A. 瓜二つ　B. 瓜田　C. 南瓜　D. 胡瓜　E. 西瓜　F. 西洋南瓜

In retrospect, I really should have done this a week earlier, so that the answers would be given on Halloween.  It feels a little silly to be talking about pumpkins a week later.

You all got that we were talking about pumpkins, right?  Good.

Theoman sits alone in that dark, damp patch, his head slumped against a splintery fence post, his eyes still open only through sheer force of will.  Midnight has long since past.  His friends–and perhaps, too, his senses–have long since abandoned him.  But he stays, and he waits, for he knows, deep inside his heart, that it will come.  It must come.  And then, all of a sudden, there it is: rising above a hill in the middling distance, its shadowy form cast against the slowly sinking moon.  He was right!  His faith was rewarded!  At last he will see, he will gaze upon . . . the Great Cucumber?  Better luck next time, Soul Eater.

Shirley, in her triumphant return, tried to be more logical.  She noted that all the answers share one character.  Could this be another one of the Wordsman’s famous tricks?  Or could she find the treat?  Well, she found a watermelon at E, and that’s not so bad.  Probably a lot better to eat than a pumpkin, actually, though if you take enough pain pills, maybe you could pretend it was both.  Halloween is a time for sweets, after all, and watermelon is pretty easily the sweetest thing on this list.  Her “Great Pumpkin,” however, is a bit of a letdown: F is the buttercup squash, which I may or may not have misread as “butternut squash” when I was making this quiz.  But they’re pretty much the same, right?

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, that one character that appears so many times means “melon,” so it’s used in the names of various melons and gourds.  Gourds are a kind of melon, right?  Or melons are a kind of gourd?  Tune in next week for the first edition of “Know Your Botany Terminology” (but not really).

A(nother) Fan had the last chance to get it right, but he ran up against an obstacle in that he chose to use a computer that was not set up to display East Asian characters.  But obstacles can be overcome.  Linus knows all about adversity, and so should we.  A(nother) Fan charged toward that wall, leapt over it, and ended up at B: the melon patch.  Well, at least he got close.  He may not have found the Great Pumpkin, but he at least got to the place where his buddy Linus waits for it every year.  Maybe if they wait long enough they can see the Red Baron.

C is the pumpkin, the “southern melon,” kabocha.  And A is actually a figure of speech meaning “two melons,” roughly equivalent to the American “as alike as two peas in a pod.”

But enough about fruits and vegetables.  Let’s get back to our characters.  Shirley should like this: we’re doing another challenge involving all the answers sharing a common element.  This time, instead of all the words sharing one kanji, I’m going to give you a list of kanji that all share a particular part.  Long-time contestants may recognize this common feature as meaning “moon,” so it should come as no surprise that the characters listed here refer to skin, existence, raising (as in raising a child), the color blue, agreement, clothing, friendship, and threatening/coercion.  Pick whichever one you feel has the most to do with the great yellow orb that hangs in the night sky.

And for those of you who might actually know one or two of these *cough*Theoman*cough*, let’s not forget to challenge ourselves.

A. 肯　B. 青　C. 服　D. 有

E. 朋　F. 育　G. 肌　H. 脅

“Let me get this straight: you want me to get you out of those handcuffs.”

“For a start.”

Peter frowned.  You never get a good answer when you start with “Let me get this straight.”  “And how would you suggest I go about doing that?”

Though she hadn’t done it in a while, in the early days of her captivity the old woman had spent some time imagining who her rescuer might be.  They came in a variety of sizes and colors, but one thing they all had in common was that they were heroic.  In her mind one of the defining characteristics of heroism was the ability to take charge of a situation.  Heroes do not need to be led by the hand every step of the way.  But after two hundred thirty-three days, she was not about to start looking gift horses in the mouth.

“The most basic way would be to go at them with some kind of saw, I suppose.”  She had spent many hours planning exactly how to direct her champion, should he ever appear.  It seemed perfectly in keeping with her luck that when he finally did, the first problem they would have to deal with would be something that hadn’t come up until that very morning.  “But it sounds like you’re having a pretty jittery day, so I don’t think I trust you with sharp objects.”

“Apparently, if you ordered me to use the saw, my mind would be crystal clear.”  Sarcasm: also not an official stage of grief, but useful nonetheless.

“No thanks.  You’re just going to have to get the key.”

“The key.”

“Yes.”

“The key to the handcuffs.”

“That’s the one.”

“The key to the handcuffs, which is in the police station.”

“That’s where I would keep it if I was the police.”

“And that’s exactly where they’d want to keep me if I tried to steal it!”

Peter didn’t like the idea of trying to get a job at a law firm with an attempted theft from a government building on his record.  He didn’t like standing around discussing the crime with someone whom the police had already tried to arrest once that day and were probably coming around to get a second time.  He didn’t like her explanation of the song in his head, which he only believed because it happened to stop when he was near her.  He especially didn’t like that he was essentially rewarding this woman for smacking him in the face—lawyers know all about setting bad precedents.

“Forget it,” he said.  “I’ll take my chances with the earworm.”  He turned around and walked toward the exit.

King George summoned his p’litical champs
“All these protests are giving me cramps!
This colonial fad
Will be driving me mad!
What on earth could they have against stamps?”

Event: Enactment of the Stamp Act
Year: 1765
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765