A. アイロン　B. 靴　C. 乗馬者　D. シルクハット　E. 指貫　F. 榴弾砲

In Monopoly, cheating is a way of life (and often the only way to make the game end).  Anyone who says, “I’ll be the banker” is as trustworthy as someone who proclaims, “I am not a crook!”  This being the case, I half-expected contestants this week to be looking up answers left and right, but it appears for the most part that people remained honest, or at least were skilled enough to be subtle about it as they slipped handfuls of $500 bills into their money piles.  Let’s see if that honesty paid off for you.

Theoman is correct in saying that both “horse” and “shoe” are one character (and “horseshoe” is two, but that’s a subject for a later puzzle).  So his kanji knowledge holds up.  Unfortunately, his Monopoly knowledge let him down.  The playing piece is not a horse but a man on horseback, which can be found at C.  Still, he was close; B is the shoe.  So we’ll say he had the right pair but put them on the wrong feet.

Shirley, however, spotted the shoe fairly easily, and she nearly pulled off the hat trick.  She correctly identified A and D as our two most stylish transportation options, but she picked D, the shirukuhatto (from “silk hat”), as the iron when it is in fact the top hat.  A is the iron.  These, by the way, are once again katakana rather than hiragana.  In the context of this game, if it’s used in conjunction with kanji, it’s probably hiragana, but if it stands on its own it’s probably katakana (that’s four correct uses of “its/it’s” in one sentence!  A new internet record!)

A Fan thought that A might be the boot because boots are old, and I suppose that’s true–the boot in Monopoly isn’t exactly shiny and new.  And iron is pretty old as well (call it 3,000 years or so).  The iron, however, is pretty new, and that’s the only thing that airon here can refer to.  Misfits this week include the poor, neglected thimble (E) and the Howitzer (F), which was perhaps too intimidating for its own good.

People may be wondering why I left the battleship, another classic Monopoly piece, out of last week’s challenge.  As a matter of fact, it was because I was saving it for this week.  It’s time for open warfare on the high seas, which, as my childhood taught me, consists primarily of random guessing.  So really, it’s the perfect topic for KYPC, which returns this week to its original all-kanji all-the-time format.  Can you sink my battleship?

A. 駆逐艦　B. 航空母艦　C. 巡洋艦　D. 戦艦　E. 潜水艦