Not from TNT or from grenades;
This land suffered most keenly from spades
Drain the water away
And what lives cannot stay
‘Twas canals almost killed th’Everglades

Event: Everglades National Park is dedicated
Year: 1947
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park

A. 試　B. 這　C. 診　D. 誉

E. 獄　F. 罰　G. 誓　H. 誰

Sometimes it seems as though the answers one gets correct on KYPC tell a story.  Theoman’s story seems to be fairly clear, as he got attempt(A), prison(E), and punishment(F).  We’ve all heard this story plenty of times: he’s in prison and, for some reason, decides he wishes to no longer be there.  So he makes an escape attempt–a fairly poorly arranged one, by his own description.  This, naturally, leads to recapture and punishment.  It seems like he’s wound up in one of those soft, white-collar prisons, though, as evidenced by the fact that the punishment for breaking out is just a noogie.  The real question, though, is how he tried to get away; he failed to identify one of the most popular modes of transportation for prison breakers, the crawl(B).  Maybe if he had thought to keep his head down, it wouldn’t have ended up getting noogied.

A(nother) Fan, on the other hand, had a(nother) plan: tunnels are the way to go.  Sure, it’s not easy, especially since he, too, failed to figure out how to crawl–good luck digging a tunnel big enough to walk through.  But if you succeed, you sure can cover yourself in glory . . . except that the character he identified as “glory,” H, is actually “who,” which, if you think about it, has sort of the opposite meaning.  Oh well.  Actually, if you’ve busted out of prison, a little anonymity probably can’t hurt.  It sure seems like it would have helped a lot of those guys in The Great Escape.  As a matter of fact, A(nother) Fan did not correctly identify any characters this week, which means that his tunnel ended not just short of the tree line but in the Kommandant’s office.  On the plus side, he seems to have missed any punishment because of it.  And he sure does remember an awful lot of that movie, which is a kind of victory of its own, I suppose.

Shirley’s story, however, is somewhat sadder, neither the standard failure of Theoman’s attempt nor the comical failure of A(nother) Fan’s–for you see, prison(E) is all she knows.  She is unfamiliar with the glory of D, so she makes no vow(G) to break free from her imprisonment.  She doesn’t even bother to examine(C) the bars for potential weakness.  But, if anyone’s keeping score, she took second place this week, so it’s not all bad.

It’s the Christmas season–time to put up the tree.  What does the Christmas tree mean to you?  Well, it depends on what you put on it, I suppose.  When you put different things on these “trees,” you get the following: a pillow, the Song Dynasty (of China), trouble, to complete/achieve, glass/cup, floor, to decay, and amazement.  Sound hard?  Well at least you don’t have to untangle all those damn little metal hooks.

A. 呆　B. 朽　C. 果　D. 床

E. 杯　F. 枕　G. 宋　H. 困

The door to the old Hamlin place creaked open, seeming to move almost of its own accord.  A strange sound rang out from some distant inner room—it could have been laughter, and if it was, it definitely wasn’t someone laughing with you.  A thick layer of dust coated the floor; no one had crossed that threshold in decades, except . . . were those footprints?  Hoofprints? A small shadow darted past the open door.  It was probably just a cat.  That’s it, just a cat.  Please let it just be a cat . . .

It would be difficult to explain why exactly Peter envisioned his return home—something he did almost every week—as though he had been triple dog dared to step inside the rotting mansion on the hill at the outskirts of town.  Suffice it to say, his imagination was running wild.  Thinking realistically hadn’t served him all that well so far that day.

The door did creak a little, but it certainly didn’t move of its own accord.  Peter had to put his shoulder into it, just as he had done every summer for as long as he could remember.  He stutter-stepped, hopped automatically over the three or four pairs of shoes that were inevitably lying right in the middle of the entryway, and skidded to a halt just before crashing into the inconveniently positioned coat tree.  It wasn’t the most subtle entrance, but Peter was pretty sure that no one was home, much more sure than he would have been if he was really walking into a house where no one had lived for generations.

Mom and Dad both started work early and left early, so on any other day of the week they would either already be back or be arriving shortly.  But Friday was Mom’s grocery shopping day, and she was one of those people who refused to buy anything premade and insisted on inspecting every purchase thoroughly, so it was a very time-consuming activity (often involving multiple stores).  Dad stayed late at work for extra-curricular activities.  Dizzy, being a teenager, was never in the house unless she was contractually obligated to be, especially during the summer.

So Peter was alone, and he was quite glad to be.  He sure as hell didn’t want to try to explain why he wasn’t at work.

Well, not entirely alone.  Shortly after regaining his balance, he was greeted by Sourdough, the more sociable of their two cats.  He rubbed up against his leg, consented to be petted for a few seconds, and then returned to his windowsill perch to get back to more important matters: scanning the backyard for birds, chipmunks, and other dangerous invaders.  Peter assumed that Cicero was down in the basement, because Cicero was always down in the basement.  Cicero only emerged at feeding time, when guests who were allergic to cats came over, or during thunderstorms—though in the last case she only came up so she could hide under his parents’ bed.  Mom liked to say that she was so shy because she was a girl who had been given a boy’s name, but Dad stubbornly insisted that they had agreed to each name one of the cats, and he wasn’t about to change anything now.  If the cat couldn’t handle being named after one of history’s greatest orators, well, that was his problem.  Err, her problem.

But Peter was not there to get reacquainted with his pets.  He was on a mission.  It comforted him to think of it as a mission, because the alternative was admitting that he was running silly errands for a crazy homeless woman in order to avoid joining her in madness because of an annoying song.  Yes, “mission” was definitely the better option.

He had told the old woman that he wasn’t sure where the flute was, but really, he could think of only one place it could possibly be.  Peter made his way to the master bedroom, hesitating only slightly to enter a place that for so many years of his life had been presented as the domain of his parents, well beyond the realm of children.  Of course, Mom and Dad did still sleep in the room, but Peter was too old to feel nervous just because of that . . . right?