Are you ready to Jummmbbbllleee?

"Would you like to play the Jumble with us?" Mom asked. (My parents play the Jumble from the newspaper every day.)

"Mm, I'll stay for 1 word." For me, the Jumble is generally a source of great frustration or great victory. There is not often any middle ground as I try to rearrange groups of letters into "everyday" words. I do it in my head so rearranging letters and remembering them correctly can be a challenge.

Dad read off 6 letters, a bit too fast and all at once as usual.

I repeated the letters in my mind while my eyes tracked from up left to up right as though I were reading them. Without rearranging the letters I just saw the word and exclaimed, "Got it!" while swinging both of my arms up and throwing the goat (throwing goats?).

After a minute, Mom said, "Got it."

"I want to say it."

Dad said, "I haven't gotten it yet."

"That's OK, I just want to say it once you have."

"You got that really fast," said Mom.

"Well, I think I've got it right." I hadn't checked the Jumble letters against the word I came up with, I just trusted my initial reaction was right. (Sometimes I'm a letter off.) At this point I couldn't repeat the original disordered sequence of letters. I just knew there were two C's and an O.

Dad said, "Got it."

I said, "Scorch."

"Very good," Mom added. Victory confirmed, woo!

"I think I was primed for it by the Comic-Con coverage I watched this weekend."


A year ago on TTaT: Life of Art SitRep #75 ZPro!