Visual Description: It’s just a dimple!
ODYIL = DOILY, DUFIL = FLUID, RHYOTN = THORNY, GANDOR = DRAGON — Giving us: DIFUITONDGN
Clue/Question: He had the small dent in his wife’s car repaired to keep her from – – –
Answer: “FIND–DING“ OUT
(Sum-Ding funny about this! It’s a very stinky pun! But, that’s what we love about the Jumble.
There were no new words today. It’s definitely been a while since we’ve seen “doily” and “thorny” though. Two of the jumbles appear to be new, but I know we’ve seen “dufil” and “gandor” sometime in the past. The answer letter layout was a dandy eleven letter jumble. I thought it was nicely cryptic. The quotation marks and the dash were very big clues to the final answer. Two days in a row for that!
Great cartoon of a car in a body shop. It looks like it could be a Lexus RC, which is a sweet little coupe. But, it could also be a Jumble coupe! Be well and do good, friends.) — YUR
Images courtesy of Google
Very difficult solve for me. I was racking my brains out trying to figure out what the three letter word could be. Of course,compounding matters I had the first word as IDOLY which gave me and I and O in the solution. When I realzed idoly wa not correct,things came together. Have a good weekend YUR.
I sent this puzzle to a lady friend of mine. She got doily correct however she had the third word as rhyton. Google search confirmed rhyton is a word. I told her the word hoyt wanted so she could solve the puzzle
A bang-up job today from our puzzlers. I liked this one. It felt original. I always like invented words made from two real words in the final answer, not easy to do always, but worked well here.
Wow, Randy! I have to hand it to you, and by extension to your lady friend, of course. I could conceivably see an argument for “rhyton” not being a “common” word. As a matter of fact, WordPress has flagged it as a misspelling! BUT, after looking it up myself, and seeing that the word – which is not a proper name, scientific/medical term, or an otherwise specialized word – is carried in just about all of the major dictionaries! AND, none of them label the word as “archaic”, which has also been used as a dis-qualifier. So, I think that David L. Hoyt might want to reconsider the legitimacy of “thorny” as a valid Jumble clue word.
I love stuff like this! Thank you, and your lady friend, Randy.
— YUR
I thought so too, David! I would have written more on it, but I was tired out from a day of watching football Wildcard Playoff games! — YUR
What Randy’s talking about does happen occasionally in Jumble regular words. If you ran ralis95’s list through on online anagram solver, you’d see a number of words that have alternate solutions found in fat dictionaries. This usually isn’t a problem, because with most such alternates, most solvers be like “I’m sorry, what? That’s a word??”
The puzzle design standard here is that if there’s one common solution with an alternate uncommon solution, such as THORNY and rython, THORNY remains fair game for Jumble as a regular word. I think that standard is reasonable, though locking on the uncommon word can be a rabbit hole that blocks a solver from the finding the final answer, as may have happened here with Randy’s friend. Elite Scrabble players could have trouble with Jumble.
If there are two or more common word solutions to an anagram, then you can still see one of those used in a Jumble final answer, but you won’t see either used as a regular word. Some examples of these include course/source, credit/direct, dearth/thread, and portal/patrol. I think there is a threesome out there that I’ve run into, but I can’t recall it right now.
I think that “occasionally” is a fairly generous assertion, David. And, words like “thorny” and “rhyton” are pretty rare, anagram-wise. I think it all goes to how broad, or narrow, David L. Hoyt’s definition of what a “common word” is. Personally, I can’t say I’ve ever heard the word rhyton used before, so it’s definitely not common to me! But, my general guide has always been what I laid out in my reply to Randy.
But, I thoroughly enjoyed your take on the subject!
— YUR