A. 駆逐艦　B. 航空母艦　C. 巡洋艦　D. 戦艦　E. 潜水艦

Theoman led off this time, and he did a fine job, sinking the battleship at D in the first shot.  He used actual knowledge of the language to guide him, which is unofficially frowned upon, but the knowledge was vague, and his source amusing, so all is forgiven.  Actually, I believe the song he is referring to is about not simply a battleship but a space battleship, which would presumably require a three-dimensional board and make the game even more excruciatingly long than it already is.

Next came Dragon, who seems to think that children are not supposed to have fun when they play games.  Perhaps this is a reflection on her own childhood, a bleak, soulless period of time in which board games were inflected upon her as a source of torment while she hovered in that featureless void.  Or it could be that her problem is simply with children getting excited over what is, at heart, an extremely violent event: the sinking of a ship.  Call me a cynic, but trying to get kids to stop thinking that blowing things up is cool sounds like a lost cause to me.  Her targeting strategy, however, was not a lost cause, at least not entirely.  She correctly identified that the Carrier, the only 5-hole ship in the game, is the longest kanji compound at B.  After that, though . . . Miss, Miss, Miss, Miss.

A Fan’s guess was brief, and thus our response is brief: Miss.

Just as in the real game, the Carrier turned out to be the easiest to get a hit on; after Dragon, both Shirley and Theoman on his second pass lodged red pegs in its dull gray hull.  The other ships ended up being considerably more elusive, except for E, the submarine, which Theoman sank through clandestine, undisclosed methods (we suspect Jack Ryan may have been involved).  But the destroyer (A) and the cruiser (C) live to fight another day.

I would like to apologize again for the lack of an entry last Monday; my computer was inflicted with a virus.  Rather than get down about it, however, I have decided to make the event into the theme for this week’s puzzle: diseases.  We’ve got the common cold, the slightly less common flu, TB, tetanus, and a couple of kinds of pox.  Grab your canes and your whiteboards, folks: it’s time for differential diagnosis.

A. 風邪　B. 結核　C. 天然痘　D. 破傷風　E. 水疱瘡　F. 流感