Visual Description: Excavating for a mine?
PARTUB = ABRUPT, XREEIP = EXPIRE, THIGCL = GLITCH, TONGET = GOTTEN, GELUNF = ENGULF, DOHSAW = SHADOW — Giving us: PTEPIGIHGTNGUSAD
Clue/Question: The archaeologists once dated and couldn’t help – – –
Pre-Answer: Four Words (7-letters) (2-letters) (3-letters) (4-letters)
Answer: DIGGING UP THE PAST
(Wow! Quite a site. I guess they both had a lot of dirt on each other. The strata of their earlier relationship seemed to be full of shards of painful memories. And, it doesn’t look like they’re willing to bury the hatchet.
All of today’s clue words are old favorites. Five of the jumbles did come up as new though. They have definitely used “partub” before. The answer letter layout was a rare find! I thought that DIGGING was pretty well hidden. But, whenever there is a P and a U in the answer letter layout, and one of the answer word slots is two letters, UP is almost always a given. And of course, the clue/question and the great cartoon led me to uncovering the answer. Great cartoon of Mediterranean ruins. Greek, or Roman? A little hard to tell which. Be well and do good, friends.) — YUR
Unclerave's Wordy Weblog 
Couldn’t get ENGULF, not even backing into it. DIGGING seemed to be obvious to me. After stepping away, I got the rest of the answer, but not clue word Engulf…. 😦
I totally understand, Damid, and I would have FLUNG it aside, too, except that it now turns up all the time on TEXT TWIST 2, a silly scrambled-letter video game that I play in spare time, so I no longer feel SWAMPED by it.
ENGULF was not easy. GOTTEN had me a bit stymied. I had GOTTEN but thought it was not a word. I looked it up in my handy dandy Franklin Spelling Ace and it came up GET. So, I figured GOTTEN was a tense of GET. But, still was not convinced. I studied the puzzle and figured out the answer with the letters I had. And GOTTEN fit, so I stuck with it. LL
Oops ! Forgot. Unc., great dig pictures! LL