A. 傷ついた心　B. こむら返り　C. 尺骨神経　D. 書痙　E. 脳の凍結

F. 喉仏

Learning lessons from one’s mistakes is very important.  Unfortunately, we are only able to do this if we assume consistency.  This policy is generally a bad one when dealing with kanji.  All this is just a lead-up to my pointing out that Theoman will probably be distressed to learn that I did in fact include “Brain Freeze,” (E) which is the newest edition to the game of Operation.  Never having played (or at least, never having competently played) Operation as a child, I felt less loyalty to the assortment of pieces present there in my youth.  The logic behind his decision to avoid bones seemed sound enough, but the Funny Bone isn’t really a bone, now is it?  It’s the ulnar nerve (C).  So, better luck next time, Theoman.  Still, it’s not a total loss.  Half your guesses are on here somewhere, and you spotted the Broken Heart (A) quickly enough.  But really, what KYPC player wouldn’t?

Shirley would probably appreciate it if we made things easier on her by not introducing contexts in which she would be inclined to mention her knee surgery.  We’ll work on that for next week, but for now let’s take a look at her responses.  It seems that Shirley may be a fine doctor after all, for she looks beyond the condition to the root cause itself.  Can excessive co-pay fees lead to a Broken Heart?  It seems possible.  Can really bad health care legislation be responsible for a Charley Horse (B)?  Uhh . . . maybe if it makes you hopping mad, haha . . . Perhaps a well-tickled Funny Bone, causing an exorbitant amount of shaking of sides, might be a reason for kne-uh-hip surgery.  And perhaps the writing of a great number of letters in an attempt to find relief for those kne-uh-hip surgery patients is the source of your Writer’s Cramp (D).  Can’t remember the Hippocratic Oath?  Must be Brain Freeze.  Lacking patience (or patients)?  Clearly, it’s something to do with . . . your . . . Adam’s Apple (F).  Or, as it is known in Japanese, the “throat Buddha.”  Because, as we all know, Buddha was an impulsive, reckless sort of guy.  Right?

You know what’s not going to win Best Picture?  That movie I watched in high school once where Keanu Reeves played Buddha.  And you thought I wouldn’t be able to make that transition.

Yesterday was the Super Bowl.  Did you watch it?  Well, I did, and I was disappointed.  Super Bowl.  Hah!  Nothing “super” about it.  So I set out to find things more deserving of the title “Super.”  Did I succeed?  You be the judge.  Sort through this pile of balls, conductors, heroes, sonics, and Tuesdays and tell me what should really be super.  I’ll even throw that bowl in there, just for good measure.

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

A. 医者　B. 運動選手　C. 会計士　D. 教師　E. 警察官　F. 芸術家

G. 販売員

Theoman appeared to be on the right track, guessing what sounded like a list of professions, which these in fact are.  However, as he failed to identify what exactly he was guessing, we have no choice but to assume that he believed these were the names of the rooms in Clue, and thus we can award him no points, for these are in fact the names of possible professions in the game of Life.  All kidding aside, he made the unfortunate mistake of attempting to be too up-to-date.  I can only assume that he, like I, looked up the list online, but I, unlike he, chose to ignore any profession on the list that I could not recall being in the game when I played it as a kid.  Fortunately for him, only two of his guesses–hairstylist and mechanic–were unfamiliar to me.  Unfortunately for him, it seems that most of these characters were unfamiliar to him.  While all of his other guesses do appear on the list, only the Doctor, A, is in the right place.  And he left out the teacher and the artist, two of the most important (and thus least well paid) jobs.

As usual, A Fan tried to hedge his bets by guessing a little bit of everything (and throwing in a bunch of stuff about movies that is totally unrelated).  Or is it?  Was his calling the doctor Moneyball a reference to Scott Hatteberg’s supposedly career-ending ruptured elbow nerve?  Or how about calling E, the police officer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?  I don’t know anything about the movie (other than that it was panned by rottentomatoes.com), but that certainly sounds like it could describe the job.  The connection between F, the artist, and Midnight in Paris is obviously appropriate, even more so than if he had said The Artist.  I am biased toward the former because it contains something that I frequently find to be a key element in movies: words.  In conclusion, Hugo probably should win, which means that it has no chance.  At least they only nominated nine movies for Best Picture this year instead of ten.

Shirley, following A Fan’s lead, decided to go her own way, and for some of her answers we don’t even have to stretch that much to make them sound right.  Her inclusion of the doctor as something to throw away is presumably yet another comment on the pain of knee surgery.  B, the athlete, is most definitely something you would find at a football game.  I believe I have done my taxes while watching TV before (I may have even done them while falling asleep); would C, the accountant, do the same?  Let’s hope not.  I thank my lucky stars that I teach at the college level, because if I had to listen to little kids scream “TEACHER!” (D) all day, I’d certainly lose it.  Are there police officers in the sky?  They have helicopters, I suppose.  Sounds like a good candidate for a classic Scattergories argument.  “Artist” for “things you are allergic to” sounds like too much of a stretch for me, but I give an unqualified thumbs up for the answer of “salesperson” (G) in the category of “things you are afraid of.”  There’s a reason I don’t own a landline phone.

Okay, this time I’ll be more specific.  We’re going to do a set of things from one of the other games, a set of things that would be of particular concern to one of the kinds of people on this most recent list (that is, they would be if they were actual things and not just a bunch of puns or other silly jokes).  Still a bit of a noodle scratcher?  Try lying down for a while.  I hear that’s good for what ails you.  Don’t take my word for it, though; I’m no . . .

A. 傷ついた心　B. こむら返り　C. 尺骨神経　D. 書痙　E. 脳の凍結

F. 喉仏

A. 飴国　B. 御免　C. 手術　D. 人生　E. 手掛かり　F. 独占

Clearly, the secret point of this challenge was not to make any real attempt at identifying the games but simply to spend the whole time talking about whether or not we like(d) them.  Well spotted, A(nother) Fan!  His comments on Operation were highly insightful and vastly understandable, especially to those of us not blessed with an overabundance of manual dexterity as children.  As for Life, on the other hand, he seems to have missed the point (I’m just talking about the game . . . right?)  Even at a young age, we players were able to discover pretty much right off the bat that going to college was an absolute waste of time.  All it did was allow you access to a couple of extra careers, and since career choice was random and the salary unrelated to said career choice, this was exceedingly pointless.  And you got stuck with loans!  Skipping college was a no-brainer.  Really, though, if you want to avoid “difficult” decisions like that, you’re better off sticking with Candy Land, which I for one was still playing in college (apparently I failed to learn the lesson that Life was trying to teach me).  Although there was, perhaps, less woofing involved.

But I suppose we should give him a more objective score as well, to see whether or not his claim about blindness enhancing his other senses (or at least his results) has any merit.  He’s one for six (or one for five if you consider that he only made five guesses with any chance of being correct), picking up a correct answer at E.  Looks like he’s better at Clue than he remembers.  Still, it’ll be hard for him to take too much joy in the victory, as he identified the much-maligned Monopoly (F) as his beloved Bridge.

Shirley’s opinions were a little more subtle, but we can still tell what she likes (the intrigue of Clue, the simplicity of Candy Land, the absurdity of Life) and what she doesn’t (the facelessness of Sorry, the interminability of Monopoly, anything under the sun related to the word “operation”).  Her guesses, too, were more subtly correct, which is a polite way of saying that they were wrong.  The second character in A, now that I think about it, does look a bit like one of those awkwardly shaped pieces in a too-small hole, but this is actually a country; the “Land” of “Candy Land.”  Presumably Shirley doesn’t want the weight of a whole nation on her new steel knee, so she’ll be okay being wrong about that one.  We can clearly see the butler in B raising up a knife to do violence to . . . some sort of complicated clockwork mechanism, it looks like, though that would seem to provide for a pretty poor mystery.  Anyway, as we all know, all butlers are British, and all British people are exceedingly polite, so it only makes sense that he would say, “Sorry” after doing the deed.  Shirley, however, says “Sorry” when presented with C, the Operation.  And D, the simplest one, is of course Life.  Just as it should be, right?

(Pause for laughter)

Theoman quietly picked up three correct answers.  This is a kid that you never want to let be the banker.

I’m still in a bit of a gaming mood, so this week’s challenge won’t stray too far.  We’re going to be working with a set of things from one of the games we just finished talking about (and no, I’m not including Bridge).  However, here’s the trick: I’m not going to tell you which game.  You have to guess that for yourself.  I will provide a couple hints, though: remember that KYPC has already had quizzes on the murder weapons from Clue and the playing pieces from Monopoly.  Presumably the Wordsman isn’t that repetitive.  Also, let’s give me a little credit and assume that I’m not going to present you with something as boring as the array of colors or numbers featured in Sorry.

A. 医者　B. 運動選手　C. 会計士　D. 教師　E. 警察官　F. 芸術家

G. 販売員

A. 決　B. 法　C. 汚　D. 沿

E. 汁　F. 泊　G. 汗　H. 汝

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to . . . read?

Actually, it looks like a fair amount of reading went on this week, at least in comparison to last week.  But what about comprehension?  Theoman’s lack of inspiration doesn’t bode well, but let’s see how he did in his showdown with A(nother) Fan.

A: A(nother) Fan, newly blessed with the gift of sight, spotted a pair of legs and thought, “Aha!  This must mean to run alongside!  That would make a lot of sense!”  Yes, I suppose it would.  But he who expects kanji to make visual sense is, unfortunately, a lot like our ancient mariner: out of luck.  Theoman, in his less inspiring but much more logical fashion, took the first round handily: will this be how the contest is DECIDED?

B: No technical right answers on B, so let’s get subjective.  B is, in fact, THE LAW (originally the Buddhist Dharmic Law, but applicable today in a greater variety of situations).  Based on that, we’ll assume that A(nother) Fan would prefer to be wrong when he referred to it as “pollution.”  Plus, Theoman makes a good point: legalese is often so incomprehensible that they might as well be using words like “thou.”  A point to him.

C: A close call here between the two attempts to land near POLLUTION (not generally a good idea to start with).  Theoman’s guess of sweat makes a lot of sense, but we have to give the edge to A(nother) Fan here: some kind of a decision needs to be made.

D: A(nother) Fan thinks that the law is something one should RUN ALONGSIDE.  Theoman, on the other hand, thinks this is the manner in which one should sleep–presumably this would lead to one being outside overnight.  As it is currently January, we award the victory to the Fan.

E: A(nother) Fan may also be a fan of archaic SOUPS, but no matter how good they are, it’s no match for the real thing.  Theoman picks up another right answer the old-fashioned way: actually knowing what he’s talking about (or at least making it seem like it).

F: Since, unlike we usually have in our head-to-head matches, there were no ties this time around, we will combine the contestants’ answers to create one: when one is on the run from the law, one SPENDS THE NIGHT in a cold sweat.  Good team effort.  No points awarded.  See where teamwork gets you?

G: Here we have SWEAT.  Is it pollution?  Is it soup?  Not much of a choice here.  Let’s give a point to Theoman and avoid A(nother) Fan’s kitchen.

H: A(nother) Fan takes the final round on an Accidental (?) Innuendo Point (did he realize that the right half of the character means “woman”?  We may never know.)  It was too late, however, to grant him victory.  Theoman takes the cup by going 4-3-1, and also by coming up with two “real” answers.  Kudos!

Maybe Theoman’s lack of inspiration is only to be expected.  After all, we’ve been working with radicals for quite some time now.  If we keep this up, sooner or later one of us is going to end up the leader of a group of guerrillas (or even, perhaps, gorillas) in the middle of some godforsaken jungle.  To prevent this unfortunate fate, we will switch back this week to a more traditional puzzle, to a simpler time.  These thoughts of youth have led me to the subject of board games.  We’ve done board game pieces before (no, really!  We have!  Look it up!) but never focused on the titles of the games themselves.  Again, as we’ve done in previous puzzles, the answers will not be the actual names used for the games in Japanese but direct translations of the English titles, because it’s more fun that way (and also makes the answers harder to look up).

Our games range from the blissfully simple (Candy Land) to the dastardly (Operation).  If you’ve got an hour or two, why not sit down for a game of Life?  If you’ve got an entire day–or you’re willing to cheat–maybe you can take on Monopoly.  Or maybe you don’t have the first Clue what to do.  If that’s the case, well, then I’m Sorry.

A. 飴国　B. 御免　C. 手術　D. 人生　E. 手掛かり　F. 独占

A. 匠　B. 折　C. 丘　D. 近

E. 芹　F. 所　G. 祈　H. 兵

I’ll spare you some kind of bad pun about having an axe to grind.

Theoman is more perceptive than I am, because he thinks the axe radical actually looks like an axe.  And his memory’s not bad either: he remembered the “grass” radical in E and assumed (correctly) that this must be parsley, because parsley tastes pretty much the same as grass.  He may even have a sneaky sense of humor, but we can’t be sure–did he know that the left side of B was the “hand” radical when he said that it looked touchy-feely?  We’ll assume for his sake it was a joke, because his actual guess was incorrect.  There were two things on this quiz that you do with your hands: fold and pray.  B is the former.  And while H is not prayer, as he guessed, we do award him a bonus point for correctly using both “it’s” and “its” in the same almost-sentence.

But Theoman seems to have had an unfair advantage this week in that he was able to use his eyes.  A Fan, unable to see, tried to hear the kanji instead.  Did it work?  Well, he found Joe “Hill,” at least, at C.  I guess the labor movement lives on after all.  Can we give him partial credit for using a Simon and Garfunkel song (technically, just the lyrics, not the title) for A, which, as it turns out, means “artisan”?  Is “The Gambler” truly as ubiquitous and useless as parsley, E?  Did he go to Google for G not just because of the letter connection but because otherwise he didn’t have a “prayer” of coming up with a song containing that word?  Maybe, like his dog, A Fan’s sense of hearing is better than his sight after all.

Shirley felt powerless (haha) to deal with this quiz, but she forged valiantly forward regardless.  She was close on B, seeing “folding” and assuming that these were hands clasped in prayer.  And speaking of close, no one got that close to “close,” D.  She tried to bring one of her favorite techniques, innovative spelling, into play at F, but it didn’t quite pay off.  Unfortunately, standard spellings would have served her better.  The “P” here stands not for “Pholding” but for “Place.”  And last came H, which, between the three contestants, was identified as a prayer at a place on a hill.  Sounds appropriate for the lonely soldier, don’t you think?

Since it’s mid-January, I was going to test you folks on the ice radical, but weather.com tells me it’s currently 38 degrees, so it would all melt.  I guess we have to do water instead.  Here we have soup, pollution, sweat, an archaic way to say “you” (sort of like English “thou”), decide, run alongside, spend the night, and law.

A. 決　B. 法　C. 汚　D. 沿

E. 汁　F. 泊　G. 汗　H. 汝

A. 秋　B. 炭　C. 災　D. 畑

E. 灸　F. 淡　G. 毯　H. 滅

Over the holidays, Theoman and Shirley had a no-holds-barred, knock-down, drag-out, slugfest KYPC rematch.  Shirley had previously claimed victory in Battle Bug.  Would Theoman get his revenge in Battle Fire?

Round A: Our battle begins with a terribly disappointing tie.  Both sides guessed autumn.  Both sides were correct.  Come on, people!  This isn’t soccer!  Someone needs to win!

Round B: Finally, in the second round, we were able to separate the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, and the . . . uh, rugs from the fields.  Neither team was technically correct (the best kind of correct!), for expert kanji scholars will tell you that this character refers to coal.  But I’m not about to allow another tie on my watch.  We award the slight edge to Theoman, because rugs are found indoors, and this is where coal is typically burned (hey, you have to work with the tools you’re given).

Round C: Oh, come on!  Another tie?  This epic showdown is turning into a real DISASTER, no matter how much our participants seem to think C looks like coal.  We just did coal.  Get over it.

Round D: And now we come to the reverse of Battle Rug-Field.  Theoman wins this time, probably because he cheated by actually knowing that the right side of the character refers to a rice field.  But all’s fair in love, war, and bizarre internet guessing games.

Round E: Groan.  What am I going to do with you people?  Where’s the competitive spirit?  If you don’t stop putting down the same answers, then I will have no choice but to resort to MOXIBUSTION.  That’s right, MOXIBUSTION.  That’ll make you turn pale.

Round F: And speaking of PALE, here we are.  See, it has fire on the right, but the fierceness of the flames is mediated by the water on the left.  See?  Anyway, marginal victory to Shirley this time, with paleness being a common characteristic of the faces of those about to undergo her guess (at least as far as I know).

Round G: Not technically a tie, but hard to judge.  How much difference is there between “ruin” and “disaster”?  And, more importantly, which of them has more to do with RUGS?  Digging deep into my reserves of arbitrariness, I will say that C, the real “disaster” character, has three arrows on top, and G has three slashes on the left, so those are closer.  Advantage: Shirley.

Round H: And what are we left with in the end but the RUINS of a much-acclaimed conflict.  Shirley comes out victorious again, 3-2, but the battle is much closer this time.  If we only awarded points for truly correct answers, it would have been a tie.  Sigh.

But now for next week.  People keep telling me that some sort of “new” thing occurred recently.  The kanji for “new” looks like this:

新

The right side of this character is the “axe” radical.  So picture a shiny new axe while you’re trying to identify all these other things that are shiny and new.  Like . . . parsley?  Or . . . a hill.  Or a soldier, an artisan, a generic word for “place,” prayer, folding, or “close” (as in “near,” not as in “shut”).

A. 匠　B. 折　C. 丘　D. 近

E. 芹　F. 所　G. 祈　H. 兵

A. 蛮　B. 独　C. 蝟　D. 虹

E. 掻　F. 蛇　G. 強　H. 蝋

It happened.  I missed the deadline.  Oh, the shame, the shame of it all!

Okay, I’m over it.  And anyway, it looks like one or two of my regular readers may have missed the deadline too.  Oh well.  This way we can set it up as a straight one-on-one showdown, mano-a-mano, Theoman vs. Shirley: which of the two contestants that actually use their real names (sort of) will emerge triumphant?

Round A: Theoman sees a hedgehog with all those points, but he’s thinking too small-scale; A is actually bristling with spears.  Or possibly just some really uncomfortable goat wool.  Shirley’s got the right idea here: we’re looking at a BARBARIAN.  Advantage: her.

Round B: Both contestants were wide of the mark on this one, so we must raise the age-old question: Which is more like GERMANY, snakes or rainbows?  (I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure this question was on my final exam for 8th grade geography class.)  Maybe we’d better stick to this character’s other meaning, “alone.”  Last time I went to the zoo, a lot of the snakes were piled on top of each other to the point where it was difficult to tell how many there were, while we all know that the double rainbow is an occurrence so rare as to make us doubt our own sanity.  Theoman takes this round, and we’re all tied up.

Round C: Is a draw, because both contestants guessed strength.  Both contestants are thus equally . . . wrong.  Though our friend Sonic the HEDGEHOG thanks you for thinking he looks so buff.

Round D: And now we get the reverse of the “Snakes vs. Rainbows” battle (coming to you soon as an iPhone app from PopCap!)  Here, however, the decision requires no judgment call on my part.  The elegant simplicity here is the RAINBOW, though we feel obliged to point out to Shirley that this is not two characters but one character made up of two parts.  But we won’t deduct points for that.  Shirley’s on top again.

Round E: This one would seem to be a foregone conclusion, because Theoman stayed within the boundaries of the challenge and Shirley didn’t.  But does that mean he’s closer?  Not that I’ve encountered many myself, but I would think that when running into a barbarian you would get a lot more than just a SCRATCH.  On the other hand, if you fail to swat those flies, as Shirley suggested, that’s exactly what you’re going to end up doing.  Let it never be said that I don’t encourage thinking outside the box.

Round F: Germany and hedgehogs.  Which is more like a SNAKE?  For the sake of political correctness and animal solidarity, we’re going to have to go with the latter.  Shirley’s on a roll.

Round G: Another tie.  Don’t scratch that character too hard.  You don’t know your own STRENGTH.

Round H: Theoman attempts a comeback by correctly identifying WAX, but it’s too little, too late.  Shirley wins KYPC this week by a score of 4-2-2 (or, if you’re only counting legitimately correct answers, 2-1).  Congrats to the contestants: you’re all winners, though none of you can read much Japanese.  But you’re not bad at making things up on the fly.

Are you cold?  I’m cold.  Time to heat things up with the fire radical.  After all, it’s only two days from the winter solstice, the official end of AUTUMN.  And then only three days after that is Christmas–better hope you don’t get a lump of COAL in your stocking.  That would be a DISASTER!  Christmas would be RUINED!  But there’s no need to turn PALE: you could simply toss it in the fireplace and curl up in a nice cozy RUG.  After all, things could be much worse.  You could be out working the FIELDS, or undergoing MOXIBUSTION.  Or, even worse, you could be trying to figure out what the heck all these characters mean.

A. 秋　B. 炭　C. 災　D. 畑

E. 灸　F. 淡　G. 毯　H. 滅

A. 呆　B. 朽　C. 果　D. 床

E. 杯　F. 枕　G. 宋　H. 困

The holiday season is truly here.  You know how I know?  Because Theoman sees an empty box and immediately thinks trouble.  And what self-respecting kid on Christmas morning wouldn’t?  But really, he should think back.  When he first opened that box at the top of A, before he channeled his inner consumer and asked the question every child asks this time of year (“Where’s mine?”), his first reaction would have been one of utterly unmitigated amazement.

Shirley saw amazement in the next character over, but what’s really going on is that this unfriendly character is making a rude gesture, not a rude glance.  Why?  Well, rudeness breeds its like–someone just let off a really nasty smell over there.  Seriously, it’s like decaying flesh or something.  (Theoman knew exactly what was going on here at B.  I don’t mean to name names, but if I had a finger to point at the source of the problem, well . . .)

A Fan, on the other hand, saw decay in C: the ugly Mr. Potter.  But where’s his chair?  He couldn’t take over the town–except in an alternate reality–he couldn’t shut down the Building and Loan, he couldn’t beat the Bailey boys, and now he’s lying helpless on the ground!  Looks like his failure is complete.  (Theoman was in the know here again.  I guess we can thank him for giving the heartless old dinosaur a friendly shove.)

Celebrating his victory over the Scrooges of the world, Theoman decided to head to D to celebrate with a nice steaming cup of hot chocolate, cider, or other appropriately seasonal beverage (can one have steaming hot egg nog?)  Unfortunately, he picked a bad seat–see how it’s missing a side over there?  Now he’s flat on the floor with his old nemesis!  (Before attempting to sit, he really should have talked to Shirley, who knows a floor when she sees one.)

Shirley, ever the Good Samaritan, rushed in to help, of course, but found that she had rushed a little too quickly.  Tired, she lay down at E.  What she thought was a pillow, however, was actually Theoman’s dropped cup.  Hopefully it was no longer steaming hot.

Now at F, A Fan recalled the poor, disturbed Mr. Gower.  Mr. Gower didn’t mean to mix up the pills.  He didn’t know they were poison.  He shouldn’t even be at work at all; he just needs a place to cry.  I recommend a nice pillow.

At G, Theoman’s amazed, A Fan’s feeling just a bit scandalized, and Shirley wants to raise a toast.  To what?  To the Song Dynasty, of course.  Why?  Well . . . because they were so amazingly sexy, apparently.

And now we come to the end, and brother, it shows.  Shirley wants things to be over.  A Fan wants a drink.  Theoman can hardly keep his eyes open.  Sure, it would be nice to close out with children’s heads and the visions of sugarplums therein, but what we’ve got here is trouble.  With a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for picture characters.  Time to go find some more.

You like bugs, huh?  Okay.  Meet the bug radical.  This little critter is responsible for all kinds of disasters, like . . . rainbows.  And, uh, Germany.  Also strength, snakes, scratches, barbarians, wax, and hedgehogs.  Better get your fly swatters.  Or your story-writing pencils.  Either works for me.

A. 蛮　B. 独　C. 蝟　D. 虹

E. 掻　F. 蛇　G. 強　H. 蝋

A. 試　B. 這　C. 診　D. 誉

E. 獄　F. 罰　G. 誓　H. 誰

Sometimes it seems as though the answers one gets correct on KYPC tell a story.  Theoman’s story seems to be fairly clear, as he got attempt(A), prison(E), and punishment(F).  We’ve all heard this story plenty of times: he’s in prison and, for some reason, decides he wishes to no longer be there.  So he makes an escape attempt–a fairly poorly arranged one, by his own description.  This, naturally, leads to recapture and punishment.  It seems like he’s wound up in one of those soft, white-collar prisons, though, as evidenced by the fact that the punishment for breaking out is just a noogie.  The real question, though, is how he tried to get away; he failed to identify one of the most popular modes of transportation for prison breakers, the crawl(B).  Maybe if he had thought to keep his head down, it wouldn’t have ended up getting noogied.

A(nother) Fan, on the other hand, had a(nother) plan: tunnels are the way to go.  Sure, it’s not easy, especially since he, too, failed to figure out how to crawl–good luck digging a tunnel big enough to walk through.  But if you succeed, you sure can cover yourself in glory . . . except that the character he identified as “glory,” H, is actually “who,” which, if you think about it, has sort of the opposite meaning.  Oh well.  Actually, if you’ve busted out of prison, a little anonymity probably can’t hurt.  It sure seems like it would have helped a lot of those guys in The Great Escape.  As a matter of fact, A(nother) Fan did not correctly identify any characters this week, which means that his tunnel ended not just short of the tree line but in the Kommandant’s office.  On the plus side, he seems to have missed any punishment because of it.  And he sure does remember an awful lot of that movie, which is a kind of victory of its own, I suppose.

Shirley’s story, however, is somewhat sadder, neither the standard failure of Theoman’s attempt nor the comical failure of A(nother) Fan’s–for you see, prison(E) is all she knows.  She is unfamiliar with the glory of D, so she makes no vow(G) to break free from her imprisonment.  She doesn’t even bother to examine(C) the bars for potential weakness.  But, if anyone’s keeping score, she took second place this week, so it’s not all bad.

It’s the Christmas season–time to put up the tree.  What does the Christmas tree mean to you?  Well, it depends on what you put on it, I suppose.  When you put different things on these “trees,” you get the following: a pillow, the Song Dynasty (of China), trouble, to complete/achieve, glass/cup, floor, to decay, and amazement.  Sound hard?  Well at least you don’t have to untangle all those damn little metal hooks.

A. 呆　B. 朽　C. 果　D. 床

E. 杯　F. 枕　G. 宋　H. 困

A. 碇　B. 磯　C. 砲　D. 碁

E. 磨　F. 妬　G. 砂　H. 砕

The website isn’t really cooperating with me right now, so we’ll see whether or not this actually gets posted.

Perhaps our knowledge of kanji can tell us what we are meant to be. For instance, Theoman would make a pretty poor apothecary, because he tries to grind up his medicines using an anchor (A). On the other hand, he might be a pretty impressive player of Go, because he sees the entire beach (B) as his board. Other than that, he easily recognizes cannons (C) and jealousy (F), so . . . pirate, I guess?

In other news, A Fan is back–or is it that he never truly left? As usual, he does his best to test the boundaries of relevancy. B could be Captain Kangaroo, provided that he is captain of a ship, and also provided that he has run his ship aground on the beach (maybe he, too, disagrees with the prevailing belief that ships are meant to be crewed). F is in fact Mr. Green Jeans because he is green with envy, presumably based on his desire to throw Captain Kangaroo overboard and usurp his position as Captain of the grounded ship. Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose are blatant rip-offs of Bugs Bunny and Bullwinkle, respectively, and will thus not be acknowledged here.

That poor anchor. First Theoman tries to use it in his mortar, and now Shirley is attempting to load it into a cannon. Well, at least it can’t be said that it doesn’t lead an interesting life. Shirley is, however, the only one who knows a good beach when she sees it, but she is also familiar with the darker side of life: smashing and crushing (H). Also of note is the fact that both Shirley and Theoman seem to favor a magnetic Go board, though the actual magnet is . . . oh hell. Looks like I actually forgot to put the magnet character up there. I instead accidentally substituted a character meaning “sand” at G. Magnet looks like this:

磁

And E is for polishing. Or brushing your teeth.

Anyway, since words seem to be such a big deal around here, this week we will be looking at characters containing the element that means “word.” Their meanings include: punishment, to vow, to crawl, to examine/diagnose, prison, to attempt, glory, and the question word for who.

A. 試　B. 這　C. 診　D. 誉

E. 獄　F. 罰　G. 誓　H. 誰