A. 亞利桑那 B. 奥克兰 C. 堪薩斯城 D. 聖地牙哥 E. 旧金山

F. 西雅圖 G. 圣路易斯 H. 丹佛

so theoman likes stream of consciousness huh well in that case i thought i would try writing todays post in a freer style that is not hampered by fascist punctuation or Okay, I can’t do this.  But even though it’s not great for blogging, the stream of consciousness strategy seems to pay off at a 50% rate for character guessing, which, as regular KYPC participants know, makes it pretty much the best game in town.  It nabbed him Denver (H) right off the bat–though I have a sneaking suspicion that his old friend, phonetic complexity, helped the stream along a bit in that case.  Anyway, he shouldn’t have needed it, as the characters for Denver are the same as their team.  Denver’s NFL team is the “Vermilion Buddhas,” right?  It also won him Seattle (F), which, appropriately enough for this Western quiz, starts with a character meaning “west.”  After that, however, the consciousness stream streamed off a bit.  Whatever the heck that means.

We hoped that when A Fan went out of town, he might have stopped in one of these places in order to improve his chances of guessing correctly.  It seems that he didn’t, however.  The character he identified as the Gateway Arch in A actually refers to Asia, so of course this is Arizona, which is . . . uh, a little closer to Asia than . . . well, about half of the others, anyway.  Then he went on to make a disparaging statement about the fine people of San Diego and a cryptic one about Oakland.  Then he actually got one right, so we had to do a double take and go back.  He probably thought he was kidding when he identified the third character in E as the hills of San Francisco, but this character actually means “mountain,” as in “old gold mountain,” which is what the Chinese decided to name the City by the Bay.  And as for the rest of his guesses . . . well, perhaps the less said the better.

We thank Shirley for her informative statements on the subject of knee replacement surgery and wish her a speedy recovery.

Finally came Dragon, who has never given up on the idea that I am trying to trick you all every week.  Her lack of trust led her to employ a sneaky strategy.  Fortunately for all that is good and pure in the world, this strategy backfired by . . . correctly identifying Arizona (A), Kansas City (C), and Saint Louis (G), giving her the best score of the week.  Hmm . . .

B is Oakland, where “the inside overcomes the orchid.”  D is San Diego, which is “a whale’s . . .”–No, I’m just kidding.  It’s the “holy land of fangs and elder brothers.”

And at last we swing back around to the East, where we can find teams in Buffalo, Dallas, Miami, New England, New York, New York again (no, I won’t list it twice), Philadelphia, and Washington.

A. 達拉斯 B. 新英格兰 C. 纽约 D. 水牛城

E. 費城 F. 迈阿密 G. 华盛顿

A. 亚特兰大 B. 卡羅來納 C. 休斯敦 D. 印第安纳波利斯

E. 傑克遜維爾 F. 新奥爾良 G. 坦帕湾 H. 田纳西

Hmm.  Not a lot of action this week.  I guess you folks aren’t all that well acquainted with fair Dixie, or its major cities, like Indianapolis (too bad A Fan wasn’t around to pounce on that one).  But you’ve got to work with the tools you’re given.

First off, I will point out that the answers appeared in the exact same order in which I listed them in English.  I . . . probably didn’t do that on purpose.

Phonetic complexity is a fickle mistress, but Theoman believes that once he’s staked a claim to a plot of land, there’s no sense trying to move off it, even when the dust storms hit (perhaps he also believes that one should not mix metaphors).  This time, however, he may have scraped together just enough to make it through winter.  He immediately recognized D as Indianapolis, the Crossroads of America, because it has so much random junk in it: a seal (like, the kind you put on letters, not the kind that plays with a beach ball at the zoo), tranquility, waves . . . waves?  We’re 600 miles from the ocean!  He also promptly spotted Tennessee, recognizing its fertile rice fields (1st character) and the fact that it is the farthest west (3rd character) of any of these, at least if you go to its furthest western point.  He tried for the hat trick, but C, unfortunately, is Houston.  He should have quit and taken a break (1st character) while he was ahead.

Dragon’s heart, on the other hand, will reside forever in the Big Easy.  She correctly identified F, and for some reason she decided to credit the third character, instead of the first one, which means “new.”  But accuracy isn’t important.  Clearly her memories are of staring out the window (see?  It’s a window!  But not really) of her French Quarter apartment, looking down at all the people below in a high state of “celebration” (the little exes).  For some reason, she will ever long for the French Quarter–for quarters in general, really.  She misses them so.

Okay, so I guess I need to pump a little excitement into this crowd.  Let’s take on the wild frontier!  Go west, young (or old) man (or woman)!  To Arizona, Denver, Kansas City, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Seattle, or wherever the wind may carry you!

A. 亞利桑那 B. 奥克兰 C. 堪薩斯城 D. 聖地牙哥 E. 旧金山

F. 西雅圖 G. 圣路易斯 H. 丹佛

A. 克里夫蘭 B. 格林贝 C. 芝加哥 D. 辛辛那提 E. 底特律

F. 巴爾的摩 G. 匹兹堡 H. 明尼蘇達

This feature seems to grow more and more dangerously close to Tuesday every week, but we’ll do our best to prevent that, since we’ve already got a Tuesday thing, and one where it actually matters what day it’s on to boot.  The line, as they say, must be drawn here!

One purpose of KYPC, it seems, is to discover whether or not it is worthwhile to trust one’s irrational impulses.  Unfortunately, the results have been inconclusive.  I am sure that there have been numerous occasions on which these baseless picks have paid off, but unfortunately for Theoman, his was not one of them.  But maybe he only thought it was baseless.  Maybe he somehow knew that that character at the end meant “to chafe,” and, realizing the winter was coming, thought of the dry skin problems that wreak havoc on those who dwell so far north.  Except . . . that doesn’t make much sense either, because F is Baltimore, which, as A Fan noted, is further south than the Mason-Dixon line (though it’s not the furthest south on this list).  In any case, he can find his native Minnesota at H, where it is referred to by a strangely religious-sounding name, with characters meaning “nun” and “rebirth.”  Perhaps this is because, as A Fan would be quick to point out, the Vikings don’t have a prayer of making the playoffs this year.

You might think that Shirley would have better odds by taking shots at all eight cities instead of just one, but her results were no better than Theoman’s.  We enjoyed her imagining of the first two characters in D as the lampposts turning back on in Detroit, but if she had thought a little longer she might have put more weight with the fact that they were the same character and looked for a city that starts with the same sound twice: D is Cincinnati.  E is Detroit, and reality is much darker than Shirley’s proposed bright future: the first character there means, roughly, “rock bottom.”

But who cares about scores?  The fun’s in the guessing.  So we wish Shirley the best of luck with her surgery anyway.

A Fan, as usual, made sure we were all up to date on which teams he likes and which he does not.  He did manage to get one correct answer, for even though Baltimore is only “the North” by NFL standards, it’s not so far out there that it can’t be identified.  Still, we would like to suggest that he pull out a map and compare Baltimore, which he describes as being not the North, and Cincinnati, which he calls barely the North.  He might be surprised.  His beloved Chicago is, appropriately enough, at C (though it would have been equally appropriate for Cleveland or Cincinnati), where the first character (“lawn”) depicts the Midway of which the Bears are Monsters.  His objects of grudging respect are at B (Green Bay) and G (Pittsburgh).  A, of course, is actually a depiction of Red Right 88, with the first character being Quarterback Brian Sipe, the last character Tight End Ozzie Newsome (who is so obviously covered!), the next-to-last a wide-open Dave Logan, and the second character poor, beat-up Don Cockroft, lying on the ground (also, you forgot “The Fumble”).

In conclusion, Ohio is a terrible place to try to watch NFL games.

But forget Ohio.  It’s starting to get cold.  Let’s go somewhere warmer . . . say, the South?  Look for Atlanta, Carolina, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, and Tennessee.

A. 亚特兰大 B. 卡羅來納 C. 休斯敦 D. 印第安纳波利斯

E. 傑克遜維爾 F. 新奥爾良 G. 坦帕湾 H. 田纳西

A. 丸芝努止怒　B. 方農呂應　C. 万遅所濃　D. 仕曳八阿則沼

E. 安陀武受

Let’s start with Dragon this time, because . . . hey, why not?

Clearly Dragon’s entire knowledge of the colonial period (and perhaps all of U.S. history) is based on 1776.  There’s nothing wrong with this; we at the Wordsman fully support the policy of defining history through fiction.  On the other hand, it’s apparently not a good policy for getting your KYPC guesses in line.  D is depressing?  Well, I suppose there’s a swamp in there at the end, but it’s not Washington.  A is obnoxious?  It does end with “anger,” true, but the character right before that means “stop,” and wouldn’t “stopping anger” be the opposite of obnox . . . ion?  E’s not sulking; that first character means it is tranquility itself, though the third character means it is also a warrior.

Her two random guesses, however, were perfectly correct.  B, the square farm responding to the second half of a bathtub, is Monroe, and C, the ten thousand slow, thick locations, is Madison.  Maybe if she paid more attention in history class, she would have known that instead of having to simply pull it out of thin air.

Shirley clearly did pay attention in history class, because she at least knew that Washington comes first, at A.  She also got Monroe and Madison right, despite that fact that they (almost! look closely!) start with the same character.  And she knows that we all like Jefferson at D even if there’s not all that much to like.  I mean, look at it.  Pulling?  The number eight?  A nook or corner?  Not very exciting, really.  She even got Adams at E, a connection not made by every participant, though every participant did correctly identify him as being obnoxious or prickly.

A Fan, of course, had to get technical.  You can’t get away with anything in this family.  I mean blog.  That’s right.  Blog.  Anyway, shame on me for forgetting such legendary founders as Elias Boudinot or Nathaniel Gorham, because clearly the United States under the Articles of Confederation are something to be celebrated rather than forgotten.  His identification of A with Adams-Morgan is peculiar, because as I recall the subway system in Washington D.C. is relatively easy to understand, unlike in some other places (see: New York City).  Then again, if that’s what he thought it looked like, maybe he should have guessed Washington, because that would have been correct.  At least he knows good high-stepping when he sees it, and can tell the difference between the staid dignity of Washington University in St. Louis and the madcap antics of University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Unfortunately, none of these insights led him to correct answers.

Theoman got most of them, though Jefferson is the longest not because of the “f” but because of the “j” (actually, it is debatable whether or not Japanese in the time when man’yogana were being used had an “f” sound, but we don’t have to get into that).  His only stumble was over Madison and Monroe.  Are they really that different?  You can ask Shirley, I suppose.

But now it’s time for something new.  Enough history.  Are you ready for some FOOTBALL??? That’s right, it’s pigskin season, the perfect time to do a quiz on football teams . . .

Oh.  You say we already did that?  Hmm . . .

I know!  We’ll do a quiz on football team locations rather than names.  Now, most U.S. geographical locations would be written in Japanese with katakana, which would be boring and way too easy for Theoman.  We could do them in man’yogana again, but I think it’s time to switch things up.  This week’s KYPC challenge will be in . . . Chinese!  Where’s your advantage now, Theoman?  The principle is similar to man’yogana; the characters are chosen based on their phonetic (sound) similarity rather than their meaning.  The main difference is that, because Chinese has actually been used within the last millennium, these names might actually mean something to someone.  And by “someone,” I mean at least several hundred million people.

First up, the North.  Look for Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota, and Pittsburgh.

A. 克里夫蘭 B. 格林贝 C. 芝加哥 D. 辛辛那提 E. 底特律

F. 巴爾的摩 G. 匹兹堡 H. 明尼蘇達

A. 位理英牟　B. 閉奴利怡　C. 自与於士　D. 愛梨社倍寸

E. 榎騰和足等

Hoo boy.  Theoman uses analysis of interlinguistic phonetic complexity to come up with his answers.  I think that’s a bit over all of our heads.  I’ll just give him a grade: 2/5.  Not bad.  Maybe if we understood all this technical business, we’d be better at stuff, too.

A Fan talked about movies instead, which I think I should have an easier time understanding.  That is, until he starts talking about movies I’ve never seen.  Maybe he should have stuck to more familiar titles, because then he might have gotten some answers right.  He did surpass Theoman in one area, correctly picking Elizabeth over Mary as the most common name for English queens (apparently I failed to predict any controversy over this Mary business).  In conclusion, I think Bad Dumbledore probably would have made a pretty good William the Conqueror because his primary skill is yelling, but I doubt he could have matched Laurie’s George IV.

Shirley finally provided an accurate count of all these various rulers, though nobody seemed to have any trouble with any of the boys.  Soldiers do tend to hog all the attention, but I don’t see what her problem is with the color orange.  Anyway, she clearly knows her monarchs.  She quickly spotted William, the first (Norman) King of England in the first spot, A.  Not content to rest on her laurels there, she also correctly identified C as George and E as Edward (a classic A Fan pick, though not this week. And I suppose it could have been Elizabeth as well).  If anyone out there wants to know more about English kings and queens, I suggest you talk to Shirley.  The real ones, that is.  A Fan is still the expert on their semi-fictional portrayals.

Elizabeth proved to be the most elusive of the rulers this time around, in part because Theoman wasn’t even looking for her.  Both A (William) and B (Henry) were identified by one contestant as looking “the most feminine.”  The second character in B does contain a component meaning “woman,” so I guess there’s some basis to that (Sorry, Hal).  Queen Bess herself is hiding out at D, emphasizing her stalwart defense (final character) of noble Albion and perhaps exaggerating her prowess as a lover (first character).

Also, I’d like to apologize to Colin Firth on Dragon’s behalf because she said he looked like D.  He didn’t deserve that.

So you like heads of state, eh?  I’ll give you heads of state.  Let’s try it again on the west side of the ol’ pond.  We’re not as big on repetition here in the colonies, so I’m giving you the names of the first five presidents.

A. 丸芝努止怒　B. 方農呂應　C. 万遅所濃　D. 仕曳八阿則沼

E. 安陀武受

A. 代衣鼻特　B. 之意藤憶留　C. 子也阿里伊　D. 安弥義依流

I’m posting late again, and it looks like this time the delay didn’t even give anyone the chance to get in a last-second submission.  I will blame the slowness on . . . solar flares.  Or wait, no: a syzygy.  That makes sense.

As penance, I will go through people’s answers in reverse order, because I’m pretending that that’s more difficult for some reason.  Dragon cleverly sidestepped the trap and did not guess that A was Abigail, even though the first character looks a little bit like a collapsing capital “A.”  She is also roughly correct in her guess of how I was rendering her name with Japanese syllables; in this case, “Abigail” becomes abigeeru.  Unfortunately, that’s where her correctness streak ended, because Abigail is actually located at . . . oh wait, she said D.  That’s correct.  Good job.  Now, man’yogana were not intended to be used for their meaning, but if they were, then the name abigeeru here would mean something like “a current of all-the-more restful righteousness and dependency.”

Shirley was half right on her masculine/feminine guesses; A and B are the male names here, and C and D the female.  She may be disappointed that she wasn’t able to pick out her own name, but she shouldn’t be too upset, as it’s one she herself described as lovely, impressive, and charming: C.  In fact, maybe that was what she really intended all along, but modesty forced her to say that she thought this combination of positive attributes belonged to someone else.  Our Japanese rendering of “Shirley” is shiyaarii, which is more complicated than everyone thought it was because we have to use two syllables, shi and ya, to approximate the sound sha.  Of course, the system of man’yogana is over 1300 years old, and it would be silly to assume that all the sounds were pronounced exactly the same back then as the syllables they are associated with today.  For example, what is now sa could very well have been sha back then.  But since we can’t know for sure what it sounded like (recording technology was still relatively primitive in the 700’s), we’ll just go with this.

Shirley’s name is rather more difficult to give a meaningless meaning to, since it involves more obscure characters, but it’s something like “children doth be in a nook about 2.5 miles from Italy.”

We wish that A Fan would be sorry after he made that regrettable pun, but unfortunately his guess was correct: A is deebido, or David.  He is “changing into clothes specially designed to accommodate his nose.”

And now it seems that Theoman finally knows everyone else’s pain, not having the first clue what to do here.  His presumed name is, of course, located at B, and is read (in our modern way) as shiodooru.  He is “fastening together recollections of these ideas of wisteria.”  Sounds very Proustian.

Now that that painful ordeal is behind us, let’s try it again.  Since Shirley seems to be so fascinated with English kings, let’s try picking out some of their names.  Listed below are the four most common names used by the Kings of England, and the one most common name used by Queens of England.  And we’re talking post-Norman Invasion, here, because I don’t know how to pronounce “Æthelberht,” let alone write it in centuries-old Japanese.

A. 位理英牟　B. 閉奴利怡　C. 自与於士　D. 愛梨社倍寸

E. 榎騰和足等

A. 明智光秀　B. 石田三成　C. 織田信長　D. 徳川家康　E. 豊臣秀吉

Well, Theoman got them all right again.  However, my guess is that this one actually required a little guesswork and figuring out on his part, so he may be awarded a modicum of praise.

COMMENCE GOLF CLAP.

CLAP.  CLAP.  CLAP.

CEASE GOLF CLAP.

Anyway, on to A Fan, who for some strange reason doubts the historical accuracy of video games.  What about Space Invaders?  That actually happened, didn’t it?  Anyway, he picked A to be Tokugawa because he thought it looked like a winner.  I think the person who had this name must have thought so too, because he believed that he could rule Japan.  History, however, had other plans.  A is the backstabbing Akechi Mitsuhide.  Also, his identification of kamikaze as a significant force in Japanese history (and also as having nothing to do with this period) is correct: this “divine wind” was a typhoon that blew away the invading Mongol fleet in the late 13th century.  D is not Toyotomi, nor Toyota, but we’ll give partial credit because it does start with ‘To.”  Finally, A Fan chose to rely on the movies, which, unlike video games, are 100% historically accurate, all the time, every time.  Just to be clear: none of these are Tom Cruise, and, like the kamikaze, “The Last Samurai” is set in a period far distant from the one currently under discussion (though it was roughly 300 years later instead of 300 years earlier).

Fortunately, Dragon stood up to defend video games and their impeccable historical accuracy.  She conclusively proved that they get all the facts right by getting A right . . . err, wait, no, she didn’t.  Well surely B . . . nope.  How about C . . . looks like not (though I think we can all agree that, had one been available at the time, Tokugawa Ieyasu would have chosen to wield a spear that also fires cannonballs, shoots lasers, and serves as a flamethrower).  Aha!  E!  She got E correct!  It’s Toyotomi Hideyoshi.  This conclusively proves that Samurai Warriors–and, by extension, video games in general–is precisely 20% historically accurate.

Last came Shirley, who put her knowledge of European history and innovative spelling techniques to work in solving the puzzle.  And . . . she got roughly the same results as Dragon, who based her guesses on the video game.  Oh well.  Shirley correctly picked out Ishida Mitsunari as B; the loserest-looking characters for the member of the list most famous for being a loser.  She also got two out of three in her picking A, C, and D as the 3 unifiers, though she jumbled them up a bit and also tossed in Akechi Mitsuhide, who simply believed that he had a chance to be a unifier.  But hey: Hideyoshi thought he was destined to conquer Korea, China, and India.  These folks aren’t exactly boasting sanity in spades, here.

Now, over the years (hey, it’s been more than one year!), there are several topics I’ve considered for KYPC but had to drop because the answers would all be written in katakana, the series of phonetic characters often used to represent non-Japanese names and other words.  For one thing, this would be unfair–well, more unfair than usual–since Theoman can handle them swimmingly and I think Dragon may know a few.  For another, using characters with no supposed “meaning” component would defeat the purpose of the exercise, right?  But I think after 67 weeks we’ve pretty well proved that these self-contained “meanings” are at best obscure.

Way way back, before things like katakana and hiragana were developed, the Japanese had nothing but Chinese characters to use to write words.  There was a system of kanji that were used essentially the same way that katakana are used today (except that they could be used for pretty much any word instead of a specific subset of words); these were called man’yogana.  They’re no longer used, of course, but I figure: why should that stop us?  So let’s try it.  The first experiment in Know Your (Really Phonetic But They Look Like) Picture Characters will be simple: common names.  I have selected the names “Shirley” and “Theodore” for obvious reasons, and then at random I decided to toss in “David” and “Abigail.”  Choose whichever one of these names appeals to you most, for whatever reason, and try to locate it.

A. 代衣鼻特　B. 之意藤憶留　C. 子也阿里伊　D. 安弥義依流

A. 青懸巣　B. 鰭条　C. 高麗鶯　D. 国民　E. 真旗魚　F. 勇士

Theoman once again has stumbled into one of the classic blunders of kanji learning.  He saw the second character in F and immediately thought, “Aha!  I recognize that character!  It means ‘earth!'”  However, he was dead wrong.  ‘Earth’ is a completely different character, which looks like this:

土

See?  Here, I’ll put them next to each other so you can see the obvious differences:

土　士

See?  Totally different, aren’t they?  See how on one the upper crossbar is shorter than the base and on the other it’s longer?  That’s a difference that’s just painfully easy to recognize, don’t you think?  And, since these two kanji are so radically different, it would make perfect sense for them to have entirely unrelated meanings, right?  For example, the one on the left means ‘earth’ and the one on the right means ‘person,’ generally used for people with some significant societal function like scholars, doctors, warriors, etc.  And thus we see that Theoman, in addition to making one of the classic kanji blunders, has also made one of the classic KYPC un-blunders, for while F has nothing at all to do with ‘earth,’ it is indeed the Atlanta Braves.  His identification of D as the Washington Nationals is, as he said, quite boringly correct, though he slipped up a bit on A, identifying the first character as being a color but not paying quite enough attention to which color it is.

Shirley was hoping for a sweep after she did so well on last week’s west coast road trip, but it wasn’t meant to be.  Disturbing D is not the Yankees but the Nationals, though given Shirley’s views on congress, perhaps this fits just as well.  F is not the Red Sox, but kudos to her for cheering them on against the Evil Empire.  Damn those Yankees for using their filthy money to give huge contracts to those two free agents, Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, last winter.  Hey, wait a second . . . Interestingly enough, she picked B as the Mets because it’s so short, and B is in fact one of the three MLB teams to be only four letters long.  It’s just not the Mets.  B is the Tampa Bay [Devil] Rays, with their stupid name and their awful stadium, about which A Fan likes to make incomprehensible French (?) puns.  Finally, I find it curious that Shirley thought E looked cold, because E is the Florida Marlins, who play in Miami (not cold) and have a fine stadium, as far as I know, except that they forgot to put fans in it.

Speaking of missing fans, we were delighted to see A Fan get in under the wire this week, just as he was presumably delighted to see that the wire had been moved back about 12 hours due to laziness unforeseeable circumstances.  He was so excited, in fact, that he posted four times.  I like the enthusiasm, even though he didn’t get any answers correct.  A Fan may not have much of a batting average, but he always plays with effort, diving for those balls he just misses up the middle and sliding headfirst into first base.  We have therefore dubbed him the “Nick Punto of KYPC.”

A Fan appears to judge baseball teams based almost entirely on the degree to which they are located in New York City.  Thus the Yankees and Mets are irredeemable, and the Phillies, only a couple hours away, are in dangerous territory.  We salute him for being the only contestant to mention the once-great Baltimore Orioles, who are not at F but are actually in the quiz; you’ll find them at C.

Oh yes, to get back to A, just in case you haven’t figured it out, these are not the Boston Red Sox but the Toronto Blue Jays.  Go Bautista!

Okay.  By this point, I’m sure you’re sick of baseball.  Heck, it’s August, so everyone who doesn’t live in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit, Dallas, Phoenix, or San Francisco has every right to be sick of baseball.  Let’s find something new to talk about.  Let’s see . . . weather?  No, we already did that.  I know!  We’ll talk about famous warlords.  That’s something people make small talk about, right?

After the power of the shogunate collapsed in the mid-15th century, Japan was essentially ruled by daimyo, feudal lords who constantly battled their neighbors for territory.  Let’s learn about a few of the more famous ones from the end of the Warring States Period (in other words, the latter half of the 16th century).  In this period we have the Three Unifiers: first was Oda Nobunaga, who conquered much of central Japan and seemed poised to take the rest until he was betrayed and killed by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide.  Next came Nobunaga’s vassal, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who defeated Mitsuhide and took over where his former master left off, taking over all of Japan but dying before he could pass it on to his young son.  Last came Tokugawa Ieyasu, who took control of Japan for good when he defeated his rival, Ishida Mitsunari, at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600.  See if you can sort out these five.

A. 明智光秀　B. 石田三成　C. 織田信長　D. 徳川家康　E. 豊臣秀吉

A. 運動選手　B. 警備官　C. 神父　D. 天使　E. 船乗り　F. ペテン師

Ah, poor Theoman.  He blundered into an age-old trap: assuming that katakana are your friends.  Yes, most of the time, these angular characters are simply a funny way of writing English words, but every once in a while you stumble across one of more arcane origins.  Case in point: even I don’t know what the peten in F’s petenshi means, but I doubt it’s “pattern.”  This tricksiness seems entirely appropriate for F, the ever-capricious Brook–I mean, Los Angeles Dodgers.

Shirley struggled a bit against the Central Division last week, and apparently she doesn’t follow the West, so she probably had a lot of difficulty this time around.  Let’s see . . . first guess, wrong (though she can perhaps take comfort in having made the same mistake as the contestant who actually knows some Japanese); second guess, wrong; third guess, wrong; fourth guess . . . correct?  Yes, C is the San Diego Padres (literally “god father(s)”).  Okay, so she got one, but anybody can get one.  I bet she missed on her next . . . nope, D is The The Angels Angels of Anaheim.  Alright, alright, but these streaks usually die out eventually . . . or not.  Shirley finished strong this week, matching all her final three guesses, for E is the Seattle Mariners.  I guess she knows the West better than she thought.

A Fan’s slate wasn’t quite as impressive, although he did correctly identified those pesky Dodgers, the one that threw both of his fellow competitors.  Our unguessed teams this week were A, the Oakland Athletics, and B, the Texas Rangers.

Okay, Eastern division: Blue Jays, Orioles, Rays, Red Sox, Yankees (AL), Braves, Marlins, Mets, Nationals, Phillies (NL).  You know the drill.

A. 青懸巣　B. 鰭条　C. 高麗鶯　D. 国民　E. 真旗魚　F. 勇士

A. 王族　B. 白足袋　C. 醸造者　D. 虎　E. 双子　F. 幼獣

Heeeey, batterbatterbatter su-wing batterbatter!

It looks like Theoman has decided to take a break from being right all the time–his identification of A as the Pittsburgh Pirates is incorrect, and I think I know how he came about it.  That second character in A is read zoku, as is the second character in the word for pirate, kaizoku.  That “zoku,” however, means “burglar” or “robber,” whereas the one in A means “family” or “tribe.”  And since the character before it means “king,” these are, in fact, the Kansas City Royals.  I suppose Theoman gets half-credit for identifying them as an equally woebegone team.  Actually, now that I think about it, there are a large number of woebegone teams on this list, either perennially or currently.  Such is the fate of the Central.

His second guess (B=White Sox) is rather boringly correct.  His pick of Cubs for E, however, was a bit off the mark.  Unfortunately for him, the critical character in this compound is not the second but the first, which means “two” or “double.”  Thus at E we recognize the Minnesota Twins, who have won more World Series titles in the past 25 years than the rest of the teams on this list put together.

A Fan struck out in his first at-bat, guessing Astros, Brewers, Cardinals, though we’ll call one of those a foul ball rather than a straight strike; he was close on the Milwaukee Brewers, who find themselves at C.  His second at-bat was similar, though unlike the Reds and Pirates, the Cubs are at least found somewhere on this list.

That brought up Shirley, who was one off on the White Sox and one off on the Brewers, though Milwaukee isn’t that far from Minneapolis, so she was close in more ways than one.  I’ll take her calling the Twins the Cardinals as a compliment.  Her comments on her guess of the Indians could probably equally apply to the Indians’ season itself this year, but F is, in fact, those poor, poor Cubs, who have not been correctly guessed on KYPC in 103 years (true story).

And, to A Fan’s undoubted consternation, we are forced to reveal that D is the DEtroit Tigers.

But now it’s time to go west, young man (or whatever particular combination of age and gender you may happen to be).  The Baseball Team Identification Challenge continues with the West Division, and you’re in luck: there aren’t as many teams out there.  Pick from the Angels, Athletics, Mariners, Rangers (from the AL) or the Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Rockies (from the NL).

A. 運動選手　B. 警備官　C. 神父　D. 天使　E. 船乗り　F. ペテン師