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

It was not the most annoying thing that had happened to him that day.  It was not even the most annoying music-related thing.  But it bothered him.  So he stood there and played the Song of Mastery over and over again, not because he was trying to manipulate anyone’s mind, not because he was trying to rescue the old woman, but simply because he wanted to get better at it.

And he did.  The eight years’ worth of memories hadn’t been erased; they were simply buried and took time to dig up again.  Gradually it came back to him: the flow of his fingers, the positioning of his mouth, how and when to breathe—soon he was doing these things almost as naturally as, well, breathing.  After an hour or so, he even began to think that maybe the song was good enough to take over someone else’s head—in a crazy, alternate fantasy universe, that is.

Completely out of breath from his first extended performance in six years, Peter lowered the flute and looked up.  It was getting late: only an hour or two left before the sun started to sink behind the roof of Simon Park Village.  A quick scan of the park showed that no one seemed to be suffering from the effects of his song, though he realized that even when the old woman had done it, he had been a ways away before picking up the horrid tune, and presumably she was better at this than he was.  He decided to pack it up, go back down to call the woman’s bluff, and then, with any luck, go home and get some sleep.

And he might have done just that if he hadn’t happened to look down and see the squirrel staring up at him.

Being watched by a squirrel was nothing new to Peter.  He had been observed by many before.  He had even once in college gone squirrel fishing, which is a lot like regular fishing in that you drink beer and don’t catch much.  But the look in this squirrel’s eye was different.  Peter didn’t even know that squirrels could have looks in their eyes.  It was staring so intensely, so fixedly, refusing to be distracted by anything else.  It was, Peter thought, waiting for something.

“No . . .”

He walked toward the subway station entrance.  The squirrel followed him.  He stopped.  It stopped.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

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

Now, I know you guys can’t be that dense
This injustice is frickin’ immense!
If you’re not a great fool
You’ll throw off British rule
Now come on! Ain’t that just common sense?

Event: Common Sense, the wildly successful pamphlet supporting the cause of American independence, is first published
Year: 1776
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_%28pamphlet%29

Simon Park was not much of a park.  It was roughly the length of a football field and surrounded on all sides by five-story apartment complexes.  It had most of the things a park was supposed to have: grass, trees, benches, paths.  Sometimes the benches were even located beneath the trees.  But it was so blatantly artificial that it failed to create the image of nature springing to life and standing against the harsh wilderness of the city; instead it felt more like they had simply painted the concrete green.  It was not a place you would go to take a walk on a weekend afternoon or sit down and read a book in the gentle breeze—it was the place you took your dog to do its business, the extra block you had to walk to get to the subway station.

But people did go there, even if only out of necessity, and so, like all public spaces in the city, it had street performers.  The saxophonist and the guitar player with their open cases.  The infinite number of different kinds of drummers.  The raving lunatic who gets his clothes from the dumpster, his news from The Onion, and thinks that standing on top of things and shouting like he’s in a war zone makes him smarter than you.  All the truly talented artists went to Hayes or Morrison Park, where there were larger crowds and annual festivals (the only holiday regularly celebrated at Simon Park was Day After Monthly Dog Waste Pickup Day).  But they weren’t terrible, either—depending on whether or not you thought the lunatic was funny—and people occasionally tossed them a dollar out of common decency.

Peter was giving these performers a bad name.

He found himself frequently wishing that he had no audience.  On the one hand, this would mean that he would have no way of testing the efficacy of the Song of Mastery and that the entire exercise would be pointless.  On the other hand, he was 80-90% convinced that his performance was pointless anyway, and if no one was around, at least it would be less embarrassing.

Unfortunately, he never got his wish.  The afternoon was growing later, and the thousands of people who lived in the immediate vicinity of the overblown courtyard were emerging from the station in a steady stream.  Approximately half of them passed by where he was standing.  Most ignored him.  Some made a sour face.  A few even flipped him a dollar, though at least one woman seemed to be indicating with her expression that she was paying him to stop.  Not a single person stopped suddenly, turned toward him with a dazed expression, and asked, “What is thy bidding, my Master?”

He kept on playing, perhaps for over an hour.  Most of the time, however, he was not doing it for the old woman; he was doing it for the flute.

For eight years Peter Hamlin had played the flute.  He first picked it up in fifth grade, almost by accident; most of his friends at the time decided to join the band, and flute was the only instrument that the Hamlin family happened to already own.  Despite this whimsical beginning, though, he kept at it, and from middle school to high school there was not a day when that flute case was not in his backpack.   He practiced an hour . . . okay, half an hour a day, took weekly lessons, joined all the various musical extra-curriculars like Marching Band and Orchestra Winds.  He got pretty good at the flute.

But he was never great.  Throughout his musical career, it was clear to Peter that he was above average but not sensational, a distinction that was made all the more clear when his younger sister picked up the trumpet and took to it like it had always been there.  He was in the top band at every level but he was never first chair.  And Peter Hamlin—especially Peter Hamlin the high schooler—had no interest in devoting his energy to an activity where he could not be outstanding.  Music looked good on applications, but he saw no future in it.  So, when he went to college, he dropped the flute and never looked back . . .

. . . until that afternoon when he had stood in his kitchen and struggled to get through “Hot Cross Buns,” a song so easy that you could leave your flute outside on a windy day and it might get played by random chance.  Peter knew that he had never really excelled at the flute.  No one had ever told him—even jokingly—that he should make a career out of it.  But he had been better than this, for god’s sake.

“As the sky has not more than one sun
So must one man the whole country run”
Folks the emp’ror did cheer
Ringing in a new year
That was named just for him: Meiji 1

Event: Mutsuhito (also known as the Emperor Meiji) proclaims the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Japan for over 250 years
Year: 1868
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Ishin

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

“I’ll bet you spent most of the morning trying to figure out what was going on,” she continued.  “Doing whatever you could to find out what had been done to you.”

“I was looking for a cure.”

“You were looking for an answer.  And you won’t be satisfied until you get one.  Suppose the song just disappeared right now and never bothered you again.  Would you really be okay with that?  Being better but having no idea why, or even what was wrong in the first place?”

“Fine,” he snapped.  The woman’s pressing was starting to get almost as annoying as the earworm.  Of course, he could have just walked away, but then he would be taking the risk of having the vile tune return.  More important even than that, though, was the fact that walking away without saying anything would have been equivalent to admitting that he had lost the argument.  Peter Hamlin did not like to lose, and the thing he hated to lose above all others was an argument.

The woman didn’t even smile.  The experience with the police officer had taught her that gloating brought nothing but trouble.

“But how can you teach me, anyway?  You just said you’ve never played the flute.”

“I can sing.”

“That’s it?  You’re just going to sing it to me, and then I’m supposed to play it back?”

“It should work, if you’re any good at listening.  Now, I shouldn’t even have to do that, because you think that you’ve heard the song many times already.  But you can’t remember it, even if you try, can you?  Gee, that’s awfully mysterious, don’t you think?”  As it turned out, the woman was not as good at not gloating as she thought she was.

“Hang on.”  Peter turned around to look at the crowd of subway passengers, which he had all but forgotten were there (they had been ignoring him, too, so it was all fair).  “What if they hear you?  Will they be . . . affected?”

She shook her head.  “It doesn’t work like that unless you’re doing it intentionally . . . uhh, most of the time,” she added when Peter gave her a dirty look.  “And I wasn’t singing that time, anyway!  I just hit you.”

“Yes, that continues to be a very comforting thought.  Let’s just get this over with.”

The woman took a deep breath.  Peter expected to hear an angry, violent noise, like a cross between the buzzing of a swarm of hornets, cannon fire, and a traffic jam’s worth of car horns, but what the woman sang was calm, gentle, even beautiful.  He began to suspect that her claim of “I can sing” had been a significant understatement.  Still, the tune was immediately recognizable as the one that had nearly driven him mad that morning.

“Now you try.”

So he did.  What he played was the Beherrschunglied, in the same way that a toddler can pile a bunch of yellow Legos in a vaguely triangular shape and call it the Great Pyramid.  The woman, who had never been a music teacher, did a poor job of concealing her disappointment.

“I told you this wouldn’t work.”

“No, no, you’ll be fine!” she said, in the voice of someone who knows a project has to succeed only because she has invested too much for it to fail.  “You just need a little practice, that’s all.  Just, uh, try it a few more times until you get the hang of it.  But . . . maybe you should do it outside.  You know . . . there are fewer people out there, so . . .”

Peter walked off, saving the woman from having to come up with a logical ending to her suggestion that didn’t involve telling the truth, which was: “I don’t want to listen to you anymore.”  He glared at the flute.  “I used to be able to play you,” he muttered grumpily as he went up the stairs.

The woman watched him go.  Her spirits, temporarily raised by the thought of actually getting out of there, were slowly sinking back down below ground.  The boy was right, of course; there was no way this plan could work.  The Beherrschunglied was a fearsome weapon, but it was only as good as the person who wielded it.  For example, an above-average rendition would be required to control Peter Hamlin, at least on a day when he was well-rested and in full possession of his mental faculties.  Legends spoke of the song’s ability to sap the will of entire armies, though such a feat would require a performance the likes of which had never been heard on Earth.  The way he had just played, she figured he would be lucky to get a couple of blades of grass to bend.

KYPC is off for the holidays. See you next week.

With its architecture Byzantine
This is something that has to be seen
‘Twas the biggest to come
For a millennium
In a town famously in between

Event: Dedication of the Hagia Sophia
Year: 537
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia