Visual Description: A miner concern.
UGOBS = BOGUS, YKALE = LEAKY, RUPINT = TURNIP, BTEEAD = DEBATE — Giving us: BOGLARNIDEE
Clue/Question: They examined the wall in the new gold mine and discovered it was – – –
Answer: “LODE“-BEARING
(A swell pun! And, not the most obvious of answers. The four clue words came very quickly, but the final solution did not exactly leap off the page for me. I even gave it to my daughter and her boyfriend, but they couldn’t get it. They were locked into the first word being GOLD, even though I told them that the guys rarely, if ever, use a word in the clue/question, or the cartoon’s dialog, if it’s part of the answer. I finally saw the answer . . . after I took the newspaper into the reading room.
All of today’s clue words are familiar old friends, yet all of their jumbles appear to be new. The answer letter layout was the toughest of the jumbles. It didn’t give away a thing! The quotation marks were the big clue, for me. “Hitting the mother lode” is an expression rooted in the mining of gold.
Great mining cartoon. Gold is a mineral that we humans have put far too much stock in, over the course of human history. So many diverse civilizations have coveted gold, but I don’t know why, or how, it all came to be. But, we still value it to this day. Maybe, someone can tell us the story of gold? Be well and do good, friends.) — YUR
Images courtesy of Google
Unclerave's Wordy Weblog 
Went down the GOLD hole too. But nothing was working out. Then I went for an ING word and, because of the “shoring up,” I found BEARING kinda quick. LODE followed suit.
Hope all y’all had nice Thanksgivings! Ours was a very nice time with family at the beach. LL