaw's Professor Higgins. Jack & Jill reaped the benefits of proper speech education!
Misty ~ I enjoyed your recipe for social advancement based on literacy (spelling) & "good speech." I got a special kick out of that opaque snake!
(Although you might have had donkey "to almost rhyme with" monkey...)
~ OMK
I enjoyed the j4, once I got over the fact that the middle "a" wasn't provided. But it was such an obvious solution that didn't really cause a delay. And I appreciate the double meaning which applies to the cartoon both ways, a truly punny pun!
The j6 gave me more trouble, possibly in part because I didn't pay enough attention to the cartoon elements, but once I saw what the doctor was holding, the original phrase came to me. Can't see the solution as a pun, though, but just a fairly clever play on words.
English is notorious for inconsistencies in spelling and pronunciation--within each category and across them.
Your verse got me to thinking, Who would pronounce "monkey" like "donkey" anyway? I came up with the perfect guy--Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies.
I don't have a clip to prove it, but he would surely rhyme "monkey" with "wrong key." And maybe sound "donkey" to go with "one bee" as well!
That initial vowel is a very shifty little customer. Sometimes it is the IPA phoneme, ɒ, (as in "donkey") and sometimes it is ʌ ("monkey").
~ OMK
I love the way you play around with the words and sounds in my poems, Ol' Man Keith. And you're right--donkey and monkey don't rhyme perfectly. But thanks for letting me get away with "as ideas began fallen" rather than 'falling.' I just wanted to use the Jumble word as it appeared, knowing that it wasn't grammatical.
And by the way, I miss your poem.
Misty ~ "Fallen" and "stalling" were great! They are not exact, of course, but the way we often pronounce them brings them close together.
My ear may be more attuned to rhyme than my eye. As an old actor, I often speak verses aloud (or I use my "mental ear") rather than leave them on the page.
"Fallen" and "stalling" don't look alike, but they sound pretty close, esp. with our conversational habit of eliding "ng" sounds.
The "donkey/monkey" combo look almost exactly alike, but when spoken aloud....
Sandy ~ Maybe we're on the wrong track, giving puns a priority in our analyses. Nobody ever said the jumble was dedicated to punning.
Obviously they do it sometimes, but the guys probably don't see it as their mission in life.
~ OMK
OMK, I know, but I'm a dedicated pun lover and so appreciate the really good ones.
Under an indigo sky he pondered the fate that reversed
A soaring career and the acclaim he'd gained as he burst
Into the public limelight. He'd given token notice when
She gyrated into his life. Oh, if only what he knew now, he'd known then.
Oh what a donkey he was. "Take a hike, you milky witch"
He should have said. Under those opaque charms lurked a snitch.
If only he'd beheld the iniquity of this fallen, false vamp
And the bag of tricks she disguised under her pedicure lamp.
Breach of trust was the charge. She'd pilfered his account books.
And there for the world to see was that Charlie the con was cooked.
WC
Did I get all ten J's and the two riddle-solutions? The sports world just saw a GM's career ruined because of text messages to a female reporter.
Sent five years ago.
WC
Wilbur, amazing how you worked all the LA Times Jumble words (and probably all the others too) into your complex, interesting verse. Really terrific--I just loved reading and then exploring your cool poem. Thank you for making our Sunday even better!
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