Jumble Spoiler – 08/20/15

English: Lawn tennis, 1887. Print. Published in: Viewpoints; a selection from the pictorial collections of the Library of Congress … Washington: Library of Congress …, 1975, no. 121. Slightly cropped from the Library of Congress digital version using the GIMP. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Visual Description:  Tied tennis twins.

INAAV  =  AVIAN,  MALYD  =  MADLY,  TECERJ  =  REJECT,  TALEHO  =  LOATHE   —   Giving us:  VANMDYEECTLHE

Clue/Question:  When the twins played tennis, they were – – –

The US Open (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Answer:  EVENLY MATCHED

(I should have paid more attention to the score in the cartoon.  I would have gotten the answer that much quicker.  At first I was thinking the first word might be TANDEM, but that didn’t leave me with anything to work with for the second word.  Then I thought maybe TEAMED was the first word, but that only changed the remaining letters by one.  Finally, I picked up on the LY and saw EVENLY, and from there MATCHED jumped out at me.

The clue words gave me no trouble, but I was a little surprised that two of them are new!  I suspected that “reject” might be new, because I cannot remember it being used before.  But, I was relatively sure that we’d seen “loathe” before.  Apparently not.  Our friend, ralis95, will have to update his world famous clue word database!  All of today’s jumbles came up as new, for me.  As you might have guessed, I thought today’s answer letter layout was very cryptic!  It hid the answer from me very nicely.  I should’ve payed closer attention to the cartoon!  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

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Cryptoquote Spoiler – 08/20/15

Aristotle (1811) Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”   —   Aristotle

(Wow.  Those seem to be opposite ends of the spectrum.  But, maybe not.  Despite the one single letter word, I had some difficulty decoding this one.  I was fairly sure UP was “is”, and X was “a”, but I wasn’t putting it together . . . until I looked at the author’s name.  That confirmed my suspicions, and gave me enough to solve this.  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

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