Know Your Picture Characters Entry #100

May 12th, 2012 by Wordsman

A. 子 B. 王 C. 刀 D. 水

E. 山 F. 口 G. 人 H. 女

Clearly all that stuff about being busy was just to throw you guys off.  Obviously the real reason KYPC was slow in appearing this week was because we were busy preparing for the 100th Installment! That’s right, KYPC is only the second feature on this site to survive to the extent of 100 entries.  And, of course, you know, we had to wait for an appropriately auspicious day, so that’s why it did not appear at the expected time (if there even is such a thing for this feature anymore).  Yes, that makes sense.  Lateness blame successfully avoided!

Theoman kicked things off well, not by getting a right answer, but by creating an answer that is in fact better than the so-called “correct” one.  For what could be a more appropriate representation of “responsibility” than the eternal image of the Sword of Damocles, the knife hanging over the head of the king?  Sadly, the only “real” kanji that makes use of this particular combination–plus a couple other parts thrown in for good measure–is one meaning “lapis lazuli.”  We also must give him credit for his correct answer, snapping up H, the woman, and A, her child, and putting them together where they belong; everyone likes that, right?  (Lovely Assistant’s Note: In Chinese, this character simply means “good,” and the parts originally depicted a son and a daughter, because that’s the best combination to have.)  Finally, while putting together D and E doesn’t give you a swamp, it does give you a character meaning “fishing with a net,” and well, some people would probably say that’s better than a swamp.  Some people probably like to fish with a net in a swamp.  It takes all kinds.

Shirley picked up two and a half correct answers (we’re assuming she meant to identify F as the mouth, and the half point is for calling H, the woman, a girl child).  B, unfortunately, isn’t a mountain “because it’s there,” but then again I’m sure there are some people who feel the same way about kings, which is what B is.  As a matter of fact, she reversed B and E, presumably because she’s been listening to too much Grieg.  So those aren’t bad, but on the other hand, she seems to be frightened of children (A) . . . or at least male children.  I wonder why that could be . . .

A Fan, as usual, brings us to the silver screen, but this time rather than simply reminding us about movies, he’s helping us to reimagine them.  Like the classic scene in which Dundee shows us how cool he is by saying, “That’s not a child.  This is a child.”  Or the new, horror-movie version of The King and I, in which Yul Brynner’s head is nothing but a mouth.  Or the alternate version of The Lord of the Rings in which Mount Doom is actually a person, which makes it significantly harder to throw rings into it.  On the other hand, some of his reinventions weren’t that far off the mark.  At D we see poor Randy, unable to move, lying in water (hey, snow is just frozen water).  At E we have half of the iceberg (“ice mountain” in kanji) that was struck by that boat in the famous movie, A Night to Remember.  Also, I am legally obligated to point out that his identification of H as “woman” is 100% correct, and that I can even kind of see the witch riding the broomstick in it now.

Okay, time for the educational part.  A=Child, B= King, C=Knife, D=Water, E=Mountain, F=Mouth, G=Person, H=Woman.  Woman+Child=Like, Person+King=Responsibility, Water+Knife+Mouth=Swamp (don’t ask), Person+Mountain=Wizard (you ever heard of a wizard who lived someplace normal?)

But now the main event.  For this challenge, we’re going to look at things that all contain the character that means 100.  You remember what it looks like, right?  Of course you do.  It looks like this:

But that’s just when it’s by itself.  When you give it a few friends, it can get up to all kinds of mischief.  What kinds, you ask?  Well, let’s see.  We’ve got an unscrupulous lawyer, a greengrocer, an encyclopedia, a gathering of beautiful women, the highest possible level of achievement, a famous poetry collection featuring one poem each from 100 famous poets, a nonstandard way of reading a kanji, and whooping cough.  Sounds like a good start to a movie to me (though even if it didn’t, we know A Fan would still turn it into one).

A. 百人一首 B. 百科事典 C. 八百屋 D. 百花繚乱

E. 三百代言 F. 百姓読み G. 百尺竿頭 H. 百日咳

Posted in Know Your Picture Characters | 3 Comments »

3 Responses

  1. TheomanZero Says:

    Dang. I actually recognize a bunch of kanji here, but none of them seem to help. Oh well:
    A. Poetry collection. The first three characters mean “hundred people one” . . . collection? Poem?
    B. Highest achievement. The characters seem to be pointing up? Also process of elimination.
    C. Encyclopedia. The first two characters mean “eight hundred”, which is how many pages encyclopedias had back when characters were being decided.
    D. Greengrocer. I’m pretty sure that the top part of the second character indicates plant matter of some sort. Maybe greengrocers have a hundred vegetables?
    E. Nonstandard reading. I think that last character has something to do with reading . . . or at least language.
    F. Gathering of beautiful women (a hundred of them, no doubt). I can see the kanji for “woman” wedged in there, as part of another kanji, where it may mean something else entirely.
    G. Unscrupulous lawyer. I can’t even remember if I ever learned the characters for “lawyer”, but these look kind of laywer-y.
    H. Whooping cough. The first two characters mean “hundred days”, which I guess is how long a whooping cough feels like it lasts?

  2. A(nother) Fan Says:

    These look really hard. Can I just copy Theoman’s answers and then write about the movies?

    No? OK, then. Here’s my best shot:

    A. Poetry collection. The first three characters mean “hundred people one” . . . collection? Poem?
    B. Highest achievement. The characters seem to be pointing up? Also process of elimination.
    C. Encyclopedia. The first two characters mean “eight hundred”, which is how many pages encyclopedias had back when characters were being decided.
    D. Greengrocer. I’m pretty sure that the top part of the second character indicates plant matter of some sort. Maybe greengrocers have a hundred vegetables?
    E. Nonstandard reading. I think that last character has something to do with reading . . . or at least language.
    F. Gathering of beautiful women (a hundred of them, no doubt). I can see the kanji for “woman” wedged in there, as part of another kanji, where it may mean something else entirely.
    G. Unscrupulous lawyer. I can’t even remember if I ever learned the characters for “lawyer”, but these look kind of laywer-y.
    H. Whooping cough. The first two characters mean “hundred days”, which I guess is how long a whooping cough feels like it lasts?

  3. A(nother) Fan Says:

    Just kidding! The old cut-and-paste gag. Never gets old, does it?

    But since we’ve established Theoman as the baseline, I’m going to rearrange his answers, saving me some typing time:

    A=C
    B=F
    C=H
    D=C
    E=E (he got that one right)
    F=B
    G=A
    H=G

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