A. 新たなる希望　B. 暗闇の騎士　C. 七人の侍　D. 帝国の逆襲

E. 殴り合い会　F. 良い者と悪い者と醜い者

Well, shame on me.  One would expect Spring Break to be responsible for causing me to miss one, maybe two posts, but three?  Oh, the shame!  The extreme shame!  Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you: this week I will post two KYPC challenges instead of one.

Wait . . . that’s actually more of a punishment, really, since it means more work for all of you.  Better stick to the usual way.

The challenge from three weeks ago was about . . . uh . . . uh . . . well, it must have something to do with movies, since A Fan felt the need to post three separate times.  Ah, yes, that’s right: IMDB’s Best Non-Best Picture Nominees.

A Fan’s right: Theoman should have either looked up or recalled the fact that, while Inception probably wouldn’t have been nominated under the old system, it had the good fortune to have been made in 2010, a year after the Academy decided it was safer to simply nominate every single movie.  Other than that, however, his picks were pretty good, and he even got half of them to land on the right letters, utilizing his knowledge of numbers–C, The Seven Samurai–conjunctions–F, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly–and, uh, geography I guess?–D, The Empire Strikes Back.

A Fan, on the other hand, knew precisely which were the top six highest rated IMDB films to never receive a nomination for Best Picture.  In fact, he knew them better than I did (as if I didn’t have enough to be apologizing for already this week).  #6 on the list is City of God, not Star Wars: A New Hope because Star Wars: A New Hope was actually nominated for Best Picture.  In my defense, how could they possibly have nominated that one and not Empire?  Don’t tell me the competition was stiffer in 1980.  Ordinary People?  Come on.

So I guess I have to give everyone honorary credit for A, which is A New Hope.  A Fan also secured the same three correctly placed answers as Theoman, which I guess makes this week’s KYPC champion’s race a draw?  We could give the edge to the one who got closer to A, but it’s too close to call; Theoman’s pick of The Dark Knight is an obvious Vader reference, but he’s really bigger in the next movie, and A Fan’s guess has the same problem (City of God=Cloud City?).  We’ll declare A Fan the winner this time round because he taught us all a lesson about how to correctly read lists.

Shirley, on the other hand, decided to eschew the upper echelons of the IMDB list and concentrate on giving recognition to the lower ranks, while at the same time giving us a few lessons in comparative theater.  For is not “The dude abides” basically the same as “Use the Force” (A)? (The Big Lebowski, #129).  Did the chase-scene antics of Batman and the Joker (B) not hearken back to the work of Buster Keaton, even if Bale and Ledger didn’t do their own stunts? (The General, #118).  Doesn’t Luke (D) kind of remind us of Monty Python’s Brian, especially in some of his whinier scenes (“That’s not true!  That’s impossible!“)?  (Life of Brian, #166).  And I suppose that if Alec Guiness had to play eight parts, then he must have been good, bad, and ugly (F) all rolled into one.  (Kind Hearts and Coronets, #217).

Apparently people have been obeying the first rule of Fight Club, because nobody identified it correctly: it’s E.

But now I actually have to go to work again.  Let’s do geography.  You all like geography, right?  You know what else you like?  That’s right, kanji characters (otherwise you wouldn’t be here).  So we’re going to go to the birthplace of kanji: Poland.  Just kidding.  I mean China.  China’s a big place, and they have a lot of big cities.  Let’s look at a few of them.  Shanghai must be pretty important, because my grandfather has been there and because it’s not every Chinese city that you can use as a verb in English (coming soon to the OED: “to chongqing”–what could it possibly mean?).  Beijing’s kind of a big deal, because it’s the capital and because they named a duck after it.  Hong Kong’s name means “fragrant harbor” in Chinese, which basically tells you everything you need to know about Hong Kong.  Tianjin is home to the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, so you know it must be exciting.  Plus it’s the sixth-largest city in China, which is much more impressive than, say, being the sixth-largest city in Ohio (Dayton).  Guangzhou appears in my Chinese textbook, used to be called Canton (no, I’m not talking about Ohio again), and is a Beta World City, ranking it with such major metropolises as Budapest, Ho Chi Minh City, Minneapolis, and Oslo.  And Shenzhen has ten million people but may just end up being part of Hong Kong someday, so you’d better learn it now while you have the chance.

So, to review, your choices are: Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.  I’m making it clear here so you don’t go to Wikipedia, which tends to flash characters about, thus spoiling the quiz.

A. 北京　B. 广州　C. 香港　D. 上海　E. 深圳　F. 天津

A. 命の木　B. 家政婦　C. 金玉　D. 芸術家　E. 子孫　F. 戦火の馬

G. パリの真夜中　H. 物凄く煩くて、有り得ないほど近い

And the Oscar for Technical Accuracy goes to . . .

Theoman, of course.  Not much of a shocker here.  Sure, he’s not perfect, and I certainly wouldn’t put him in charge of casting: he has an unfortunate tendency to hire artists to do all the cleaning work and to take on maids to design all his scenes.  Other than that, however, his record is solid.  Luckily for him, at KYPC, the Oscar for Technical Accuracy is awarded at the main event and not at that special separate nerd ceremony they always have for the technology stuff.

The award for Most Subjectivity goes to . . .

A(nother) Fan, surprising no one.  If movies are involved, you’d better believe he has an opinion and is willing to share it.  So what if his accuracy suffered because he was more concerned with badmouthing Tree of Life than he was with spotting it at A (supposedly his first runner up).  Oh wait . . . actually, his accuracy wasn’t half bad.  It wasn’t half good, either, but it was close.  Turns out that his knowledge isn’t limited to films he approves of, either.  He spotted Moneyball at C, The Descendants at E, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at H.  And here’s a funny story about ELIC: this challenge was somewhat inspired by seeing a friend of mine looking up movie titles in Japanese in order to prepare a lesson for class.  I saw him looking at one and, reading only the beginning (“Extremely loud”), assumed this was a review of the movie rather than its title.  Though based on A(nother) Fan’s low opinion, perhaps it was both.

The moral of the story is: don’t simply rank things in the order they come to you.  While this system puts ELIC in its “proper” place, it also says that The Descendants is better than War Horse, The Help is better than The Artist, and Tree of Life is better than all of them.

The award for Most Easily Recognizable Answer goes to . . .

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Oh, the horror, it actually won something!  Not much of a surprise here, since the title has twice as many meaningful words as any of the others do.  Technically, everyone also got Moneyball correct, but we’re going to assume based on Shirley’s comments that she was more sure about ELIC.

Finally, the award for Best Original Screenplay goes to . . .

Shirley.  Whether or not she actually gets the answers right (this time she picked up as many correct answers as A(nother) Fan), we can always count on Shirley to give us the most detailed description of how she arrived at them.  She weaves a tale of deception and subterfuge at C, Moneyball.  She tells us how the life of a maid can be like a war at B, The Help.  She reminds us of John Williams’ powerful score with her reference to musical instruments at F, War Horse.  She . . . says something about horses that I don’t entirely understand at D, The Artist (can’t expect to catch every little detail in a silent movie, right?)  And she was the only one to mention anything about Ernest Hemingway at G, Midnight in Paris.

But hey, to me, you’re all winners.  And I actually mean that.  Anyone who’s played KYPC for as long as you folks have knows that three out of eight is nothing to sneeze at.

Still, awards aren’t everything.  There are other ways to judge a film’s value.  See if you can identify the top six films from the IMDB Top 250 List that were never nominated for Best Picture.

A. 新たなる希望　B. 暗闇の騎士　C. 七人の侍　D. 帝国の逆襲

E. 殴り合い会　F. 良い者と悪い者と醜い者

A. 居間　B. 温室　C. 玄関　D. 食堂　E. 書斎　F. 台所　G. 玉突き室

H. 図書室　I. 舞踏室

My problem with Clue was that I always insisted on searching only the most “exotic” rooms–the Conservatory, the Billiard Room, the Ballroom.  I refused to believe that Mr. Boddy could have been killed in a kind of room that my own boring house also had, like the Kitchen or the Dining Room.  Or the Hall.  What a useless place.  It’s not even a room, really.  I never once searched the Hall when I played Clue as a child.  This may have cost me the game on more than one occasion.

Theoman, on the other hand, is much more open-minded, and therefore probably a better detective.  In fact, he is a much better detective.  Not only did he identify the location of the murder (hey, since he was the only one to participate, why not?), but he also correctly identified more than half of the rooms, which is pretty much unprecedented in a KYPC challenge that has this many choices.  I’m not sure I’d make him my butler, as he tends to confuse the Conservatory with the Ballroom and the Hall with the Lounge, but he’s definitely qualified enough to be Stephen Fry’s deputy in that one movie my parents like so much.

The correct answers were, in order: Lounge, Conservatory, Hall, Dining Room, Study, Kitchen, Billiard Room, Library, Ballroom.

Now we’ll take a brief break from games to do movies.  The Oscars were last night.  Do you know which film won Best Picture?  Do you know it well enough to find it written in kanzi?  If not, can you console yourself by trying to identify some of the losers?  Don’t worry: this doesn’t mean you are a loser.  Probably.

In any case, people with good memories should challenge themselves by looking for more than just the winner, since that appeared as an answer here about a month ago.  Also, those who do not enjoy futility should not waste their time looking for Hugo–alas!  Poor Hugo–cuz it just ain’t there.  As usual, a couple of these are the actual Japanese titles of the movies, but most are just things I made up to reflect the meanings of the original English titles.

A. 命の木　B. 家政婦　C. 金玉　D. 芸術家　E. 子孫　F. 戦火の馬

G. パリの真夜中　H. 物凄く煩くて、有り得ないほど近い

A. 英雄　B. 音速　C. 火曜日　D. 玉　E. 導体　F. 配管工兄弟　G. 椀

Is the Wordsman up to his old tricks again?  Or has he simply forgotten how to count?  One thing that nobody seems to have forgotten is the days of the week, as both Theoman and A Fan identified C as Tuesday, proving that copying answers is effective, provided you choose a good source (and also provided you choose a setting in which admitting that you’re copying answers has no serious negative ramifications).  Super Tuesday is March 6th this year, and if [INSERT WHICHEVER CANDIDATE YOU THINK IS FUNNIEST] doesn’t see his or her shadow, it means we only have to put up with 35 more weeks of campaigning.

After that, however, our memories don’t seem to have served us all that well.  Theoman came closest when he called F “hero,” because F is “plumber brothers,” referring to a famous–to some generations, at least–duo of overall-clad Italian heroes.  Yes, that’s the one I snuck in there on you.  I make no apologies.  Would it have been fairer if I had written “mario kyoodai” instead of “haikankou kyoodai“, because there’s never been a game called “Super Plumber Brothers”?  Possibly.  But that would have involved using characters other than kanji, and as those of you who have been around for the long haul know, I would never, ever do something like that.  We have also decided, in our limitless magnanimity, to award him partial credit for identifying B, “sonic”, as a ball (since we seem to have video game characters on the brain), and A, “hero” as conductor, because where is it written that conductors can’t be heroes?

A Fan is absolutely right in his analysis that the importance of a thing is exclusively determined by the number of people who have watched it on TV, meaning, among other things, that Justin Bieber is more important than Gandhi, and that American Idol is more important than the United States Constitution.  After that, however, his insight dropped off a bit.  G is not a ball, but it is a “bowl,” which is also round and could very well sound like “ball”–or more accurately “bawl”–in some people’s speech.  I suppose B could look a little bit like Toscanini conducting if you really wanted to see it (as A Fan, ever blind, surely does).  There’s his baton, hovering near his head, and below it is the elegant arc it has just cut through the air.  The first character could even be the podium, I guess, though it also seems to be employing some sort of hover technology.  However, as was previously mentioned, B is “sonic.”  As was not previously mentioned, the “conductor” in this case is the conductor of “superconductor,” which is not the name of an unpopular superhero but rather the physics thing.  Sorry to burst your bubbles.  It’s actually located over at E, which, what the hey, we will say also looks like Toscanini.  It’s all the same to A Fan.

D, looked at askance by both contestants as the source of all the numerical confusion, is a ball.  That’s right, a ball.  Just a simple ball.  Not trying to trip you up in any way.  Unless you step on it, of course.

But anyway, before we got distracted by the Super Bowl, we were talking about games.  And just so there’s ABSOLUTELY NO CONFUSION, I will tell you that this time we are doing the rooms from Clue.  You can check the Wikipedia article about Clue to be sure.  They’re all there, except for the Cellar, because you can’t actually go there.  So tell me: where was Mr. Boddy murdered?

A. 居間　B. 温室　C. 玄関　D. 食堂　E. 書斎　F. 台所　G. 玉突き室

H. 図書室　I. 舞踏室

A. 傷ついた心　B. こむら返り　C. 尺骨神経　D. 書痙　E. 脳の凍結

F. 喉仏

Learning lessons from one’s mistakes is very important.  Unfortunately, we are only able to do this if we assume consistency.  This policy is generally a bad one when dealing with kanji.  All this is just a lead-up to my pointing out that Theoman will probably be distressed to learn that I did in fact include “Brain Freeze,” (E) which is the newest edition to the game of Operation.  Never having played (or at least, never having competently played) Operation as a child, I felt less loyalty to the assortment of pieces present there in my youth.  The logic behind his decision to avoid bones seemed sound enough, but the Funny Bone isn’t really a bone, now is it?  It’s the ulnar nerve (C).  So, better luck next time, Theoman.  Still, it’s not a total loss.  Half your guesses are on here somewhere, and you spotted the Broken Heart (A) quickly enough.  But really, what KYPC player wouldn’t?

Shirley would probably appreciate it if we made things easier on her by not introducing contexts in which she would be inclined to mention her knee surgery.  We’ll work on that for next week, but for now let’s take a look at her responses.  It seems that Shirley may be a fine doctor after all, for she looks beyond the condition to the root cause itself.  Can excessive co-pay fees lead to a Broken Heart?  It seems possible.  Can really bad health care legislation be responsible for a Charley Horse (B)?  Uhh . . . maybe if it makes you hopping mad, haha . . . Perhaps a well-tickled Funny Bone, causing an exorbitant amount of shaking of sides, might be a reason for kne-uh-hip surgery.  And perhaps the writing of a great number of letters in an attempt to find relief for those kne-uh-hip surgery patients is the source of your Writer’s Cramp (D).  Can’t remember the Hippocratic Oath?  Must be Brain Freeze.  Lacking patience (or patients)?  Clearly, it’s something to do with . . . your . . . Adam’s Apple (F).  Or, as it is known in Japanese, the “throat Buddha.”  Because, as we all know, Buddha was an impulsive, reckless sort of guy.  Right?

You know what’s not going to win Best Picture?  That movie I watched in high school once where Keanu Reeves played Buddha.  And you thought I wouldn’t be able to make that transition.

Yesterday was the Super Bowl.  Did you watch it?  Well, I did, and I was disappointed.  Super Bowl.  Hah!  Nothing “super” about it.  So I set out to find things more deserving of the title “Super.”  Did I succeed?  You be the judge.  Sort through this pile of balls, conductors, heroes, sonics, and Tuesdays and tell me what should really be super.  I’ll even throw that bowl in there, just for good measure.

A. 英雄　B. 音速　C. 火曜日　D. 玉　E. 導体　F. 配管工兄弟　G. 椀

A. 医者　B. 運動選手　C. 会計士　D. 教師　E. 警察官　F. 芸術家

G. 販売員

Theoman appeared to be on the right track, guessing what sounded like a list of professions, which these in fact are.  However, as he failed to identify what exactly he was guessing, we have no choice but to assume that he believed these were the names of the rooms in Clue, and thus we can award him no points, for these are in fact the names of possible professions in the game of Life.  All kidding aside, he made the unfortunate mistake of attempting to be too up-to-date.  I can only assume that he, like I, looked up the list online, but I, unlike he, chose to ignore any profession on the list that I could not recall being in the game when I played it as a kid.  Fortunately for him, only two of his guesses–hairstylist and mechanic–were unfamiliar to me.  Unfortunately for him, it seems that most of these characters were unfamiliar to him.  While all of his other guesses do appear on the list, only the Doctor, A, is in the right place.  And he left out the teacher and the artist, two of the most important (and thus least well paid) jobs.

As usual, A Fan tried to hedge his bets by guessing a little bit of everything (and throwing in a bunch of stuff about movies that is totally unrelated).  Or is it?  Was his calling the doctor Moneyball a reference to Scott Hatteberg’s supposedly career-ending ruptured elbow nerve?  Or how about calling E, the police officer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?  I don’t know anything about the movie (other than that it was panned by rottentomatoes.com), but that certainly sounds like it could describe the job.  The connection between F, the artist, and Midnight in Paris is obviously appropriate, even more so than if he had said The Artist.  I am biased toward the former because it contains something that I frequently find to be a key element in movies: words.  In conclusion, Hugo probably should win, which means that it has no chance.  At least they only nominated nine movies for Best Picture this year instead of ten.

Shirley, following A Fan’s lead, decided to go her own way, and for some of her answers we don’t even have to stretch that much to make them sound right.  Her inclusion of the doctor as something to throw away is presumably yet another comment on the pain of knee surgery.  B, the athlete, is most definitely something you would find at a football game.  I believe I have done my taxes while watching TV before (I may have even done them while falling asleep); would C, the accountant, do the same?  Let’s hope not.  I thank my lucky stars that I teach at the college level, because if I had to listen to little kids scream “TEACHER!” (D) all day, I’d certainly lose it.  Are there police officers in the sky?  They have helicopters, I suppose.  Sounds like a good candidate for a classic Scattergories argument.  “Artist” for “things you are allergic to” sounds like too much of a stretch for me, but I give an unqualified thumbs up for the answer of “salesperson” (G) in the category of “things you are afraid of.”  There’s a reason I don’t own a landline phone.

Okay, this time I’ll be more specific.  We’re going to do a set of things from one of the other games, a set of things that would be of particular concern to one of the kinds of people on this most recent list (that is, they would be if they were actual things and not just a bunch of puns or other silly jokes).  Still a bit of a noodle scratcher?  Try lying down for a while.  I hear that’s good for what ails you.  Don’t take my word for it, though; I’m no . . .

A. 傷ついた心　B. こむら返り　C. 尺骨神経　D. 書痙　E. 脳の凍結

F. 喉仏

A. 飴国　B. 御免　C. 手術　D. 人生　E. 手掛かり　F. 独占

Clearly, the secret point of this challenge was not to make any real attempt at identifying the games but simply to spend the whole time talking about whether or not we like(d) them.  Well spotted, A(nother) Fan!  His comments on Operation were highly insightful and vastly understandable, especially to those of us not blessed with an overabundance of manual dexterity as children.  As for Life, on the other hand, he seems to have missed the point (I’m just talking about the game . . . right?)  Even at a young age, we players were able to discover pretty much right off the bat that going to college was an absolute waste of time.  All it did was allow you access to a couple of extra careers, and since career choice was random and the salary unrelated to said career choice, this was exceedingly pointless.  And you got stuck with loans!  Skipping college was a no-brainer.  Really, though, if you want to avoid “difficult” decisions like that, you’re better off sticking with Candy Land, which I for one was still playing in college (apparently I failed to learn the lesson that Life was trying to teach me).  Although there was, perhaps, less woofing involved.

But I suppose we should give him a more objective score as well, to see whether or not his claim about blindness enhancing his other senses (or at least his results) has any merit.  He’s one for six (or one for five if you consider that he only made five guesses with any chance of being correct), picking up a correct answer at E.  Looks like he’s better at Clue than he remembers.  Still, it’ll be hard for him to take too much joy in the victory, as he identified the much-maligned Monopoly (F) as his beloved Bridge.

Shirley’s opinions were a little more subtle, but we can still tell what she likes (the intrigue of Clue, the simplicity of Candy Land, the absurdity of Life) and what she doesn’t (the facelessness of Sorry, the interminability of Monopoly, anything under the sun related to the word “operation”).  Her guesses, too, were more subtly correct, which is a polite way of saying that they were wrong.  The second character in A, now that I think about it, does look a bit like one of those awkwardly shaped pieces in a too-small hole, but this is actually a country; the “Land” of “Candy Land.”  Presumably Shirley doesn’t want the weight of a whole nation on her new steel knee, so she’ll be okay being wrong about that one.  We can clearly see the butler in B raising up a knife to do violence to . . . some sort of complicated clockwork mechanism, it looks like, though that would seem to provide for a pretty poor mystery.  Anyway, as we all know, all butlers are British, and all British people are exceedingly polite, so it only makes sense that he would say, “Sorry” after doing the deed.  Shirley, however, says “Sorry” when presented with C, the Operation.  And D, the simplest one, is of course Life.  Just as it should be, right?

(Pause for laughter)

Theoman quietly picked up three correct answers.  This is a kid that you never want to let be the banker.

I’m still in a bit of a gaming mood, so this week’s challenge won’t stray too far.  We’re going to be working with a set of things from one of the games we just finished talking about (and no, I’m not including Bridge).  However, here’s the trick: I’m not going to tell you which game.  You have to guess that for yourself.  I will provide a couple hints, though: remember that KYPC has already had quizzes on the murder weapons from Clue and the playing pieces from Monopoly.  Presumably the Wordsman isn’t that repetitive.  Also, let’s give me a little credit and assume that I’m not going to present you with something as boring as the array of colors or numbers featured in Sorry.

A. 医者　B. 運動選手　C. 会計士　D. 教師　E. 警察官　F. 芸術家

G. 販売員

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

A. 匠　B. 折　C. 丘　D. 近

E. 芹　F. 所　G. 祈　H. 兵

I’ll spare you some kind of bad pun about having an axe to grind.

Theoman is more perceptive than I am, because he thinks the axe radical actually looks like an axe.  And his memory’s not bad either: he remembered the “grass” radical in E and assumed (correctly) that this must be parsley, because parsley tastes pretty much the same as grass.  He may even have a sneaky sense of humor, but we can’t be sure–did he know that the left side of B was the “hand” radical when he said that it looked touchy-feely?  We’ll assume for his sake it was a joke, because his actual guess was incorrect.  There were two things on this quiz that you do with your hands: fold and pray.  B is the former.  And while H is not prayer, as he guessed, we do award him a bonus point for correctly using both “it’s” and “its” in the same almost-sentence.

But Theoman seems to have had an unfair advantage this week in that he was able to use his eyes.  A Fan, unable to see, tried to hear the kanji instead.  Did it work?  Well, he found Joe “Hill,” at least, at C.  I guess the labor movement lives on after all.  Can we give him partial credit for using a Simon and Garfunkel song (technically, just the lyrics, not the title) for A, which, as it turns out, means “artisan”?  Is “The Gambler” truly as ubiquitous and useless as parsley, E?  Did he go to Google for G not just because of the letter connection but because otherwise he didn’t have a “prayer” of coming up with a song containing that word?  Maybe, like his dog, A Fan’s sense of hearing is better than his sight after all.

Shirley felt powerless (haha) to deal with this quiz, but she forged valiantly forward regardless.  She was close on B, seeing “folding” and assuming that these were hands clasped in prayer.  And speaking of close, no one got that close to “close,” D.  She tried to bring one of her favorite techniques, innovative spelling, into play at F, but it didn’t quite pay off.  Unfortunately, standard spellings would have served her better.  The “P” here stands not for “Pholding” but for “Place.”  And last came H, which, between the three contestants, was identified as a prayer at a place on a hill.  Sounds appropriate for the lonely soldier, don’t you think?

Since it’s mid-January, I was going to test you folks on the ice radical, but weather.com tells me it’s currently 38 degrees, so it would all melt.  I guess we have to do water instead.  Here we have soup, pollution, sweat, an archaic way to say “you” (sort of like English “thou”), decide, run alongside, spend the night, and law.

A. 決　B. 法　C. 汚　D. 沿

E. 汁　F. 泊　G. 汗　H. 汝

A. 秋　B. 炭　C. 災　D. 畑

E. 灸　F. 淡　G. 毯　H. 滅

Over the holidays, Theoman and Shirley had a no-holds-barred, knock-down, drag-out, slugfest KYPC rematch.  Shirley had previously claimed victory in Battle Bug.  Would Theoman get his revenge in Battle Fire?

Round A: Our battle begins with a terribly disappointing tie.  Both sides guessed autumn.  Both sides were correct.  Come on, people!  This isn’t soccer!  Someone needs to win!

Round B: Finally, in the second round, we were able to separate the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, and the . . . uh, rugs from the fields.  Neither team was technically correct (the best kind of correct!), for expert kanji scholars will tell you that this character refers to coal.  But I’m not about to allow another tie on my watch.  We award the slight edge to Theoman, because rugs are found indoors, and this is where coal is typically burned (hey, you have to work with the tools you’re given).

Round C: Oh, come on!  Another tie?  This epic showdown is turning into a real DISASTER, no matter how much our participants seem to think C looks like coal.  We just did coal.  Get over it.

Round D: And now we come to the reverse of Battle Rug-Field.  Theoman wins this time, probably because he cheated by actually knowing that the right side of the character refers to a rice field.  But all’s fair in love, war, and bizarre internet guessing games.

Round E: Groan.  What am I going to do with you people?  Where’s the competitive spirit?  If you don’t stop putting down the same answers, then I will have no choice but to resort to MOXIBUSTION.  That’s right, MOXIBUSTION.  That’ll make you turn pale.

Round F: And speaking of PALE, here we are.  See, it has fire on the right, but the fierceness of the flames is mediated by the water on the left.  See?  Anyway, marginal victory to Shirley this time, with paleness being a common characteristic of the faces of those about to undergo her guess (at least as far as I know).

Round G: Not technically a tie, but hard to judge.  How much difference is there between “ruin” and “disaster”?  And, more importantly, which of them has more to do with RUGS?  Digging deep into my reserves of arbitrariness, I will say that C, the real “disaster” character, has three arrows on top, and G has three slashes on the left, so those are closer.  Advantage: Shirley.

Round H: And what are we left with in the end but the RUINS of a much-acclaimed conflict.  Shirley comes out victorious again, 3-2, but the battle is much closer this time.  If we only awarded points for truly correct answers, it would have been a tie.  Sigh.

But now for next week.  People keep telling me that some sort of “new” thing occurred recently.  The kanji for “new” looks like this:

新

The right side of this character is the “axe” radical.  So picture a shiny new axe while you’re trying to identify all these other things that are shiny and new.  Like . . . parsley?  Or . . . a hill.  Or a soldier, an artisan, a generic word for “place,” prayer, folding, or “close” (as in “near,” not as in “shut”).

A. 匠　B. 折　C. 丘　D. 近

E. 芹　F. 所　G. 祈　H. 兵