Jumble

Jumble

The Daily Jumble Puzzle had two words this week that stumped me. Today's was TAIGEY. I struggled with it for a while, but finally resorted to using the dictionary (a real bound paper one) and discovered that unscrambled it becomes GAIETY. Not a word that gets used much anymore on account of "gay" being usurped by the alternately sexed. Too bad they couldn't have made up a new word instead of stealing a perfectly good old one.

The other day RAMER gave me trouble. I also resorted to the dictionary for this one, but could not find anything that would work. I eventually resorted to using ARMER, as in surely someone uses his arms is arming and is an armer. To my chagrin the actual word is REARM. I needed the first, middle and last letter to solve the quip, and you will note that those three letters in both cases are RAM.

To use the dictionary to decode a Jumble, I arrange the letters in alphabetically order, and then start looking for the first two letter combination, and then going on to three or however many it takes to rule it out. Then we go to the next, which means the first and third letters, and so on through the first and last. Then we go to second and third, and so on and so forth. It's tedious, and little time consuming, but if my brain won't deliver the answer, it's my only hope. And as illustrated here, it doesn't always work.

Update December 2016 replaced missing image.