All hints are in the comments!

Sunday, July 11, 2021

July 11, 2021

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| | should, bigger, orator, iodine, hymnal, equate, here goes nothing.
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.

15 comments:

Sandyanon said...

Or you could take a well-deserved day off.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Thanks for trying, Owen.
If you can't find a source, you might give serious consideration to Sandy's suggestion.

I have already established Sunday as my day off, so you could join me in just being the audience, or completely silent if there is nothing to respond to.
~ OMK

OwenKL said...

Finally, one of the online sites came out with it! I had to piece it together from 5 screenshots, so it may look a little ragged. Solving the puzzle plus assembling the parts took me about an hour, so it was about 4 am Mountain Time when it finally showed up.

I still have no idea why no one had today's puzzle available before then.

Misty said...

"Parents"

Stan's folks told him he should do what he could
to get out of his crummy neighborhood.
He should aim for something bigger,
and become a well-known figure.
They were sure he could people floor
by becoming an orator.

But Stan sadly injured his spine,
and was treated with iodine,
and decided it was best to equate
his goals with a plausible fate.

His new career began minimal,
as a preacher who wrote a hymnal.
Then he achieved what he most did desire:
to organize his own choir.

His folks said, "Well, there goes nothing,"
but at least they stopped their fussing.
Then when Stan's choir won an award,
his parents were proud that he starred.
And with this all their conflicts did cease,
and the family is now at peace.

Ol' Man Keith said...


Misty ~
Now that is an AMAZING accomplishment.
If ever there was a group of words that didn't belong together, this was it. Yet you managed to wrangle them into some semblance of narrative order. You gave them an arc by having Stan's folks saddle him with the goal of improving his lot. That burden worked, giving him an obstacle (his spine) & a hurdle (hymnal) to success (the award).
Your story fell into place. And so did all the words!
Well done!
~ OMK

Misty said...

Thank you, thank you, Ol' Man Keith. I worried that the story would seem pretty contrived but am glad you appreciate that it wasn't easy with the differences between all the words. So thank you, so much, for understanding the challenge and telling me that it worked okay. Makes me happy!

(P.S. I miss your verse today, but totally understand that you need a relaxing day once a week and Sunday certainly is the best one! So have a good rest and a fun day.)

Ol' Man Keith said...

I thank you in turn, Misty, for understanding my wish to take a day off--and the toughest day at that!

Last night I confess, when I saw that Owen had serious trouble finding a source for posting the Jumble, I tried to think how I might help.
But then when I saw those crazy words, I thought there was NOTHING I could do with them.

Still, in the spirit of lampoon, I managed to come up with this:
(Anyone familiar with Chris Guest's Waiting for Guffman may appreciate the following--)

"He Knows Guffing"
The orator should be able to iodine out for years
on how he whupped the bigger "Hymnal"
(what he called the fat preacher crim'nal)
taking him by the ears.

It must surely beat how he loved to crow
'bout playing the title role
in Equating for Godot..
~ OMK

Wilbur Charles said...

[Lois is comfortable telling Chet everything]
"I am not now what I was then, I'll swear that before a notary
I carried no hymnal in my purse - orators made me contrary
I should have addressed my problem years ago but I was in denial
I drank anything short of iodine, I sipped vodka from a hip vial

My problems just got bigger but my defect equated to procrastination
I'd heard of the program, could it help? Could it really bring cessation?
And those people at the meeting might find me disgusting
But under the lash of alcohol I said to myself. 'Oh well, here goes nothing'".

WC

Misty said...

Wow! Clever, sharp verse after all, OMK--how cool! Well, I've waited for GODOT, but never for GUFFMAN. So I looked up 'Waiting for Guffman' and it turns out to be a "mockumentary"! A mockumentary? Had to look it up--apparently a show that takes the form of a serious documentary in order to satirize some subject or other? Does theater get any wilder than this, OMK? The things you learn on a blog!

Ol' Man Keith said...

Kudos, Wilbur, a very strong showing!

I especially liked how you handled the two toughest words- equate & iodine. Each worked well in context, a far from easy thing. Bravo, good sir!
~ OMK

Misty said...

My goodness, Wilbur, looks like Lois had a much tougher past than I realized. Hopefully she did go on to the program and find cessation.

Wilbur Charles said...

In a bit of irony. I had one of the words wrong from the J. I noticed it when I started to post. Here's my original

"I am not now what I was then, hardly a candidate for the Rotary
I carried no hymnal in my purse - talk of God made me contrary


Now that Misty has did the work I seem to recall "Guffman". And...

I think we had a discussion in here about Godot. Was that one of your favorites, Keith?

What a fun story Misty. Iodine on the spine? OK, that's why we call it poetry. As for Lois...

I knew a girl that I met when we brought a meeting to a Hospital detox. She told me how she was sipping vodka from a straw. Her boyfriend had run off with her younger sister.

WC

Sandyanon said...

Appreciate Lois' confession, Wilbur. Only thing is, I can't imagine anyone drinking iodine. Good thing she stuck to vodka (well, relatively speaking!!)

Ol' Man Keith said...

Wilbur & Misty ~ If the iodine in question is a problem of deficiency, then iodized salt is recommended.
However, I doubt that such a constitutional frailty would be localized along the spine. I rather suppose Stan's injury was an external one, perhaps a puncture or scraping along the lumbar region--or higher up--anyway, somewhere along the backbone, requiring an application of iodine to prevent infection.
I imagine it would be in this sense that we may say iodine was applied to a spinal injury.
~ OMK

Misty said...

Thank you again, for that very helpful iodine explanation, OMK. Did you think about becoming a doctor? You sure seem to have the talent!