English: A 14lb pork shoulder, rubbed with a spice rub, before 21 hours of indirect cooking at 225 degrees F on a Green Egg smoker/grill. After extended cooking, the pork will be tender enough to be shredded with forks into ‘pulled pork’. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Visual Description: Chapter IV: Wilbur gets a tummy ache.
RANEA = ARENA, BEYRD = DERBY, SMETUK = MUSKET, COMSHO = SMOOCH — Giving us: RADEUMCH
Clue/Question: The farmer called the vet to attend to the pig so that the pig could become a . . .
Answer: CURED HAM
American cuts of pork (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(I thought that certain elements of today’s puzzle may have qualified it as a potential Unclerave’s Wiseguy of the Day contest, but I guess it wasn’t all that hard. It was more a little surprising/shocking, I suppose. I remember my mother telling me that as a child she made the mistake of making a pet out of a baby pig. I don’t think I have to tell you guys how that story ended. Suffice it to say that to this day she still will not eat ham. But, strangely enough, she doesn’t have a problem with pork chops, roast pork or bacon. Coincidentally, my son has a similar porcine oddity, in that he too will no longer eat ham. But he’s more than fine with pork chops and bacon. When he was about ten or eleven, we were at a cousin’s house for a family party. It was a super hot day, they didn’t have any air conditioning, and all this food was sitting out . . . all day. He had some ham, like all of us did, but he, his mom and one cousin got a bout of really bad food poisoning, that came on very quickly. The two boys and I had left the party to go to a place where they had batting cages and video games, and that’s where they both were initially stricken. We left there to go to our house, when they had a second wave come over them, while I was driving. Most of it went out the window! When we finally got home they both got sick again, and it was from both ends, of course. They both got so weak, and when my son’s eyes started rolling back in his head I decided I had to get them to the E.R. Back then the E.R. didn’t suck, and they were seen rather quickly. They were given some kind of shot, and some I.V. fluids, because they had become so dehydrated. It was fairly traumatic, but everything turned out all right. I found out a little later that my wife, who had stayed at the party, also got very sick, but she just spent a few hours on the can, and she too survived. Now, I’m sure most of you can understand how my son developed such an aversion to ham, but here’s the funny part. It has been about 15 years, and my son still refuses to touch cured ham, but get this. What everyone, who got sick that day, got sick on . . . was a fresh ham! Not a cured ham! Fresh ham is essentially the same as roast pork, which he will eat! I’ve explained the difference to him at least 100 times, but for him . . . cured ham is the devil! My mom was probably about 8 or 9 at the time of her trauma, and she’s been carrying around her cured ham baggage for about 70 years. I just hope my son’s – wholly misguided – fear and loathing doesn’t last that long.
English: Ending of the “Looney Tunes” with Porky out the drum Català: Final clàssic dels “Looney Tunes” amb Porky eixint del tambor. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I liked the jumbling of the clue words, today. None were new, but I thought that “arena” was a little tricky, and “smooch” really took me a while. I didn’t have to back into it, or even write out trial combinations or anything, but it did have me stumped for a bit. The answer letter layout was super! No giveaways there. It really might have made for a good tease/contest, but I felt more like entertaining you with my little anecdotes. Lucky you. Nice cartoon! It’s kind of like James Herriot’s All Things Great and Small meets Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Hey! You can keep a cow for milk, and chickens for eggs, but there’s only one reason for raising pigs, folks. Be well and do good, friends. “Th’-th’-th’-th’-th’-th’-that’s All, Folks!”) — YUR
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Unclerave's Wordy Weblog 
Unc- I got the clue words, but had to cheat on final answer, that’s twice in the last two weeks.. Yikes Have a good day. Wimpy
Had trouble with the first word today, and finally decided it was the relatively obscure, but legitimate, word ANEAR. Needless to say, that didn’t work out.
I have a lot of friends who can’t understand why I don’t have a Green Egg (or similar grill). Everything I’ve eaten from one is delicious. I love to cook and work from home which would allow me to baby sit long cooking times. I just can’t pull the trigger on the price when I have a perfectly good Weber (gas) grill. Maybe the traditional 17th wedding anniversary gift is a grill? We’ll see.
I am all caught up — still! That green egg recipes looks really good….it will be tried when we get home. So glad that everyone survived the Ham Poisoning! Funny how some things stay with us. Am thoroughly enjoying the puzzles. Always do. Didn’t really get stuck. Had to get up and down several times while working the puzzle, and somehow that always helps give me a different perspective on the puzzle, so I was not stuck. The answer was a hoot!
ALL ham comes from cruelty to pigs, who are very intelligent creatures.
This one did not come easy today, even as I was eating a ham sandwich while solving.
“Derby” took forever. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it, even after writing out a number of combinations. Then my brain kept wanting to put “Hog” in the answer, well knowing it didn’t fit.
Wow! 6 comments, so far, and way over 900 hits, this early in the day! Maybe I could’ve made this a Wiseguy of the Day contest! Oh, well.
Wimpy. That’s what I’m here for, bro.
From what I could find, only dictionary.com had “anear”, and they have it as archaic. It looks like “anear” is out of circulation. The WordPress spell-check doesn’t like it either. It has a nice Shakespearean sound to it, but I think David Hoyt is safe in keeping “arena” a valid clue word.
I’m so out of it! The only Green Egg I know is in a Dr. Seuss book.
Glad to hear that Linda Lee is (still) all caught up. Comments on older posts kind of throw me a little.
I’m with you . . . in spirit, Marc! I feel the same way about pigs, also about veal. But, my taste buds and tummy always win that vote. I think the cattle industry and the meatpacking industry lobbyists have corrupted my entire digestive system against my overall health. Kinda like how Grover Norquist and the Tea Party extremists have paralyzed Congress.
Nice to have you back, Keith.
— YUR
the first word was anear and not what you had this is the only time since i was doing this that the letters formed a different word
OK, Robert. If the word is supposed to be “anear” then that would change the first two answer letters from RA to NA. What answer did you come up with that uses NADEUMCH? DUNCE HAM? DANCE HUM?? The letters work, but the answer doesn’t really fit the question.
— YUR
I was the ANEAR respondent. Robert, I’d say that once every several months there’s at least one word that can be anagrammed two ways. Usually one of the two is obscure, such as today. But I would think the Jumble folks would want to go out of their way to check for multiples, just in the interest of professionalism.
Art
It may actually be more frequent than that, Art, but I think some of you guys are missing the point. Right under the Jumble title it states: “Unscramble these four jumbles, one letter to each square, to form four ORDINARY words.” If a word is listed as “archaic”, and the more established major dictionaries no longer carry it, then it’s a little hard to consider the word “ordinary”. Nobody likes to needle the guys, and play a little “Gotcha”, more than yer uncle, but we don’t need to get carried away. In the past, I’ve made a few stinks about certain plural words ending in “S”, and just adding a “D” to make a past tense verb, but there don’t seem to be any official rules about that. In my mind, those words are a little cheap and lazy, but they DO qualify as “ordinary”, so I’ve just decided to get over it.
If you come up with a word that technically fits, but doesn’t give you the right answer letters to solve the Jumble, then you just have to go back to the old drawing board, and re-evaluate your previous answer. That happens to me, occasionally. For me, though, it’s usually because of some brain-fart spelling error, but I HAVE gone the “archaic” route a few times. Eventually, I get there.
Have fun.
— YUR
YUR:
In the decade I’ve been maintaining the Jumble Word Database (on a daily basis) there have been only 38 letter combinations used that could spell more than one ordinary word for the same scrambling. As far as new multiple unscrambles coming up “once every several months,” the record doesn’t support that conclusion. The guys are just too good to have that happen.
Belated Happy Birthday to you!
ralis95
Once again, “ordinary” being the key word here! 38 times in 10 years is a pretty darn impressive record, ralis95. I probably make at least 38 mistakes a day!
Thanks for the birthday wishes, brother-man!
— YUR
i’m a brand new participant here, but if we accept your 38 value then that’s 3.8 per year, which qualifies as “every several months” in my book.
Incidentally, ANEAR was even in my computerized Random House dictionary, circa Windows 95, which I’ve never replaced because, well, it seems to work just fine on current machines.
I wasn’t trying to make a big todo over ANEAR; just thought it was an interesting observation.
On a different note, I dropped my subscription to the Los Angeles Times last month after 33 years. I’ve found the daily Jumble courtesy of the Houston Chronicle’s web site, but haven’t yet stumbled on an online source for the Sunday. Can anyone provide a reference to the Sunday Jumble?
Art
No harm, no foul, Art! We welcome a wide spectrum of views, here at Unclerave’s Wordy Weblog. (Despite some complaints that I don’t allow comments without first approving them.)
As an interesting observation, “ANEAR” made for an evocative alternative to ARENA. We just disagree that it constitutes an ordinary word, and thus the Jumble should be judged as – somehow – erroneous. The standard Merriam Webster’s, and Webster’s New Collegiate, dictionaries don’t recognize “ANEAR”, so ARENA stands alone as the word that RANEA can make.
So far, there is not an online source for the Sunday Jumble. Jeff Knurek, or David Hoyt?, has explained why in the past, but their reasoning escapes me . . . and it very likely confused me. You just gotta get hold of a newspaper that carries it! Sorry, Art.
— YUR
YUR:
To clarify – the 38 ordinary words came from only 18 scrambled letter combinations – that’s less than 2 a year on average. Those 18 scrambled letter combos individually produced mostly 2 ordinary words each, but in two cases, produced 3 ordinary words each:
AEGLR – large, glare & regal; EEHRT – there, three & ether.
Best,
ralis95
Nuff said, brother-man! We’ll keep shooting for the moon, while we just roll with the punches.
— YUR
Thank you for stopping by my blog.
BE ENCOURAGED! BE BLESSED!
You have a very nice blog, Fran. http://francineinretirement.wordpress.com/
I hope to visit more often. Please, stop by here, any time!
— YUR