A. 子　B. 王　C. 刀　D. 水

E. 山　F. 口　G. 人　H. 女

Clearly all that stuff about being busy was just to throw you guys off.  Obviously the real reason KYPC was slow in appearing this week was because we were busy preparing for the 100th Installment! That’s right, KYPC is only the second feature on this site to survive to the extent of 100 entries.  And, of course, you know, we had to wait for an appropriately auspicious day, so that’s why it did not appear at the expected time (if there even is such a thing for this feature anymore).  Yes, that makes sense.  Lateness blame successfully avoided!

Theoman kicked things off well, not by getting a right answer, but by creating an answer that is in fact better than the so-called “correct” one.  For what could be a more appropriate representation of “responsibility” than the eternal image of the Sword of Damocles, the knife hanging over the head of the king?  Sadly, the only “real” kanji that makes use of this particular combination–plus a couple other parts thrown in for good measure–is one meaning “lapis lazuli.”  We also must give him credit for his correct answer, snapping up H, the woman, and A, her child, and putting them together where they belong; everyone likes that, right?  (Lovely Assistant’s Note: In Chinese, this character simply means “good,” and the parts originally depicted a son and a daughter, because that’s the best combination to have.)  Finally, while putting together D and E doesn’t give you a swamp, it does give you a character meaning “fishing with a net,” and well, some people would probably say that’s better than a swamp.  Some people probably like to fish with a net in a swamp.  It takes all kinds.

Shirley picked up two and a half correct answers (we’re assuming she meant to identify F as the mouth, and the half point is for calling H, the woman, a girl child).  B, unfortunately, isn’t a mountain “because it’s there,” but then again I’m sure there are some people who feel the same way about kings, which is what B is.  As a matter of fact, she reversed B and E, presumably because she’s been listening to too much Grieg.  So those aren’t bad, but on the other hand, she seems to be frightened of children (A) . . . or at least male children.  I wonder why that could be . . .

A Fan, as usual, brings us to the silver screen, but this time rather than simply reminding us about movies, he’s helping us to reimagine them.  Like the classic scene in which Dundee shows us how cool he is by saying, “That’s not a child.  This is a child.”  Or the new, horror-movie version of The King and I, in which Yul Brynner’s head is nothing but a mouth.  Or the alternate version of The Lord of the Rings in which Mount Doom is actually a person, which makes it significantly harder to throw rings into it.  On the other hand, some of his reinventions weren’t that far off the mark.  At D we see poor Randy, unable to move, lying in water (hey, snow is just frozen water).  At E we have half of the iceberg (“ice mountain” in kanji) that was struck by that boat in the famous movie, A Night to Remember.  Also, I am legally obligated to point out that his identification of H as “woman” is 100% correct, and that I can even kind of see the witch riding the broomstick in it now.

Okay, time for the educational part.  A=Child, B= King, C=Knife, D=Water, E=Mountain, F=Mouth, G=Person, H=Woman.  Woman+Child=Like, Person+King=Responsibility, Water+Knife+Mouth=Swamp (don’t ask), Person+Mountain=Wizard (you ever heard of a wizard who lived someplace normal?)

But now the main event.  For this challenge, we’re going to look at things that all contain the character that means 100.  You remember what it looks like, right?  Of course you do.  It looks like this:

百

But that’s just when it’s by itself.  When you give it a few friends, it can get up to all kinds of mischief.  What kinds, you ask?  Well, let’s see.  We’ve got an unscrupulous lawyer, a greengrocer, an encyclopedia, a gathering of beautiful women, the highest possible level of achievement, a famous poetry collection featuring one poem each from 100 famous poets, a nonstandard way of reading a kanji, and whooping cough.  Sounds like a good start to a movie to me (though even if it didn’t, we know A Fan would still turn it into one).

A. 百人一首　B. 百科事典　C. 八百屋　D. 百花繚乱

E. 三百代言　F. 百姓読み　G. 百尺竿頭　H. 百日咳

A. 田　B. 心　C. 金　D. 隹

E. 立　F. 日　G. 木　H. 里

Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?  Well, let’s see what kind of wholes turned up.

Seeking to recreate a bell, Theoman put together ‘metal’ and ‘bird’ and ended up with . . . a drill.  Well, they both make noise, certainly, though one of them is typically seen as more pleasant than the other.  The idea of a ‘mind-tree’ was very close to ‘think,’ but he didn’t quite get there–you need to stick an eye in there as well (this is not, however, the same character for ‘think’ that I had intended).  A sun and a village, with an extra line tossed in for good measure, make ‘quantity,’ presumably referring to the large quantity of sun in Sun Village, which is the main reason people like it so much.  Standing in a rice field sure seemed like a lock for ‘gather,’ but the character I was thinking of was gather in the sense of ‘assemble’ rather than ‘harvest.’  So you put birds on top of a tree, because that’s where birds assemble.  Turns out, if you stand on top of a rice field, and add a tail, you get . . . a dragon.  Go figure.

Shirley put B, D, and E together and came up with a pretty good ‘idea’ . . . that is, if you assume that she must have accidentally typed D instead of F.  Heart-bird-stand doesn’t get you much, but stand-sun-heart is an idea, alright.  I’ll make sure to give you guys a stone to work with in the future so you can take care of these birds more efficiently.

A Fan thinks he can make me look silly by making references to a bunch of movies I haven’t seen, but I still know a thing or two.  I remember the octopus scene from Deer Hunter.  At least, I assume there must have been an octopus scene, because that’s what A Fan built with his ’stand,’ ‘rice field,’ and ’sun’ (okay, to be fair, you have to stick in a few other parts as well to get an octopus, but with that combo, no other kanji comes closer).  Then again, if he had just left out that field, he could have made some real ‘noise.’  He could have also achieved a similar effect by putting together a bell, which, by his logic, is a combination of Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and about one-third of Deer Hunter.  Which leads us to the inevitable question: are these movies really that different from each other?

So, to review:

To build a bell: ’stand’ on a ‘village,’ with ‘metal’ on the left
To build a thought: ‘rice field’ over ‘heart/mind’
To build a sound: ’stand’ on the ’sun’ (that’d better have you making some sound, anyway)
To build a gathering: ‘bird’ on top of ‘tree’

I realize that was a bit hard, so let’s make the challenge slightly different this time.  I’m still going to give you a bunch of kanji parts and their meanings, but I’m not going to tell you which is which.  We’re going to assume that Theoman already knows what most of these are, anyway, so assembly will be his job: give me responsibility, a wizard, to like, and a swamp.  A Fan and Shirley can choose to attempt this as well, or they can take on the simpler (?) task of identifying the pieces: a person, a knife, a mouth, a woman, a child, a mountain, a king, and water.

A. 子　B. 王　C. 刀　D. 水

E. 山　F. 口　G. 人　H. 女

A. 喬治·沃克·布什 B. 比爾·克林顿 C. 理查德·尼克森

D. 林登·约翰逊 E. 本杰明·哈里森 F. 湯瑪斯·傑佛遜

Yup, it’s Wednesday again.  Let it never be said that the pleas of my readers fall on deaf ears.  That’s assuming, of course, that I would have been ready to get this out on Monday anyway.

Theoman returned to his old friend, logic.  And why not?  From a logical perspective, A was so obvious.  It has to be LBJ, because he’s the only one with three names.  Well, three full names, certainly.  I mean, the “W” in George W. Bush is just a letter, right?  It doesn’t stand for . . . oh wait, no, that was Truman.  The W is for Walker, which means that the A is for Bush.  But surely logic wouldn’t fail him a second time!  These characters are intended to represent sounds, so if you see two names ending with the same sound and two answers ending with the same character, you must have a match!  Because there are only two presidents on this list whose names end with “-son” . . . no, no, don’t be ridiculous, “Nixon” is spelled with an “x,” so it’s not . . . oh.  I guess it is.  Theoman still had a 50-50 shot at Benjamin Harrison, and you would have thought that after logic failed him luck would swoop in to pick him back up, but that’s not the way it works, apparently.  However, youthful sentimentality and 100% subjective observation paid off in the end: he found Clinton, whom A Fan called great and Shirley called attractive, at B.  You know, B for Bill.

A Fan sat right down in his director’s chair and, as usual, immediately began casting.  We don’t doubt that John Travolta would have made an intriguing Thomas Jefferson, or that Philip Baker Hall could have handled the role of Dubya.  We are also very curious to see a TV series that features Walter Cronkite as George Washington, Mario Cuomo as Martin van Buren, Billy Graham as James Garfield, and Colin Powell as Taft.  As usual, A Fan impresses more with his capacity for tangential thought than with his accuracy, though he did manage to track down LBJ at D (presumably by shouting “Hey, Hey!”)  Also, John Adams was the best character in 1776, but he couldn’t compare to Morley Safer’s Adams in The American President.

Shirley continued the trend of each participant getting one answer correct, though she may be disappointed to learn that her intuition served her best at A, George Walker Bush.  But her descriptions weren’t all so far off.  She called C, the one that looks good in the beginning but troubled at the end, LBJ, but couldn’t that description apply equally well to Nixon?  F, the cute one, may not be Bill Clinton, but Thomas Jefferson was certainly a looker in his day as well, or so 1776 would have us believe.  Also, he played the violin.

E is Benjamin Harrison, a shining example of the Era of Forgettable Presidents (1865-1901).  I wonder why he was included in this quiz . . .

I’m giving my lovely assistant the week off, so we’re back to Japanese this time around.  This week we’re going to try something different.  I’m sure you’re all tired of simply passively picking characters; wouldn’t you rather create some of your own?  Don’t worry, there won’t be too much creativity involved: I’ll give you the parts, and you simply have to put them together.  Here is a list of kanji parts that have the following meanings (in order): rice field, heart/mind, metal, bird, stand, sun, tree, and village.

A. 田　B. 心　C. 金　D. 隹

E. 立　F. 日　G. 木　H. 里

Of course, you are more than welcome to create any sort of combination, with whatever meaning you choose to assign to it.  But for those who like something to shoot for, you can try to build me characters with the following meanings: bell, think, sound, and gather.

A. 阿不思·鄧不利多 B. 芙蓉·德拉库尔 C. 哈利·波特 D. 赫敏·格兰杰

E. 罗恩·韦斯利 F. 西弗勒斯·斯内普 G. 汤姆·里德尔

Apologies again for not getting this out until Wednesday.  I’m certainly not winning any awards for consistency this month.

Theoman had a good idea, but unfortunately it was thrown off by a few discrepancies between the Chinese versions of the books and the English ones, such as the fact that the Chinese Book 1 is pretty much entirely about Fleur Delacour, or that Harry himself doesn’t actually appear until Book 5.  Hmm . . . my lovely assistant appears to be telling me that I’m making things up again.  On a more serious note, doesn’t Dumbledore appear before Harry anyway?  Still, despite his handicaps, Theoman managed to stumble across Hermione at D.  In conclusion, the spell checker’s seeming capriciousness can be explained by the fact that “Severus” is the name of a Roman emperor and “Albus” isn’t, and by the fact that “Hermione” is a name invented by J.K. Rowling that had never existed previously.

Shirley, as far as I know, has never read the books, but she knows her stereotypes well, spotting Hermione, the smart one, at D and Ron, the sidekick, at E (raise your hand if you kind of wish Ron had been kicked in the side a little more in the books).  I, personally, also feel inclined to give her credit for identifying Severus Snape (F) as the most heroic character in the books, and also for pointing out that Harry Potter (C) is basically just a pretty boy.  And if we’re thinking about the movies, calling Dumbledore (A) the mean teacher might not even be that far off, though we agree with A Fan that he got slightly better after he died (we’re assuming here that A Fan was referring to the death of the character, not the actor).

A Fan, shockingly, decided to turn the conversation to movies.  He makes a good point about Alan Rickman, though he seems to have him cast as Fleur Delacour (B), which I might call a curious choice.  Daniel Radcliffe, on the other hand, would have made a much better Dumbledore than Michael Gambon.  Alan Rickman would have, too, for that matter.  Or Bruce Willis.  Or anyone else from the cast of Die Hard.  But I digress.  A Fan almost correctly identified E as Ron Weasley, but then he seemed to be saying that Rupert Grint grew up to be a pretty okay actor, so I can only assume he was thinking of someone else and simply got confused.  And the duel between Harry and Voldemort was ruined by sunspots.

G is Tom Riddle.  Wasn’t he basically just misunderstood?

Remember that part in the first book when someone made a flag that said “POTTER FOR PRESIDENT,” and it didn’t make any sense, because why would kids from England want to be president?  Well, after that not-at-all tenuous segue, the puzzle provided for this week by my lovely assistant is about U.S. presidents.  I know we did presidents once before, but there are two key differences: 1. these are in Chinese, and therefore actually mean something to someone other than me, and 2. these are not merely the first presidents but are in fact the greatest presidents, each one of them the absolute best at what he did.  We have the president who opened up relations with the most Chinas (well, communist Chinas, anyway; Richard Nixon).  We have the only president to share a last name with a president who was impeached and not be impeached himself (LBJ).  We have the president who survived the most pretzel-induced choking incidents (George W. Bush; isn’t it funny how that joke never gets old?).  We have the president who was the best saxophone player (Bill Clinton; little-known-fact: John Adams also played the saxophone, but he was terrible at it, primarily because it wasn’t invented until twenty years after he died).  We have the president who holds the record for most high schools named after him in western Bloomington, MN (Thomas Jefferson).  And, finally, we have the president who holds the record for greatest percentage increase in length of term from the previous president of the same last name (Benjamin Harrison, whose time in office was approximately 4600% longer than William Henry Harrison’s).

A. 喬治·沃克·布什 B. 比爾·克林顿 C. 理查德·尼克森

D. 林登·约翰逊 E. 本杰明·哈里森 F. 湯瑪斯·傑佛遜

A. 芝士蛋糕 B. 酸辣湯 C. 冰淇淋 D. 鍋貼 E. 三明治 F. 罗非鱼

G. 華夫餅

Is it still Monday?  Excellent.

We’re going to mix it up a little and go choice by choice this time rather than person by person.  Why?  Because I said so, that’s why.

A is, perhaps, either waffles, Hot and Sour Soup, or ice cream.  Seems to have kind of a desserty feel, except for the Hot and Sour Soup.  Analysis of the meanings of the characters gives us: a lawn, a gentleman (sorry, Theoman, it’s the other one again.  “Earth” is short on top and long on the bottom), something having to do with bugs, and something having to do with rice.  Clearly this is ice cream: the gentleman is lounging on his lawn, swatting lazily at bugs, and eating ice cream . . . but, since he’s lactose intolerant, it’s actually rice cream.  See how logical that was?  Also, A Fan said it was ice cream, and he gave the best reason.

What’s that, lovely assistant?  A is actually “cheesecake”?  I don’t even know what I’m talking about?  Oh dear . . . sorry, A Fan.  I fought for ya.  Although I suppose I did say it was desserty.

Well, let’s see if we have better luck with B, a mix of ice cream, potstickers, and tilapia.  This particular combination can only mean that we are on Iron Chef, where Tilapia Potsticker Ice Cream is not only a popular creation, it was even the secret ingredient once (I’m pretty sure that’s true).  Now, as we all know, the coolest Iron Chef was Chen Ken’ichi, who was Iron Chef Chinese, which means that B must be the most Chinese-sounding of the answers.  Obviously, then, this is waffles.  Just kidding.  It’s Hot and Sour Soup.  See?  That first character means sour, and the last one means soup, because it’s water standing next to the sun.  That’s how I make soup at least.

My lovely assistant confirms that this time I’m actually right, so let’s move on.

In C, Theoman thinks he sees water.  In fact, he sees it not once, not twice, but thrice.  Clearly there’s a whole lot of water going on here, as is reflected in the answers of tilapia, tilapia, and Hot and Sour Soup.  But do you know what’s even more watery than water?  That’s right: ice!  Ice is solid water, and as everyone knows, the solid versions of things are always denser than the liquid ones, so this is ice cream.  Shirley’s little man had enough sense to give up on fishing and go grab a cone instead.

D is short, sweet, dense, and shaped like a waffle iron (?).  A careful analysis of the characters reveals one meaning “pot” and one meaning “to stick.”  As I have no idea how to interpret this, I will move on to E.

While I agree with Shirley that E has a somewhat cold feel, it’s Theoman and A Fan who are on the right track this time around.  If there’s a better way to represent the prototypical sandwich than that first character there, I don’t wanna hear it.  And those latter characters are just thrown in for fun, I guess.  For the coldness, presumably, since sandwiches can be cold . . . or hot (did we have an argument about this in Scattergories once?)

In the name of sanity, I should also point out that the first character in E is the number three, which is pronounced “san.”

Theoman has the best justification for F, based on his use of the word “pointy,” but it’s not quite enough.  Nor was the process of elimination successful.  Nope, here we have St. Peter’s fish, one of the hundred or so species called tilapia.  In Theoman’s defense, it could very well end up in a bowl with a spoon.  In Shirley’s, you could maybe even eat it covered with syrup, though personally I like it with white pepper and just a little bit of soy sauce.

And, last but not least, we have the cheesecake sandwich.  Man, those French really know how to cook.  Sadly, to the detriment of our tongues but the benefit of all our arteries, there is no such thing as a cheesecake sandwich.  There is, however, such a thing as a waffle, so life isn’t all bad.

And now for this week we have characters from the Harry Potter series.  Included in this list are Ron Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore, and Severus Snape.  Or, for those less familiar with the series, we have the Loyal Sidekick, the Pretty One, the Smart One, the Hero, the Villain, the Old Wise Guy, and the Mean Teacher.

A. 阿不思·鄧不利多 B. 芙蓉·德拉库尔 C. 哈利·波特 D. 赫敏·格兰杰

E. 罗恩·韦斯利 F. 西弗勒斯·斯内普 G. 汤姆·里德尔

A. 北京　B. 广州　C. 香港　D. 上海　E. 深圳　F. 天津

April Fool’s!  You were expecting this on Monday, weren’t you?  And you thought that This Day in History would appear on Wednesday, because that’s what I said it would do from now on.  Boy, I sure fooled you!  (By the way, this is totally something I had planned entirely in advance, and not at all an excuse I am making up on the spot to justify a rather large amount of forgetfulness on my part.  And hey, only one person responded to last week’s challenge, so I’m not the only forgetful one around here.  But I’m sure you all probably had better reasons for not getting to it than I do for not doing my job.)

Ahem.  Anyway, as a continuation of the “joke,” TDiH may continue to appear on Tuesdays for the rest of the month.  KYPC should hopefully go back to Mondays, though.  Hopefully.

But that’s enough of bureaucracy.  Let’s get to the characters.  Since Theoman was the only one to attempt the challenge this week, we will get to focus on him, taking apart every one of his errors in excruciating detail.  No, no, Theoman, you don’t have to thank me.

Theoman actually recognized a character in A.  Unfortunately, he recognized the wrong one.  While a greater knowledge of Chinese geography may have helped him to interpret the meaning of the “north” there, the clues I provided should have been enough to get him there if he knew the second one.  He may have recognized it as also appearing in Tokyo, but I don’t think he recalled its meaning: capital.  That’s right, this is Beijing, which is in fact located in northern China, for what little good that did you.  In the future, you can probably find maps of China that don’t have characters on them, but man, Google is so much easier.

Guangzhou and Hong Kong have been reversed (in reality they are B and C, respectively).  So Theoman was close on these two.  And, for that matter, Guangzhou and Hong Kong are themselves pretty close to each other (unlike you participants, I have no need to submit to any kind of map taboos).  But he came even closer on the next one.  Defying all logic, his attempt to make an interlingual pun was entirely successful: D is Shanghai (literally, it is “above the sea”).  Based on this success, I hope he continues to use this sort of strategy in the future; even if it’s not correct (which it probably won’t be), it should be good for laughs.

His correct identification of F as Tianjin, on the other hand, was entirely logical and therefore boring.  That first character, meaning “sky” or “heaven,” is pronounced “ten” in Japanese and “tian” in Chinese.  But, as I’m sure you all can guess, this strategy won’t save you all the time.  For example, if we used the more standard Japanese pronunciations of the characters in A (Beijing), it would come out sounding something like “hokkyou.”  But, because this is a famous place, there is a special irregular reading for this word, so it comes out as “pekin.”  Remember when Beijing was called Peking?  I know you guys were there.  We ate all that duck?  Man, good times.

Maybe the reason for the limited participation last time around was geography.  Maybe geography’s not as popular as I thought it was (read: “as it should be”).  But I know something that is: food.  Also, I have a special announcement: this week’s puzzle was put together not by the Wordsman but by his lovely assistant.  His lovely assistant has the advantage of actually knowing Chinese characters (that is, as they are used in China; hanzi as opposed to kanji); the Wordsman, of course, simply dinks around on the internet and pretends that he does.  He probably would have no idea that the following words mean sandwich, waffle, ice cream, cheesecake, hot and sour soup, potstickers, and tilapia.

Now, this list of foods may seem somewhat random at first, but there’s method to the madness.  The Wordsman’s lovely assistant is quite smart, after all.  She’s also–have I mentioned this yet?–lovely.

A. 芝士蛋糕 B. 酸辣湯 C. 冰淇淋 D. 鍋貼 E. 三明治 F. 罗非鱼 G. 華夫餅

A. 新たなる希望　B. 暗闇の騎士　C. 七人の侍　D. 帝国の逆襲

E. 殴り合い会　F. 良い者と悪い者と醜い者

Well, shame on me.  One would expect Spring Break to be responsible for causing me to miss one, maybe two posts, but three?  Oh, the shame!  The extreme shame!  Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you: this week I will post two KYPC challenges instead of one.

Wait . . . that’s actually more of a punishment, really, since it means more work for all of you.  Better stick to the usual way.

The challenge from three weeks ago was about . . . uh . . . uh . . . well, it must have something to do with movies, since A Fan felt the need to post three separate times.  Ah, yes, that’s right: IMDB’s Best Non-Best Picture Nominees.

A Fan’s right: Theoman should have either looked up or recalled the fact that, while Inception probably wouldn’t have been nominated under the old system, it had the good fortune to have been made in 2010, a year after the Academy decided it was safer to simply nominate every single movie.  Other than that, however, his picks were pretty good, and he even got half of them to land on the right letters, utilizing his knowledge of numbers–C, The Seven Samurai–conjunctions–F, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly–and, uh, geography I guess?–D, The Empire Strikes Back.

A Fan, on the other hand, knew precisely which were the top six highest rated IMDB films to never receive a nomination for Best Picture.  In fact, he knew them better than I did (as if I didn’t have enough to be apologizing for already this week).  #6 on the list is City of God, not Star Wars: A New Hope because Star Wars: A New Hope was actually nominated for Best Picture.  In my defense, how could they possibly have nominated that one and not Empire?  Don’t tell me the competition was stiffer in 1980.  Ordinary People?  Come on.

So I guess I have to give everyone honorary credit for A, which is A New Hope.  A Fan also secured the same three correctly placed answers as Theoman, which I guess makes this week’s KYPC champion’s race a draw?  We could give the edge to the one who got closer to A, but it’s too close to call; Theoman’s pick of The Dark Knight is an obvious Vader reference, but he’s really bigger in the next movie, and A Fan’s guess has the same problem (City of God=Cloud City?).  We’ll declare A Fan the winner this time round because he taught us all a lesson about how to correctly read lists.

Shirley, on the other hand, decided to eschew the upper echelons of the IMDB list and concentrate on giving recognition to the lower ranks, while at the same time giving us a few lessons in comparative theater.  For is not “The dude abides” basically the same as “Use the Force” (A)? (The Big Lebowski, #129).  Did the chase-scene antics of Batman and the Joker (B) not hearken back to the work of Buster Keaton, even if Bale and Ledger didn’t do their own stunts? (The General, #118).  Doesn’t Luke (D) kind of remind us of Monty Python’s Brian, especially in some of his whinier scenes (“That’s not true!  That’s impossible!“)?  (Life of Brian, #166).  And I suppose that if Alec Guiness had to play eight parts, then he must have been good, bad, and ugly (F) all rolled into one.  (Kind Hearts and Coronets, #217).

Apparently people have been obeying the first rule of Fight Club, because nobody identified it correctly: it’s E.

But now I actually have to go to work again.  Let’s do geography.  You all like geography, right?  You know what else you like?  That’s right, kanji characters (otherwise you wouldn’t be here).  So we’re going to go to the birthplace of kanji: Poland.  Just kidding.  I mean China.  China’s a big place, and they have a lot of big cities.  Let’s look at a few of them.  Shanghai must be pretty important, because my grandfather has been there and because it’s not every Chinese city that you can use as a verb in English (coming soon to the OED: “to chongqing”–what could it possibly mean?).  Beijing’s kind of a big deal, because it’s the capital and because they named a duck after it.  Hong Kong’s name means “fragrant harbor” in Chinese, which basically tells you everything you need to know about Hong Kong.  Tianjin is home to the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, so you know it must be exciting.  Plus it’s the sixth-largest city in China, which is much more impressive than, say, being the sixth-largest city in Ohio (Dayton).  Guangzhou appears in my Chinese textbook, used to be called Canton (no, I’m not talking about Ohio again), and is a Beta World City, ranking it with such major metropolises as Budapest, Ho Chi Minh City, Minneapolis, and Oslo.  And Shenzhen has ten million people but may just end up being part of Hong Kong someday, so you’d better learn it now while you have the chance.

So, to review, your choices are: Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.  I’m making it clear here so you don’t go to Wikipedia, which tends to flash characters about, thus spoiling the quiz.

A. 北京　B. 广州　C. 香港　D. 上海　E. 深圳　F. 天津

A. 命の木　B. 家政婦　C. 金玉　D. 芸術家　E. 子孫　F. 戦火の馬

G. パリの真夜中　H. 物凄く煩くて、有り得ないほど近い

And the Oscar for Technical Accuracy goes to . . .

Theoman, of course.  Not much of a shocker here.  Sure, he’s not perfect, and I certainly wouldn’t put him in charge of casting: he has an unfortunate tendency to hire artists to do all the cleaning work and to take on maids to design all his scenes.  Other than that, however, his record is solid.  Luckily for him, at KYPC, the Oscar for Technical Accuracy is awarded at the main event and not at that special separate nerd ceremony they always have for the technology stuff.

The award for Most Subjectivity goes to . . .

A(nother) Fan, surprising no one.  If movies are involved, you’d better believe he has an opinion and is willing to share it.  So what if his accuracy suffered because he was more concerned with badmouthing Tree of Life than he was with spotting it at A (supposedly his first runner up).  Oh wait . . . actually, his accuracy wasn’t half bad.  It wasn’t half good, either, but it was close.  Turns out that his knowledge isn’t limited to films he approves of, either.  He spotted Moneyball at C, The Descendants at E, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at H.  And here’s a funny story about ELIC: this challenge was somewhat inspired by seeing a friend of mine looking up movie titles in Japanese in order to prepare a lesson for class.  I saw him looking at one and, reading only the beginning (“Extremely loud”), assumed this was a review of the movie rather than its title.  Though based on A(nother) Fan’s low opinion, perhaps it was both.

The moral of the story is: don’t simply rank things in the order they come to you.  While this system puts ELIC in its “proper” place, it also says that The Descendants is better than War Horse, The Help is better than The Artist, and Tree of Life is better than all of them.

The award for Most Easily Recognizable Answer goes to . . .

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Oh, the horror, it actually won something!  Not much of a surprise here, since the title has twice as many meaningful words as any of the others do.  Technically, everyone also got Moneyball correct, but we’re going to assume based on Shirley’s comments that she was more sure about ELIC.

Finally, the award for Best Original Screenplay goes to . . .

Shirley.  Whether or not she actually gets the answers right (this time she picked up as many correct answers as A(nother) Fan), we can always count on Shirley to give us the most detailed description of how she arrived at them.  She weaves a tale of deception and subterfuge at C, Moneyball.  She tells us how the life of a maid can be like a war at B, The Help.  She reminds us of John Williams’ powerful score with her reference to musical instruments at F, War Horse.  She . . . says something about horses that I don’t entirely understand at D, The Artist (can’t expect to catch every little detail in a silent movie, right?)  And she was the only one to mention anything about Ernest Hemingway at G, Midnight in Paris.

But hey, to me, you’re all winners.  And I actually mean that.  Anyone who’s played KYPC for as long as you folks have knows that three out of eight is nothing to sneeze at.

Still, awards aren’t everything.  There are other ways to judge a film’s value.  See if you can identify the top six films from the IMDB Top 250 List that were never nominated for Best Picture.

A. 新たなる希望　B. 暗闇の騎士　C. 七人の侍　D. 帝国の逆襲

E. 殴り合い会　F. 良い者と悪い者と醜い者

A. 居間　B. 温室　C. 玄関　D. 食堂　E. 書斎　F. 台所　G. 玉突き室

H. 図書室　I. 舞踏室

My problem with Clue was that I always insisted on searching only the most “exotic” rooms–the Conservatory, the Billiard Room, the Ballroom.  I refused to believe that Mr. Boddy could have been killed in a kind of room that my own boring house also had, like the Kitchen or the Dining Room.  Or the Hall.  What a useless place.  It’s not even a room, really.  I never once searched the Hall when I played Clue as a child.  This may have cost me the game on more than one occasion.

Theoman, on the other hand, is much more open-minded, and therefore probably a better detective.  In fact, he is a much better detective.  Not only did he identify the location of the murder (hey, since he was the only one to participate, why not?), but he also correctly identified more than half of the rooms, which is pretty much unprecedented in a KYPC challenge that has this many choices.  I’m not sure I’d make him my butler, as he tends to confuse the Conservatory with the Ballroom and the Hall with the Lounge, but he’s definitely qualified enough to be Stephen Fry’s deputy in that one movie my parents like so much.

The correct answers were, in order: Lounge, Conservatory, Hall, Dining Room, Study, Kitchen, Billiard Room, Library, Ballroom.

Now we’ll take a brief break from games to do movies.  The Oscars were last night.  Do you know which film won Best Picture?  Do you know it well enough to find it written in kanzi?  If not, can you console yourself by trying to identify some of the losers?  Don’t worry: this doesn’t mean you are a loser.  Probably.

In any case, people with good memories should challenge themselves by looking for more than just the winner, since that appeared as an answer here about a month ago.  Also, those who do not enjoy futility should not waste their time looking for Hugo–alas!  Poor Hugo–cuz it just ain’t there.  As usual, a couple of these are the actual Japanese titles of the movies, but most are just things I made up to reflect the meanings of the original English titles.

A. 命の木　B. 家政婦　C. 金玉　D. 芸術家　E. 子孫　F. 戦火の馬

G. パリの真夜中　H. 物凄く煩くて、有り得ないほど近い

A. 英雄　B. 音速　C. 火曜日　D. 玉　E. 導体　F. 配管工兄弟　G. 椀

Is the Wordsman up to his old tricks again?  Or has he simply forgotten how to count?  One thing that nobody seems to have forgotten is the days of the week, as both Theoman and A Fan identified C as Tuesday, proving that copying answers is effective, provided you choose a good source (and also provided you choose a setting in which admitting that you’re copying answers has no serious negative ramifications).  Super Tuesday is March 6th this year, and if [INSERT WHICHEVER CANDIDATE YOU THINK IS FUNNIEST] doesn’t see his or her shadow, it means we only have to put up with 35 more weeks of campaigning.

After that, however, our memories don’t seem to have served us all that well.  Theoman came closest when he called F “hero,” because F is “plumber brothers,” referring to a famous–to some generations, at least–duo of overall-clad Italian heroes.  Yes, that’s the one I snuck in there on you.  I make no apologies.  Would it have been fairer if I had written “mario kyoodai” instead of “haikankou kyoodai“, because there’s never been a game called “Super Plumber Brothers”?  Possibly.  But that would have involved using characters other than kanji, and as those of you who have been around for the long haul know, I would never, ever do something like that.  We have also decided, in our limitless magnanimity, to award him partial credit for identifying B, “sonic”, as a ball (since we seem to have video game characters on the brain), and A, “hero” as conductor, because where is it written that conductors can’t be heroes?

A Fan is absolutely right in his analysis that the importance of a thing is exclusively determined by the number of people who have watched it on TV, meaning, among other things, that Justin Bieber is more important than Gandhi, and that American Idol is more important than the United States Constitution.  After that, however, his insight dropped off a bit.  G is not a ball, but it is a “bowl,” which is also round and could very well sound like “ball”–or more accurately “bawl”–in some people’s speech.  I suppose B could look a little bit like Toscanini conducting if you really wanted to see it (as A Fan, ever blind, surely does).  There’s his baton, hovering near his head, and below it is the elegant arc it has just cut through the air.  The first character could even be the podium, I guess, though it also seems to be employing some sort of hover technology.  However, as was previously mentioned, B is “sonic.”  As was not previously mentioned, the “conductor” in this case is the conductor of “superconductor,” which is not the name of an unpopular superhero but rather the physics thing.  Sorry to burst your bubbles.  It’s actually located over at E, which, what the hey, we will say also looks like Toscanini.  It’s all the same to A Fan.

D, looked at askance by both contestants as the source of all the numerical confusion, is a ball.  That’s right, a ball.  Just a simple ball.  Not trying to trip you up in any way.  Unless you step on it, of course.

But anyway, before we got distracted by the Super Bowl, we were talking about games.  And just so there’s ABSOLUTELY NO CONFUSION, I will tell you that this time we are doing the rooms from Clue.  You can check the Wikipedia article about Clue to be sure.  They’re all there, except for the Cellar, because you can’t actually go there.  So tell me: where was Mr. Boddy murdered?

A. 居間　B. 温室　C. 玄関　D. 食堂　E. 書斎　F. 台所　G. 玉突き室

H. 図書室　I. 舞踏室