A. 決　B. 法　C. 汚　D. 沿

E. 汁　F. 泊　G. 汗　H. 汝

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to . . . read?

Actually, it looks like a fair amount of reading went on this week, at least in comparison to last week.  But what about comprehension?  Theoman’s lack of inspiration doesn’t bode well, but let’s see how he did in his showdown with A(nother) Fan.

A: A(nother) Fan, newly blessed with the gift of sight, spotted a pair of legs and thought, “Aha!  This must mean to run alongside!  That would make a lot of sense!”  Yes, I suppose it would.  But he who expects kanji to make visual sense is, unfortunately, a lot like our ancient mariner: out of luck.  Theoman, in his less inspiring but much more logical fashion, took the first round handily: will this be how the contest is DECIDED?

B: No technical right answers on B, so let’s get subjective.  B is, in fact, THE LAW (originally the Buddhist Dharmic Law, but applicable today in a greater variety of situations).  Based on that, we’ll assume that A(nother) Fan would prefer to be wrong when he referred to it as “pollution.”  Plus, Theoman makes a good point: legalese is often so incomprehensible that they might as well be using words like “thou.”  A point to him.

C: A close call here between the two attempts to land near POLLUTION (not generally a good idea to start with).  Theoman’s guess of sweat makes a lot of sense, but we have to give the edge to A(nother) Fan here: some kind of a decision needs to be made.

D: A(nother) Fan thinks that the law is something one should RUN ALONGSIDE.  Theoman, on the other hand, thinks this is the manner in which one should sleep–presumably this would lead to one being outside overnight.  As it is currently January, we award the victory to the Fan.

E: A(nother) Fan may also be a fan of archaic SOUPS, but no matter how good they are, it’s no match for the real thing.  Theoman picks up another right answer the old-fashioned way: actually knowing what he’s talking about (or at least making it seem like it).

F: Since, unlike we usually have in our head-to-head matches, there were no ties this time around, we will combine the contestants’ answers to create one: when one is on the run from the law, one SPENDS THE NIGHT in a cold sweat.  Good team effort.  No points awarded.  See where teamwork gets you?

G: Here we have SWEAT.  Is it pollution?  Is it soup?  Not much of a choice here.  Let’s give a point to Theoman and avoid A(nother) Fan’s kitchen.

H: A(nother) Fan takes the final round on an Accidental (?) Innuendo Point (did he realize that the right half of the character means “woman”?  We may never know.)  It was too late, however, to grant him victory.  Theoman takes the cup by going 4-3-1, and also by coming up with two “real” answers.  Kudos!

Maybe Theoman’s lack of inspiration is only to be expected.  After all, we’ve been working with radicals for quite some time now.  If we keep this up, sooner or later one of us is going to end up the leader of a group of guerrillas (or even, perhaps, gorillas) in the middle of some godforsaken jungle.  To prevent this unfortunate fate, we will switch back this week to a more traditional puzzle, to a simpler time.  These thoughts of youth have led me to the subject of board games.  We’ve done board game pieces before (no, really!  We have!  Look it up!) but never focused on the titles of the games themselves.  Again, as we’ve done in previous puzzles, the answers will not be the actual names used for the games in Japanese but direct translations of the English titles, because it’s more fun that way (and also makes the answers harder to look up).

Our games range from the blissfully simple (Candy Land) to the dastardly (Operation).  If you’ve got an hour or two, why not sit down for a game of Life?  If you’ve got an entire day–or you’re willing to cheat–maybe you can take on Monopoly.  Or maybe you don’t have the first Clue what to do.  If that’s the case, well, then I’m Sorry.

A. 飴国　B. 御免　C. 手術　D. 人生　E. 手掛かり　F. 独占