Jumble Spoiler -08/21/12

English: An adding machine made by Burroughs Corporation on display at a historical museum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Visual Description:  Flashback to the days of the Second Industrial Revolution.

BBRUL  =  BLURB,  NLAST  =  SLANT,  AMURTA  =  TRAUMA,  TEPEMX  =  EXEMPT   —   Giving us:  URSMEM

Clue/Question:  When William Seward Burroughs patented his adding machine on August 21, 1888, it was this.

Answer:  SUMMER

 

Waiter (Photo credit: Kiril Strax)

(About as easy as yesterday’s, but a better double meaning.  Furthermore, I’m a sucker for historically themed Jumbles!  Ya know, when I first applied at a temp agency, in NYC, way back in May of 1980, one of the tests was proficiency with an adding machine.  No, kids.  Not a calculator.  An adding machine.  Well, at least they were electric!  . . . I think?  Definitely NOT as old as the one in the picture you’re seeing!  The one in the picture – an original – was more like the old manual typewriters, but you stood at it..  Anyway, I had never used an adding machine before in my life.  I sucked at it, but I was smart enough to realize that I sucked at it.  My fat, untrained fingers made SO many mistakes, but I realized them as I was making them, so I would alternately add, or subtract, the difference of the number that I entered from the one that I should have, or I’d add, or subtract, the entire erroneous number, if it wasn’t too big.  We were being timed, after all.  I was one of the last people to finish, and I sheepishly explained myself to the testing person, when I handed in my tape.  I left thinking I’d probably have to try waiting tables, or something.  Something that probably could have kept me semi-connected to the acting community.  But, soon after I had gotten back to my apartment, I got a phone call saying that they had a temp job for me . . . with a bank.  It was supposed to be a two week gig, but the bank kept extending it.  Six months later the bank hired me as a permanent employee, and I ended up working there for the next 23 years.  If I hadn’t caught all my errors that day I might have become a waiter, and maybe even what I was supposed to be . . . an actor.  Life’s funny.  Ain’t it?

No new clue words, but they were all jumbled well.  Good answer letter layout.  Nice cartoon.  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

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Cryptoquote Spoiler – 08/21/12

George Eliot (Photo credit: Colin Paterson)

“The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.”   —   George Eliot

George Eliot (Photo credit: mary_gaston22)

(This is actually just part of a line from her first novel:  Adam Bede.  The full line is:  “Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman’s soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.”  I find her way of writing difficult to read.  My Homer Simpson brain needs plain talk.  Be better than yer uncle.  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

PS.  I threw in this picture of a cat named George Eliot, because my buddy, Carlo, is looking to place a new stray he has kind of adopted.  4 is enough for him, and this latest one makes five.  It’s a male, with a dark tabby top and white lower face, bib and front and back legs.  Jersey City, NJ  –  if anyone is interested.   —   YUR