A. 嬉　B. 怒　C. 恐　D. 悲　E. 退屈　F. 恥

Time to see just how in touch with your emotions you really are.

Theoman presented an interesting theory of emotion based on happiness, sadness, and anger.  I thought that the elemental emotional states were sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic, but I guess I’m just old-fashioned.  He cleverly spotted the same “element” in B, C, and D (and, if you look carefully, it’s over there in F, too, stretched out tallways).  For the most part, his basic emotions matched up with this set; unfortunately, his choice of order was poor.  In fact it’s B that’s anger, and D that’s sadness.  He can be sad and angry about that, I guess.  He also missed C, fear, which is a pretty primal emotion if you ask me.

A Fan also failed to record a correct answer, though he gets eclecticity points for managing to reference both Men in Black and A Charlie Brown Christmas in the same post.  He also gets sympathy points for misspelling “embarrass” the same way I always misspell “embarrass.”  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Or embarrassed about.  In other words, no cause for F.

Shirley continued her roll, knocking off B, anger, right away.  She also spotted boredom at E (apparently she was not as enthralled by the Bug in Men in Black as A Fan was).  And she even gets a half-point bonus for recognizing that A is not sad.

And apparently if you scare a Dragon its hairs stand on end.  I didn’t even know dragons had hair.

The misfit of the week is A, happiness.  I could make some sort of comment about how you all chose to focus on the negative emotions (except Theoman), but I suppose most of the blame is mine for including only one positive emotion in the list.  It’s hard to stay happy when you’re surrounded by boredom, fear, and anger.  But now you all know how to get to your happy place.

But helping people be properly emotionally adjusted is not my only goal here on KYPC.  I also like to dispense wisdom.  In this case, it’s wisdom of the obvious, trite variety.  That’s right, this week we’re going to learn some proverbs!  Don’t worry–these are all tidbits of wisdom you should be familiar with.  That is, you should be familiar with their figurative meanings.  Someone out there with more familiarity with Japanese could, if he was feeling adventurous, take a stab at their literal meanings as well.  Hey, No Pain, No Gain, right?  And if you miss, it’s all okay: There’s No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk.  Now, once again, I must remind participants not to collaborate on answers.  No matter how much you may think that Two Heads Are Better Than One, in fact this is a case of Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth.

Is this challenge too difficult?  Is it borderline harassment?  Am I, as I have so often been accused of, simply being sadistic?  Well, let’s just say that The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree.

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

But a few of them had a soft spot for the clerks, possibly because they too spent much of their time sipping mixed drinks at the Lime or sampling seasonal ales at the Danny Boy, so every once in a while something trickled down.  “It’s just a proofread for Victorino,” Peter explained, holding up a gold doubloon so encrusted in grime that only the most desperate treasure hunter would be excited to see it.

His coworker made a face.  “Yikes.  I don’t know what’s worse: his pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey-style punctuation or his misuse of ‘than’ and ‘then.’”

“At least it’s not a Wachowsky,” said the other clerk, having returned from the bathroom.  His tie was adjusted to the perfect balance of casualness and self-importance.  “Can you imagine proofing something he wrote?”

“Wachowsky’s aren’t that bad.”

“I don’t believe it.  Have you heard the man talk?  It’s like a machine gun mated with a thesaurus from the 19th century.”

“Wachowsky dictates everything to his secretary, and she’s been doing it for fifteen years, so she’s the world’s foremost Wachowsky-to-English translator.”

“That’s not the only thing she’s been doing for fifteen years, if you know what I mean.  You ready to go?”

“Yeah.  Keep fighting the good fight against Victorino’s grammar, Pete.”

“What else are us clerks good for, right?”

Sometimes even the wise make mistakes
And to right them a quite long time takes
But there’s naught to discuss
It was unanimous
“Separate can’t be equal, for god’s sakes!”

Event: U.S. Supreme Court rejects the constitutionality of school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
Year: 1954
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
See also: http://wordsman.dxli.com/2010/05/18/this-day-in-history-entry-66/

A. アトリエ　B. アンケート　C. コンクール　D. ズボン　E. ピーマン

F. ピエロ

Parlez-vous japonais?

Theoman does, at least, to a certain extent.  But he decided to put aside his knowledge for the sake of fair and honest competition.  If the world was a fair place, this noble sacrifice would have earned him a correct answer.  KYPC is not a fair place, and thus he goes unrewarded.  I can see what you saw about “agreement,” but I don’t know why you linked that to surveys.  Everybody knows that the purpose of surveys is to create divisiveness and spread strife.  So yes, suitably shaky reasoning indeed.  Well done.  In fact, C is konkuuru, or in French concours, or in English, contest.  I mean contest.  Because as we all know, contests are about working together and making sure that everyone gets along.

A Fan may not speak Japanese, but he knows enough French to make pithy statements when the situation calls for it (or even when it doesn’t).  His obsession with flat furniture continues, and this presumably led him to identify not a table, per se, but the only thing on this list that would be likely to contain a table: A is atorie/atelier/studio.  His other answers were not quite so close, at least on the Japanese side of things.  We’ll have to take his word on the French.

Shirley did her best to channel the grizzled veteran, perhaps in an old war movie, which maybe could take place in France I guess?  Whatever convoluted logic you choose to apply, the tactic paid off for her.  She nailed D, the pants (Jp: zubon Fr: jupon), B, the survey (Jp: ankeeto Fr: enquete), and F, the clown (Jp: piero Fr: pierrot).  Perhaps these katakana characters, which have no reason at all to resemble the things they represent, are more easily recognizable than kanji, which have vague and misleading reasons for possibly resembling the things they represent.

E is the bell pepper (Jp: piiman, Fr: piment).  Not much more to say about that, really.

Or maybe there is.  Maybe, deep down, I’m hurt that no one paid much attention to this poor vegetable.  Maybe I’m torn up inside.  Maybe it’s only years of trained stoicism that prevent me from bawling, tearing my hair, and slamming my head down onto the keyboard like a afoj;asjkfaosoug.

Excuse me.  I guess I got a little emotional there.  But don’t worry: you can all get a little emotional too.  Once you’ve recognized the characters for it, that is.  Are you sad that it’ll be a whole week until the next KYPC?  Or happy?  Are you angry about my outburst, or merely embarrassed?  Maybe you’re scared about what the next challenge will be.  Or maybe you’re simply bored of these antics.

A. 嬉　B. 怒　C. 恐　D. 悲　E. 退屈　F. 恥

Slowly, the two competitors returned to “real life.”  Controllers clattered on the desk.  The TV winked out, and the brilliant blue and green of the ballpark were replaced by the dull brown and gray of a cubicle.  They were no longer ballplayers, nor were they spectators; they were summer law clerks, doing what summer law clerks do best: killing time before lunch.

They were well-prepared for the noonday meal, and had been for much of the morning.  Ties loosened?  Check.  Sport coats removed and ready to be slung over shoulders?  Check.  Boss consulted to make sure they wouldn’t miss anything?  Well . . . they had cell phones in case he really needed them.  It wasn’t like they were firefighters or some other profession that needed to leap into action at a moment’s notice.  All that remained was to decide on a destination.

“The Lime?”

“The Lime.  Hey Pete, we’re going to the Lime for lunch!  You wanna come?”

One cubicle over, Peter Hamlin was staring at another screen, a far less entertaining one.  “No thanks.  I’ve got to finish this.”

The first half of his response was not unexpected.  Peter did not dislike his coworkers, nor was he anti-social, nor was he opposed to a little drinking in the middle of the workday (not for a job like this, at any rate); he was opposed to the price.  Daily dining in downtown Crescenton, especially at places like the Lime of the Ancient Mariner, was beyond the financial capability of someone who had only a summer law clerk’s salary to support him.  Someone who, say, did not have parents who bought him a European sports car for his sixteenth birthday.  Someone who knew of trust funds only as distant, abstract concepts, in the same way that a Siberian may have heard of “summer.”  Not that he was bitter.

The second half of his answer, however, was positively startling.  His colleague regarded him with a face that was three parts shock to one part pity, well-stirred.  “You have work to do?” he asked, as if work were buried pirate treasure or the Loch Ness Monster.  Admittedly, buried pirate treasure is rarer than work for the 12th floor at Huston and Thomas (often referred to as the “Clerk Cage.”)  On the other hand, people actually go looking for buried treasure, so the two end up being found about equally frequently.

Peter had not had any delusions about standing in front of a jury and arguing a case as a mere summer clerk.  He had, however, been under the mistaken impression that he would spend his time doing research and other inglorious but necessary tasks.  The problem was that Huston and Thomas determined annual bonuses by how many hours its employees billed, so the regular associates were reluctant to pass on even the more menial assignments.  There were the bigwig partners, of course, for whom bonuses meant little, but they were never given the menial assignments in the first place.  Their primary duty seemed to be going out to lunch, work that was difficult to delegate.

In the old days it was quite a hike
Going west by horse, boat, foot, or bike
But the mighty steam train
Helped to lessen the pain
Once they drove in that bright golden spike

Event: First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah
Year: 1869
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad

A. 億　B. 京　C. 千　D. 兆　E. 百　F. 万

People didn’t seem to be very interested in the smaller numbers this week.  I guess “Go big or go home” is the motto of the KYPC enthusiast.  It should be noted that the characters representing numbers larger than one hundred million are rarely used–that is, rarely used in their capacity to represent numbers.  “Trillion” and “ten quadrillion” have other meanings for which they more commonly appear.  So don’t feel bad if those ones misled you.

We salute A Fan for using Google to look up how many seconds are in a week, just as we used it to figure out how many years ten quadrillion seconds is.  Unsurprisingly, his “surprise pick” turned out to be incorrect, as, for some strange reason, the Japanese have no specific character to represent the number 604,800 (or 60,4800).  However, he did manage to pick the answer that was closest; F is ten thousand, or, in terms of seconds, the play/musical.  There is, in fact, a character used to represent “zero,” but it’s not E.  It looks like this:

零

But, once again, he cleverly managed to pick the one that was closest to it.  E is a hundred, the microwave lunch.  Also, we regret to inform A Fan that we will continue writing puzzles about tables as long as we like, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

We’ll give Theoman the benefit of the doubt and assume that he stuck to the large numbers because he already knows the smaller ones.  And even with huge sums he’s not that bad.  By process of elimination he was able to pick out D as a trillion, making it the cave painting, not the dinosaurs, which was A Fan’s theory.  This character also means “omen.”  The basis on which he established his elimination, however, was wrong.  Like Dragon, he leapt on the idea that the most complicated character would be the largest number, and they were both quite wrong.  A is the smallest of the “large” numbers: 100 million, the abbreviated college career.  And the one he recognized is one that he probably saw while it was playing its other, much more popular role.  B means “capital” and is the “kyo” of both Tokyo and Kyoto.  On the weekends, it means 10 quadrillion, or, in seconds, 316,887,646 years.

Shirley made good guesses but failed to hit the mark.  While it might feel like it takes a pot of water a trillion seconds to boil if you stare at it, it’s probably not quite that long.  The character for a thousand, the number of seconds it takes to boil water if you don’t watch the pot, is C.  I agree that B is the best looking of the characters here, but, sadly, it didn’t translate into a correct answer.

And now, from our Be Careful What You Wish For Department, we give A Fan exactly what he asked for: a quiz about French.  The following are all words in use in Japanese today that were originally borrowed from French.  This will also be the first KYPC challenge to not feature a single kanji character.  But don’t complain to me; it wasn’t my idea.  Instead, you should devote your energies to identifying the words that represent the following concepts: bell pepper, clown, contest, studio, survey, and pants.  Bonne chance!

A. アトリエ　B. アンケート　C. コンクール　D. ズボン　E. ピーマン

F. ピエロ

Day 229:

“Two outs, runners on first and third.  Parr coming to the plate.”

“Rivers has thrown thirty pitches already this inning.  Does he have one more out in him?”

“No one warming up in the bullpen.  That’s showing confidence in your closer.”

“Here’s the pitch—”

DOINK

“Easy out.”

“Hang on . . . this could be trouble.”

“The wind’s carrying it out!  Castillo’s not going to be able to catch up!”

“Oh you have got to be kidding me.”

“Johnson, playing a deep right field, charges—”

“C’mon, c’mon.”

“Runners off at the crack of the bat.  Rogers has already crossed home plate, and the speedy Ricardo rounding third—”

“C’mon!”

“Johnson dives . . . AND MAKES A SPECTACULAR CATCH!”

“Yes!”

“Unbelievable.  No way Johnson gets to that ball in real life.”

In the aftermath, most people saw
It was time for a new basic law
Two big changes in store
Were the clause to end war
And the emperor’s final hurrah

Event: Postwar constitution of Japan goes into effect
Year: 1947
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Japan

A. 移り気　B. 社交的　C. 心配性　D. 短気　E. 生意気　F. 楽天的

You may know your picture characters, but how well do you really know yourself?  Let’s see.

Theoman knows himself perhaps even better than he realizes.  He first noted that he is whimsical, and this trait above all else seems to have defined his responses.  The Japanese word for whimsicality is represented by characters meaning “movement” and “spirit,” calling to mind the image of a mind constantly in motion, flitting from one place to the next.  In this case, Theoman’s whimsical mind reversed his two answers.  He found C whimsical and A worrisome, but it turned out that they were the other way round.

A Fan ignored the instruction to relate his guesses to his own personality, which some might consider E, impertinent.  But he did his best to make up for it by telling a story about a table, which could in its own peculiar way tell us about the author himself.  Does he see himself as being like the table, the symbol of flatness, ever even-keeled, a personality trait that is not particularly well represented among this list?  Or does the saga of the table’s inevitable fall suggest a short-tempered individual ever teetering on the edge, as one finds at D? (Note: the word used here for “short-tempered” actually uses a character that means “short.”)  This second possibility seems more likely, as his usually reliable shotgun method failed to earn him a single correct answer this week.

Shirley, then, is the only contestant this week to get one right.  However, she may or may not be pleased to learn that her intuition was sharpest with regard to C, the worrywart.  Apparently knowledge of Scandinavian Angst is not to be scorned.  Her “whimsical thing” at the end of B and F is, sadly, simply a suffix used to turn nouns into adjectives.  Then again, by itself this character means “target,” and it is made up of components meaning “white” and “ladle,” so maybe the fact that none of these things seem to have anything to do with each other could be regarded as pretty whimsical (or speak to the whimsicality of whoever made the character up in the first place).  In fact, B and F are the sociable fellow and the optimist, respectively, making them probably the most well-balanced members of the group.  But where would we be without all the brazen, short-tempered, whimsical worrywarts to make things more interesting?

All this business about emotions and personality is pretty murky.  It’s time to get back to cold hard facts, and as facts go, none are colder or harder than numbers.  You may recall that, way back (roughly one year ago), we had a quiz on numbers.  It was our first KYPC challenge.  That quiz, though, only went as high as the number ten.  Surely you’re not satisfied with only knowing how to count that high!  It’s about time I expanded your horizons.  Those who are disturbed by large quantities of zeroes can stick to the small stuff, your hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands . . . that’s right, ten thousands!  While we in the west group our large numbers by the thousands (thousand, million, billion, etc.), traditional East Asian counting systems use ten thousand (ten thousand, hundred million, trillion, etc.)  Think of it as writing a comma every 4 zeroes instead of every 3.  But anyway, I’m expecting that these large, intimidating sums will be left to anyone who, say, happened to minor in math at a reputable educational institution at some point.

And for those of you who, like me, have trouble conceiving of what such giant numbers could possibly mean, try this helpful guide:

A hundred seconds is about how long it might take you to microwave your frozen lunch
A thousand seconds is about how long it might take you to bring a large pot of water to boil
Ten thousand seconds is about how long it might take you to watch a two-act play or a musical
One hundred million seconds is about how long it might take you to finish college if you came in with sophomore standing
A trillion seconds is about as old as the oldest known cave paintings
Ten quadrillion seconds ago is before the age of the dinosaurs

A. 億　B. 京　C. 千　D. 兆　E. 百　F. 万