A. 戦場にかける橋　B. 波止場　C. 羊たちの沈黙　D. 普通の人々

E. 許されざる者　F. 夜の大捜査線

A Fan feels strongly about his movies and somewhat less strongly about the sanctity of the Academy’s Best Picture award.  He should perhaps have saved some of his second batch of guesses, though, as I reserve the right to present a “Should’ve Been Best Picture” puzzle at some later date.  I like to think that none of the ones I put up were too terrible, and this hope is somewhat backed up by the fact that none of his first batch of guesses can be found on this list.  I feel like I should give him something, though, so I will say that he was closest on D, which is Ordinary People.  It certainly sounds boring, anyway.

Theoman gave me the benefit of the doubt in terms of taste, but unfortunately it didn’t pay off.  His kanji knowledge, which had served him quite well the past few weeks, failed him, and his “one” sailed far over the cuckoo’s nest, missing the list entirely.  We’ll give him partial credit for getting the right number of words in A, and, in fact, they both have the same fourth word.  The word is “the.”

We at the Wordsman are rather distressed to learn that Dragon has never seen Chariots of Fire, The Sting, or either of the good parts of the Godfather trilogy.  She is an expert on Gandhi, though, which allowed her to figure out that it is not on this list.  Unfortunately, Lawrence of Arabia is not either.  C is Silence of the Lambs–a good movie, but one which, unlike some of the others she missed, it may be forgivable to pass over.

So at this point you’re probably thinking that no one got anything correct this week.  And you would be absolutely . . . WRONG!  Shirley decided to put together a list that was basically the opposite of A Fan’s, and she struck paydirt straight off the bat: A is The Bridge on the River Kwai, though the Japanese title is the somewhat less specific “Bridge on the Battlefield.”  None of the rest of her guesses was correct, but hey, the way everybody else was swinging, one out of six ain’t half bad.  And she even identified another picture that appeared on the list: On the Waterfront (or, in Japanese, simply “Waterfront”) is B, not F.

Finally, at E, we have Unforgiven.  And F?  Well, you wanna know what they call me?  They call me Mister Wordsman.  And if you can’t figure it out from that, it’s your own fault.

But let’s do something a little less complicated this week.  I’m going to pull a challenge pretty much straight from my old first-year Japanese textbook, and we’re going to try to identify types of buildings.  If you can’t stop thinking about your favorite films after last week’s challenge, you can look for the movie theater.  If you prefer something a little more old-fashioned, check out the library.  In case of emergencies, look for the hospital, and in case it’s, uh, Sunday, try to find the church.  The post office is there too, and so is the embassy, because if you’re in another country, it sure can’t hurt to know where that is.

A. 映画館　B. 教会　C. 大使館　D. 図書館　E. 病院　F. 郵便局

NOTE: I will be somewhat busy next weekend, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the vast majority of my readership will as well, so there will likely not be a KYPC update next Monday.

Day 230:

Despite legal obstacles, Officer Tang did not relent.  It is said that the early bird gets the worm, but the persistent bird learns the worm’s entire life, comes to know it inside and out (not that the inside and the outside of a worm are all that different).  In the end, the worm all but catches itself.  Of course, it is also said that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, but Officer Tang was not after flies.  She wanted that worm.

The woman’s situation had changed over the past few weeks.  As with all celebrities of her type, she was a flash in the pan, and her fame had been destined not to last from the instant the first wannabe journalist had mentioned her in his blog.  Besides, it was summer now, and people had lost interest in indoor attractions.  If she had been the Old Woman of Morrison Park she might have stood a chance, but she was in a subway station, where the air would only turn fouler as June became July became August.

Officer Tang hoped that her disappearance from the public eye would lead the woman to slip up, so she observed her at every possible opportunity.  She took very detailed notes.

Suspect continues to approach passersby with odd questions. (In her notebook she always referred to the woman as “suspect,” even though she had no idea what she suspected her of.  As soon as she figured that out, there would be no more need for the notebook.)  Can this be construed as a form of harassment?  Negative.  Those who want to leave can do so freely; those who want to listen stay.

Investigate: conspiracy.  Does she ever talk to same person on multiple occasions?  Need more observers.

Citizen approaches.  Suspect begins usual speech.  Citizen reaches into pocket, tosses handful of change in suspect’s face.  Does not stop, speak, or look at her.  Suspects sits quietly, does not pick up coins, looks dazed.

Investigate: money laundering.

Before royal tempers could flare
The two countries decided to share
Ferdinand got the west
Portugal got the rest
How could anything else have been fair?

Event: Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the New World between them
Year: 1494
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
See also: http://wordsman.dxli.com/2010/05/04/this-day-in-history-entry-64/

A. オペラ座の怪人　B. 猫　C. 美女と野獣　D. 惨め者達　E. 家賃

F. 屋根の上のバイオリン弾き

Not quite enough answers this week to stage a full musical, but we might be able to put together one of those quirky off-Broadway shows.

To the tune of “Gaston”:

When I was a lad I took Japanese class every spring, summer, winter and fall
And in those classes we learned katakana, so I basic’lly can read them ALLLLLLLLLL!

We at the Wandering Wordsman have ruled that looking up the list is not cheating, which is lucky for you, as we are bound to pursue any criminal to the ends of the earth, like the relentless Javert.  Presumably the list helped Theoman pick out #8 on the long-run list, Beauty and the Beast, as letter C, while he was busy scorning A and F.  But was he telling the truth or merely bluffing when he claimed to be able to identify B as #2, Cats?  I guess we’ll never know.  We will also leave it up to the world to wonder whether you got it because you saw the character for “woman” or because you realized it was the only one on the list to come in the form “_____ and _____”

To the tune of “Master of the House”:

Master of the site
Tripping up the folks
Puzzling their minds and telling awful jokes
Setting up his traps
Laying out the bait
Mocking their misfortune when they can’t think straight

We agree with Shirley that F is certainly long enough to deserve to be Les Mis, but unfortunately it is not.  Here we have #14, Fiddler on the Roof.  This is one of the three that actually uses what I wrote as its Japanese title; the others are C and A, the unstoppable Phantom.  Those miserable ones are hiding over at D, trying to stay away from the misguided revolutions, racist forced relocations and angry mobs that are running rampant through this puzzle (and you thought Chicago was bad!)  Next to them, and not much better off, E represents the struggles of the poverty-stricken to get enough together to pay the Rent.

By the way, last week’s bonus answer was: Memorial Day->”Memory”->Cats->Musicals

I rather liked that puzzle idea, but I’m guessing you won’t be too happy about having to do musicals two weeks in a row, so we’re modifying the topic slightly.  This time around it’s Best Picture Winners.  Every movie on the following list has won an Academy Award for Best Picture, and, unlike last week, everything listed here actually goes by this title in Japan.  I know that’s a lot of choices, so I’ll narrow it down for you a little: none of the choices is from the past fifteen years, and none are more than sixty years old.

A. 戦場にかける橋　B. 波止場　C. 羊たちの沈黙　D. 普通の人々

E. 許されざる者　F. 夜の大捜査線

Officer Tang had a problem.

Unlike her colleague, Officer Escobar, she had no talent at not seeing problems.  Nor was she a person who could patiently wait around for problems to go away of their own accord, no matter how often other members of the LCPD told her that it really does happen.  Problems, she firmly believed, exist to be solved.  And when an unsolvable problem came along, one that stared her in the face every single day, it created an imbalance in her universe that was far beyond the power of baked goods to right.

As is often true of impossible situations, this one could be blamed on an old, dead white guy.  When the illustrious Bartholomew Phineas Taylor—tycoon, philanthropist, and all-around character—had finally died, his will specified that his Crescenton Subway System should be left, “to the people of this fine city, in perpetuity, to use as they see fit.”  Some historians argued that this was his most generous act, while others liked to cite a quote of dubious origin in which he stated that he had done it because he “never understood the point of the whole damn thing.”

Numerous legal precedents had established that, as the subway belonged to the people, just about anything they did in it was permissible, so long as it did not interfere with the running of the trains.  The standard joke was that you could get away with murder, which was appropriate, for there was an urban legend that old B.P. Taylor had originally had the tunnels dug so he could discreetly bury some of his competitors.

Officer Tang had no intention of letting anyone get away with murder, or any other act that could definitively be called a crime.  Loitering, sadly, did not fall into this category, not even when it persisted for weeks or months.  She did not blame the homeless for their predicament; she knew that most had no other choice.  But that did not make it any less wrong.  “A place for everything and everything in its place,” was one of her mottos.  People belonged in homes, where they had addresses and phone numbers and could be kept track of.  Just as pigeons belonged in parks, though if she had her way, there wouldn’t be any pigeons, either.

The fact that the woman had become something of an attraction added insult to injury.  It was only natural that she drew attention to herself.  Her presence raised so many questions: Who was she?  Where had she come from, and why?  Could she be exploited like some sort of sideshow freak?  One group had tried having her predict the outcomes of football games, but they gave up when she said the Cleveland Browns would win the Super Bowl.  She never answered any personal questions—and, perhaps out of reciprocity, no one ever gave a satisfactory answer to the questions she asked.

But to Officer Tang it just seemed like they were showcasing her failure.  She went on vacation for one week—one measly week!—and by the time she got back the Old Woman of Simon Park Station had shown up.  And, until the woman violated a freaking commandment, there was nothing she could do about it.

It would not have comforted her at all to learn that the woman would have liked nothing better than to leave, that she was, in fact, devoting every effort to getting away.  These facts would only have irritated the officer further, although she would have been hard-pressed to tell you exactly why.

As it was, Officer Tang walked her normal beat, driving injustice out of dark places and defending the innocent travelers on Crescenton’s underground rails.  Perhaps she was a little harsher with the criminals she could actually arrest, and perhaps she paid a little bit more attention to the old woman than was healthy.  She would have said that she was merely doing her duty as one of Crescenton’s finest.

A squash court, some baths, and a pool
Enough lifeboats to follow the rule
But the gigantic boat
Just could not stay afloat
Proving hubris is not really cool

Event: RMS Titanic first launched
Year: 1911
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.M.S._Titanic
See also: http://wordsman.dxli.com/2009/10/20/this-day-in-history-entry-36/

A. 蛙の子は蛙　B. 虎穴に入らずんば虎児を得ず

C. 三人寄れば文殊の知恵　D. 船頭多くして船山に登る

E. 覆水盆に返らず

“Not even the wisest can see all ends.”

Not a proverb, exactly, but hopefully it’s some comfort to the weekly KYPC sufferers . . . I mean, contestants.

What do you look for in a proverb?  Theoman likes ’em short and sweet, preferably of the “X=Y” variety.  This must be why he went for A, and his instincts did not lead him astray.  “The child of a frog is a frog,” or, as we like to say, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

A Fan, on the other hand, seems to think that the most important aspect of a proverb is that it be in another language, which means that he would probably do well to learn a few of these.  “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” is certainly true, but it can’t be found on this list.  Neither can “A good beer is a good friend.”  The graduate student’s motto, “To learn is to suffer,” is not located at E, but its cousin can be seen up there at B: “If you don’t go into the tiger’s lair, you won’t get a tiger cub.”  Why you would want to get a tiger cub is left up to the imagination, I suppose.  And it looks like he picked up on A, too.  Guess that one’s pretty easy to recognize across language barriers.

Leaving aside the issue of whether or not Shirley has a grudge against members of the legal profession, I think it would be best for everyone to calm down a little about E.  After all, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, or, to put it another way, spilt water won’t go back in the tray.  Maybe if you put it in a cup or something instead, it wouldn’t have spilled in the first place, but I guess that’s all water under the bridge now.  She also cites another proverb with a lot of applicability for graduate students, most of whom would be rather distressed to learn that “Money can’t buy happiness” isn’t actually true.  In fact, there seem to be a lot of proverbs that she feels miss the mark; perhaps they were put into production without sufficient prior consultation.  Maybe they should have had more people think about these things first, falling back on C, “Two heads are better than one,” or, “When three people come together, they have the wisdom of Manjusri.”  I suppose I can’t blame you guys for not getting one that involves Buddhism.

Dragon thought D looks painful.  And it is, but not because it represents “No pain, no gain.”  D is the Japanese equivalent of “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” but its literal meaning implies rather more drastic consequences than simply having to eat a subpar meal: “Too many captains will steer the ship up a mountain.”  Ouch!

And now it’s time for a little song and dance number.  This week we’re going to be looking at musicals.  Now, for a lot of Broadway musicals, the Japanese equivalent title is not a translation but a transliteration: Cats is Kyattsu, Rent is Rento, etc.  It’s not like we don’t do this in English, too: last time I checked, Les Misérables wasn’t English.  But that didn’t sound like a lot of fun to me, so I decided to render them by their meanings rather than by their sounds.  Half of the shows on this list, though, are given as they typically would be in Japanese.  All of them are from the list of Top 20 Longest Running Broadway Shows of All Time.  Those who can read katakana could choose to show off by identifying the easy ones, but I think it would be more fun to challenge yourself and try something harder.

A. オペラ座の怪人　B. 猫　C. 美女と野獣　D. 惨め者達　E. 家賃

F. 屋根の上のバイオリン弾き

And, finally, bonus points to anyone who can guess the somewhat convoluted string of associations that explains why this challenge is appearing today, of all days.

What is the purpose of a summer law clerk?  Peter devoted much of his time to trying to answer this question, at least when he wasn’t on YouTube or playing Minesweeper.  “To gain experience,” his academic advisor had told him.  It sounded good on paper, but the primary field in which he was gaining experience was wasting time, and, as a typical American suburbanite, he had been an expert in that field since high school.

Mr. Abrahamson, a partner and the official supervisor of the summer clerks, said it was all about schmoozing.  The only way to get ahead in business is through your connections, so a clerk’s most important job was meeting people.  Peter did meet people, at dinners with clients or at Happy Hour on Fridays.  Unfortunately, these events typically involved free drinks and old bombasts like Wachowsky, who eclipsed lesser personalities like a heavy metal concert next to a poetry recital, so he couldn’t be sure how many of the people he met remembered him.

Mostly he interacted with his fellow clerks, and he didn’t even know them that well.  They carpooled every day, but it wasn’t the best opportunity to strike up a conversation.  Driving in downtown Crescenton during rush hour is a harrowing experience, comparable to skiing a double black diamond course on a mountain made of pure ice, without skis.  It requires full concentration.  Other than that, his main opportunity to get to know them was in the regular baseball tournaments, and baseball wasn’t Peter’s game.  He didn’t like to lose, and he especially didn’t like to lose when the bet was that you had to buy the winner’s lunch.  Peter couldn’t even afford one Surf ‘n’ Turf Special; two was out of the question.

To be fair, he had only been doing the job for two weeks.  Presumably any hidden meaning would not reveal itself until he had been there for at least a month.  Still, he felt unsatisfied.  And on this particular day, he chose to voice his dissatisfaction to the empty Clerk Cage: “I feel like there’s something missing from my life.”

There was one person in the city of Crescenton who would have been overjoyed to hear those words.  Unfortunately, whatever other fantastic talents she may have possessed, being able to understand softly spoken phrases from three miles away and through layers and layers of concrete was not one of them.  And, after all she had been through, it was amazing that she still bothered to listen to anyone at all.

There have been some complaints recently about our newest Friday feature.  Rest assured that I am not simply jerking you around (at least, not intentionally).  There are, so far, two separate storylines, with two separate sets of characters.  They are, however, not entirely unrelated; both take place in the city of Crescenton and its surrounding suburbs, which make up Laragheny County, Ohio.  They may be thought of as two patches, largely discontiguous up to this point, but perhaps some day to be woven together.  As my sewing skills are not the greatest, those of you out there who are expert quilters will have to bear with me.

It seems likely that some of the confusion may be due to the occasionally inelegant way in which I have chosen to divide the stories (story?) up between different weeks.  As a solution, I offer a new page (listed above as “WSPS”) which contains all the entries so far, for those who would like to get caught up and for those who would like to see if they can guess where this is going.

Oh, its fleece was as white as the snow
And where Mary went, it too did go
Violating the rule
It went with her to school
And the punishment? Well, I don’t know

Event: Mary Had a Little Lamb, a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale, is first published
Year: 1830
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Had_a_Little_Lamb