A. 亞利桑那 B. 奥克兰 C. 堪薩斯城 D. 聖地牙哥 E. 旧金山

F. 西雅圖 G. 圣路易斯 H. 丹佛

so theoman likes stream of consciousness huh well in that case i thought i would try writing todays post in a freer style that is not hampered by fascist punctuation or Okay, I can’t do this.  But even though it’s not great for blogging, the stream of consciousness strategy seems to pay off at a 50% rate for character guessing, which, as regular KYPC participants know, makes it pretty much the best game in town.  It nabbed him Denver (H) right off the bat–though I have a sneaking suspicion that his old friend, phonetic complexity, helped the stream along a bit in that case.  Anyway, he shouldn’t have needed it, as the characters for Denver are the same as their team.  Denver’s NFL team is the “Vermilion Buddhas,” right?  It also won him Seattle (F), which, appropriately enough for this Western quiz, starts with a character meaning “west.”  After that, however, the consciousness stream streamed off a bit.  Whatever the heck that means.

We hoped that when A Fan went out of town, he might have stopped in one of these places in order to improve his chances of guessing correctly.  It seems that he didn’t, however.  The character he identified as the Gateway Arch in A actually refers to Asia, so of course this is Arizona, which is . . . uh, a little closer to Asia than . . . well, about half of the others, anyway.  Then he went on to make a disparaging statement about the fine people of San Diego and a cryptic one about Oakland.  Then he actually got one right, so we had to do a double take and go back.  He probably thought he was kidding when he identified the third character in E as the hills of San Francisco, but this character actually means “mountain,” as in “old gold mountain,” which is what the Chinese decided to name the City by the Bay.  And as for the rest of his guesses . . . well, perhaps the less said the better.

We thank Shirley for her informative statements on the subject of knee replacement surgery and wish her a speedy recovery.

Finally came Dragon, who has never given up on the idea that I am trying to trick you all every week.  Her lack of trust led her to employ a sneaky strategy.  Fortunately for all that is good and pure in the world, this strategy backfired by . . . correctly identifying Arizona (A), Kansas City (C), and Saint Louis (G), giving her the best score of the week.  Hmm . . .

B is Oakland, where “the inside overcomes the orchid.”  D is San Diego, which is “a whale’s . . .”–No, I’m just kidding.  It’s the “holy land of fangs and elder brothers.”

And at last we swing back around to the East, where we can find teams in Buffalo, Dallas, Miami, New England, New York, New York again (no, I won’t list it twice), Philadelphia, and Washington.

A. 達拉斯 B. 新英格兰 C. 纽约 D. 水牛城

E. 費城 F. 迈阿密 G. 华盛顿