On Day Three, things began to go bad
They told Houston a problem was had
All that could go wrong did
Even dropping off grid
But they made it–now isn’t that rad?
Event: Apollo 13 returns safely to Earth
Year: 1970
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
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“Besides,” Peter added, “who could sleep when they had just learned that there are magic songs that can control people’s minds?”
“Is that sarcasm?”
“It’s . . . not entirely sarcasm.”
While he slept on the fold-out couch in his parents’ living room, Peter had had a dream. He dreamt that he was in Paris. The setting of the dream was quite clearly the alleyway behind his old dorm, but for some reason in the dream he thought—no, he knew that it was Paris. He was talking to David, who had been his friend in the third grade and whom he had never seen since. David left, and all of a sudden Peter realized that he had something very important to tell him, so he ran after him. While he ran, someone said, “Look out! There’s a fire!” Peter turned, and saw smoke in the distance, and he immediately thought, That’s not Uncle Jim’s house. (Naturally, there was no sensible reason for Peter to think that Uncle Jim’s house would be on fire. Nor was there any reason for him to think that he had an uncle named Jim.) Peter passed the Eiffel Tower, which had a large clock on it. The clock read 3:57 AM. Then Big Ben started ringing, and Peter thought, I bet I’m about to wake up. Then he ran for a while longer. Then he woke up.
When he had collected his thoughts, Peter decided that, after all the interesting things that had happened to him the day before, it was really stupid of him to have had a dream like that.
“So are you going to be carrying that around all the time now?” the woman asked, pointing to the flute—out of its case, already assembled—in his right hand.
Peter spun the flute absent-mindedly. “You never know when you’re going to need to summon the squirrels of Simon Park to your aid.”
“Now that was sarcasm.”
“Yes. One hundred percent.”
“So . . . what’s Simon Park like, anyway?” The woman cast a reflexive glance toward the stairs.
Peter was temporarily torn. Reassure her by telling the truth? Or would the knowledge that the world above ground wasn’t so hot either break her mentally?
“It’s a park,” he said with a shrug. Ever the strategic liar.
She nodded. “It’s just a little odd that I’m called ‘The Old Woman of Simon Park Station’ and I’ve never even seen Simon Park.”
He chuckled. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
“You’re sealed in a subway station by an invisible, inexplicable force, you assault and then teach strange musical hypnosis techniques to strangers, and that’s what you think is odd?”
The woman smiled. It was good to talk to someone. Not to pitch him on a quest or try to explain herself: just to talk. But talk wasn’t going to get her out of there. “Don’t forget: I eat mystery muffins. Odd is in the eye of the beholder. Now did you come here to offer me treats and make small talk or did you come to discuss business?”
“Both.” Peter looked at the ground, hesitated, and then sat down anyway. He was still wearing the grungy clothes he had changed into to go home for dinner: no great loss. “When I start a new job, I like to find out what I’ll be doing as soon as possible.”
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To compete with his rivals in Spain
Past the ‘Lantic James One spread his reign
By his say, ‘cross the Pond
A new colony dawned
But ‘twould cause his successors some pain
Event: The Virginia Company of London, which would later establish the Jamestown Settlement, is established by royal charter
Year: 1606
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Company
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Is it still Monday? Excellent.
We’re going to mix it up a little and go choice by choice this time rather than person by person. Why? Because I said so, that’s why.
A is, perhaps, either waffles, Hot and Sour Soup, or ice cream. Seems to have kind of a desserty feel, except for the Hot and Sour Soup. Analysis of the meanings of the characters gives us: a lawn, a gentleman (sorry, Theoman, it’s the other one again. “Earth” is short on top and long on the bottom), something having to do with bugs, and something having to do with rice. Clearly this is ice cream: the gentleman is lounging on his lawn, swatting lazily at bugs, and eating ice cream . . . but, since he’s lactose intolerant, it’s actually rice cream. See how logical that was? Also, A Fan said it was ice cream, and he gave the best reason.
What’s that, lovely assistant? A is actually “cheesecake”? I don’t even know what I’m talking about? Oh dear . . . sorry, A Fan. I fought for ya. Although I suppose I did say it was desserty.
Well, let’s see if we have better luck with B, a mix of ice cream, potstickers, and tilapia. This particular combination can only mean that we are on Iron Chef, where Tilapia Potsticker Ice Cream is not only a popular creation, it was even the secret ingredient once (I’m pretty sure that’s true). Now, as we all know, the coolest Iron Chef was Chen Ken’ichi, who was Iron Chef Chinese, which means that B must be the most Chinese-sounding of the answers. Obviously, then, this is waffles. Just kidding. It’s Hot and Sour Soup. See? That first character means sour, and the last one means soup, because it’s water standing next to the sun. That’s how I make soup at least.
My lovely assistant confirms that this time I’m actually right, so let’s move on.
In C, Theoman thinks he sees water. In fact, he sees it not once, not twice, but thrice. Clearly there’s a whole lot of water going on here, as is reflected in the answers of tilapia, tilapia, and Hot and Sour Soup. But do you know what’s even more watery than water? That’s right: ice! Ice is solid water, and as everyone knows, the solid versions of things are always denser than the liquid ones, so this is ice cream. Shirley’s little man had enough sense to give up on fishing and go grab a cone instead.
D is short, sweet, dense, and shaped like a waffle iron (?). A careful analysis of the characters reveals one meaning “pot” and one meaning “to stick.” As I have no idea how to interpret this, I will move on to E.
While I agree with Shirley that E has a somewhat cold feel, it’s Theoman and A Fan who are on the right track this time around. If there’s a better way to represent the prototypical sandwich than that first character there, I don’t wanna hear it. And those latter characters are just thrown in for fun, I guess. For the coldness, presumably, since sandwiches can be cold . . . or hot (did we have an argument about this in Scattergories once?)
In the name of sanity, I should also point out that the first character in E is the number three, which is pronounced “san.”
Theoman has the best justification for F, based on his use of the word “pointy,” but it’s not quite enough. Nor was the process of elimination successful. Nope, here we have St. Peter’s fish, one of the hundred or so species called tilapia. In Theoman’s defense, it could very well end up in a bowl with a spoon. In Shirley’s, you could maybe even eat it covered with syrup, though personally I like it with white pepper and just a little bit of soy sauce.
And, last but not least, we have the cheesecake sandwich. Man, those French really know how to cook. Sadly, to the detriment of our tongues but the benefit of all our arteries, there is no such thing as a cheesecake sandwich. There is, however, such a thing as a waffle, so life isn’t all bad.
And now for this week we have characters from the Harry Potter series. Included in this list are Ron Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore, and Severus Snape. Or, for those less familiar with the series, we have the Loyal Sidekick, the Pretty One, the Smart One, the Hero, the Villain, the Old Wise Guy, and the Mean Teacher.
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Peter’s mom had no objection to him spending the night, because it is the secret goal of every mother to get her children to spend as many of their hours as possible under her roof. As soon as dinner was over, she set about fixing up the living room couch for him. Peter’s old room had been converted into what his father called a “study,” which was basically code for “book storage.” His father owned more books than some small libraries; storing them was a never-ending, Sisyphean battle. His mother—who had nothing against books, per se—would always try to get rid of some at garage sales, but Dad would always snatch them up before anyone else could get their hands on them (really, it was a doomed strategy to begin with, because the average garage sale patron would have no interest in the kind of books he tended to collect).
“But you haven’t read that one in thirty years!” Mom would cry. Dad would just give her a look to say that she had completely missed the point.
Peter’s sleeping in the living room immediately after dinner did not present a problem either. Mr. and Mrs. Hamlin were both believers in the “Early to bed, early to rise” system, and it had ended up being a late meal anyway. Dizzy’s schedule was considerably more irregular, but she was going out with her friends. She did not go out directly, though.
“You lied to Mom.”
Peter was lying on the couch, scratching Cicero, who was making a rare appearance. Earlier in the day he would have been in no mood for this kind of banter, but dinner had refreshed him. “What do you think I lied about?”
“Any number of things.” Dizzy was leaning on the back of the couch; her preposterous amount of hair was draped down onto it. A casual flick of her head would easily have sent Cicero scampering back to the safety of the basement. It might even have knocked Peter clean off the couch. “Your saying that you were late to dinner because you were stuck at work didn’t have a lot of verisimilitude. But I’m talking specifically about why you borrowed her flute.”
The flute had not been a subject of major inquiry at the dinner table. Mom had started off by telling him that he looked like he wasn’t eating or sleeping enough (and, on this particular occasion, she was quite right). Then she had demanded—politely, of course—an explanation for his lateness. Much later on, and quite casually, she had inquired regarding the whereabouts of her flute. Equally casually, Peter had responded that he felt the sudden urge to try playing again, and that he was considering taking lessons, and that he had borrowed the flute to practice a little, so as not to completely embarrass himself in front of a new teacher.
“Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with lying to your parents,” continued Inspector Dizzy. “I certainly do it all the time. It’s how the system works. But I don’t think it’s fair to let you go around thinking that you’re actually getting away with it.”
“Mom seemed to take me at my word.”
“She’s your mother. It’s her job. She’s been pretending to take you seriously since before you knew how to talk. I don’t think she believed you any more than I did. She just was too polite to say anything about it.”
“Whereas you, clearly, are not.”
“No such thing as politeness between siblings.”
“Nor honor among thieves.” The average person, when caught in a lie, thinks he has two options: cover it up with another lie, or give up and tell the truth. A cleverer person knows about option three: cover up the lie with truth. “I needed the flute to help a friend.” Okay, so the “friend” part may have been a bit of a stretch, but the rest was true.
The mountain of hair shifted. Cicero skedaddled. “What kind of friend could you help by playing the flute for him?”
Peter decided not to comment on the “him.” “So I’m really that awful, huh?”
“I never said that.”
This was true. In all their years of good-natured (well, largely good-natured) sibling rivalry, Dizzy had never once insulted his musical talent. Peter’s decision to give up on the flute was more about what people didn’t say than what they did.
Rather than thank his sister for her years of silent support—or at least, years of not actively trying to sabotage his confidence—he decided to go with another obscuring truth: “Did I say anything about playing it?”
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April Fool’s! You were expecting this on Monday, weren’t you? And you thought that This Day in History would appear on Wednesday, because that’s what I said it would do from now on. Boy, I sure fooled you! (By the way, this is totally something I had planned entirely in advance, and not at all an excuse I am making up on the spot to justify a rather large amount of forgetfulness on my part. And hey, only one person responded to last week’s challenge, so I’m not the only forgetful one around here. But I’m sure you all probably had better reasons for not getting to it than I do for not doing my job.)
Ahem. Anyway, as a continuation of the “joke,” TDiH may continue to appear on Tuesdays for the rest of the month. KYPC should hopefully go back to Mondays, though. Hopefully.
But that’s enough of bureaucracy. Let’s get to the characters. Since Theoman was the only one to attempt the challenge this week, we will get to focus on him, taking apart every one of his errors in excruciating detail. No, no, Theoman, you don’t have to thank me.
Theoman actually recognized a character in A. Unfortunately, he recognized the wrong one. While a greater knowledge of Chinese geography may have helped him to interpret the meaning of the “north” there, the clues I provided should have been enough to get him there if he knew the second one. He may have recognized it as also appearing in Tokyo, but I don’t think he recalled its meaning: capital. That’s right, this is Beijing, which is in fact located in northern China, for what little good that did you. In the future, you can probably find maps of China that don’t have characters on them, but man, Google is so much easier.
Guangzhou and Hong Kong have been reversed (in reality they are B and C, respectively). So Theoman was close on these two. And, for that matter, Guangzhou and Hong Kong are themselves pretty close to each other (unlike you participants, I have no need to submit to any kind of map taboos). But he came even closer on the next one. Defying all logic, his attempt to make an interlingual pun was entirely successful: D is Shanghai (literally, it is “above the sea”). Based on this success, I hope he continues to use this sort of strategy in the future; even if it’s not correct (which it probably won’t be), it should be good for laughs.
His correct identification of F as Tianjin, on the other hand, was entirely logical and therefore boring. That first character, meaning “sky” or “heaven,” is pronounced “ten” in Japanese and “tian” in Chinese. But, as I’m sure you all can guess, this strategy won’t save you all the time. For example, if we used the more standard Japanese pronunciations of the characters in A (Beijing), it would come out sounding something like “hokkyou.” But, because this is a famous place, there is a special irregular reading for this word, so it comes out as “pekin.” Remember when Beijing was called Peking? I know you guys were there. We ate all that duck? Man, good times.
Maybe the reason for the limited participation last time around was geography. Maybe geography’s not as popular as I thought it was (read: “as it should be”). But I know something that is: food. Also, I have a special announcement: this week’s puzzle was put together not by the Wordsman but by his lovely assistant. His lovely assistant has the advantage of actually knowing Chinese characters (that is, as they are used in China; hanzi as opposed to kanji); the Wordsman, of course, simply dinks around on the internet and pretends that he does. He probably would have no idea that the following words mean sandwich, waffle, ice cream, cheesecake, hot and sour soup, potstickers, and tilapia.
Now, this list of foods may seem somewhat random at first, but there’s method to the madness. The Wordsman’s lovely assistant is quite smart, after all. She’s also–have I mentioned this yet?–lovely.
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From St. Joe to San Fran in 10 days
Doesn’t sound like a rate to amaze
It’s not email, of course
But a letter by horse
‘Cross the West, then, those ponies did blaze
Event: The first Westbound Pony Express trip leaves St. Joseph, Missouri
Also: The first Eastbound Pony Express trip leaves San Francisco
Year: 1860
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pony_Express
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“I didn’t expect you to come back so soon.” The woman tried to act nonchalant and conceal her happiness, but she didn’t do a very good job of it. She hadn’t had anything to be happy about in a long time.
“I was out and about anyway.” Despite his strong desire to remain comatose, Peter had been unable to resist the summons to Friday Night Family Dinner. For one thing, he had said he would be there, and Peter Hamlin did not go back on his word—unless he had a very good reason, or the word was ambiguous in the first place. Also, after the phone call he realized that he had not eaten anything since the half a bowl of Caffeinated Cereal Catastrophe that morning. So he dragged himself out of bed, lurched over to Carmine Street, and headed home for the second time that day. He was greeted energetically by Sourdough, rather coolly by his human family members (who were impatient to eat), and not at all by Cicero.
After everything that had happened, however, he was unable to stomach the thought of yet another subway ride, so he decided to crash at his parents’ house for the night.
“I thought you could use something to eat,” he continued, reaching into a small paper bag and producing a muffin. It was smaller than the last one she had been given, dotted with one of those berries with a name you think just has to be made up, like the nannyberry. The top was a swirl of golden brown and a deeper, more granulated brown. It was no longer warm, but even so the smell was at the same time both heavenly and devilish.
The woman couldn’t stop smiling. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had to work her cheek muscles so much. “Why do you people keep bringing me muffins?”
“What?” Peter was still only really familiar with the woman’s bitter, aggressive side. He wasn’t sure why anyone else would go out of his way to bring her breakfast. He wasn’t sure why he was doing it either. “Who else brought you a muffin?”
“Oh . . . I don’t know, actually. It just sort of appeared one day.”
“. . . and you ate it?”
“Yeah. Listen, when you’re trapped somewhere for a long time, you do a lot of stupid things.” Then, either because she wanted to avoid going into a list of those things or because she didn’t want to admit that she had eaten the mystery muffin after only having been down there a week, she took a bite. It had a kick, more of a kick than muffins should really be allowed to have. But it was the exciting, invigorating kind of kick, not the “Ohymygodwhereismywater?” kind.
“Fanks,” she said, chewing. “Buh I fough you be cahing up on yo seep?”
“I did. I went to sleep right after dinner.”
Well, almost.
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“Henri, please! Have you gone quite insane?
With this preposterous . . . water-plane?
To take off in that duck
You will need all the luck
This designing has rotted your brain!”
Event: Henri Fabre makes the first successful seaplane flight
Year: 1910
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabre_Hydravion
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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.
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