An animation depicting the orbits of GPS satellites in medium Earth orbit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Visual Description: Future space junk.
CINCY = CYNIC, LEPSL = SPELL, GRULAF = FRUGAL, TIEPOT = TIPTOE — Giving us: YNCSPEFALPTOE
Clue/Question: There are more than 1000 satellites orbiting earth, because there’s – – –
Ozone cycle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Answer: PLENTY OF SPACE
(Yeah, but all those holes in the ozone layer, the thermosphere, and the exosphere, have got to be taking their toll. Right? It’s got to be the same as with drilling holes in the earth. How many holes do we think we can drill into the ground, extracting oil and natural gas, and replacing it with mostly salt water, without some kind of repercussions? There are natural fault lines throughout the U.S., but which state – without a major fault line – do you think is seeing the most earthquakes these days? It’s Oklahoma! They had more than 900 earthquakes last year. 55% more than they had in 2014. They used to average about 2 per year. They are – largely – not of the magnitude of the ones along the major fault lines, but still, they do damage, and . . . they’re just not natural. With all of our concerns for the ozone layer, already depleting for other man-made reasons, how many more man-made holes can we afford to inflict on our planet’s atmosphere? There are about a thousand active man-made satellites out there currently, but there are thousands more that are floating around out there, essentially as space junk. Sure, satellites are a very necessary part of modern life. But, doesn’t there have to be a kind of tipping point? It just seems that too much modern technology, or actually, too much of our need of/dependence on modern technology, is outpacing our planet’s ability to sustain all of these intrusions. I could go on and on, but most of you are only here for a puzzle spoiler, so I’ll stop for now.
Without further ado . . . there were no new clue words today! But two of the jumbles were new, and two were re-runs. I was able to get the first three immediately, but “tiptoe” stumped me . . . once again. With me, it’s always those compound words that trip me up. Even though I knew the spelling was incorrect, I was seeing “pottie”. Since Hoyt doesn’t inflict street talk upon us, I knew this wasn’t right. Since the final answer wasn’t all that tough, I knew I needed a T, O, P and E, so I was able to back into “tiptoe”. Even though I could figure out the answer, minus four letters, I thought it was a great answer letter layout. Nothing given away. The cartoon is great, but I was surprised to see the word “plenty” in the dialog. They should have just used LOTS! Be well and do good, friends.) — YUR
PS. Hey, Hoyt! The word POTTY is not in the ralis95 clue word database yet! — YUR
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Unclerave's Wordy Weblog 
No need to TIPTOE around it, UR. This word always requires a second glance (for me, at least) to distinguish from POTPIE (kind of like DEFACE / FACADE, discussed a few days ago). I really like the configuration of the first word. It’s *not* where the Reds and Bengals play, though a lot of sportscasters call it that!
I was surprised to see “plenty” in the cartoon too! Only FRUGAL was instant today. CYNIC took me a second. I initially typed in SLEEP before realizing that there were two Ls. TIPTOE took a couple of seconds. The final answer was obvious to me and I got it almost instantly.