Three Puzzlers
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner, Wayno. You can read Wayno’s weekly blog post here and I highly recommend it.
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Good moment to you, Jazz Pickles. Wayno and I appreciate your dropping by to look at our cartoons and we hope we can provide you with some chuckles today. Here’s the answer key to the Secret Symbols in the above cartoon.
Today’s Sunday cartoon (above) is perhaps the tenth or twelfth edition of this unusual word puzzle format that my good friend, Cliff Harris The King of Wordplay devised. SPOILER ALERT: The answers to the three puzzles above are in bold at the end of this little mini-essay.
Instructions for solving this kind of puzzle are in the banner at the top of the cartoon above. It’s the same as William Steig’s children’s book, C D B!, published in 1968. Cliff’s version has taken the motif to a new level with much more complex sentences. He even wrote a fairly long story in this form once, which made my brain melt inside my skull and I had to have it professionally cleaned.
For many people, this type of puzzle is aggravatingly confounding while others figure them out immediately. If you find them crazy and frustrating, you may discover that if you spend a few minutes acquainting yourself with how it works, your brain may suddenly get the hang of it and you’ll be off and running with a big, proud smile on your face. They’re a lot of fun once you crack the code. (For what it’s worth, they didn’t come easily to me at first, either, but some patient explaining by Cliff got me past the block. Now I love them!)
ADDITIONAL, DIFFERENT SPOILER ALERT: Regarding today’s puzzle, I’ll give you an extra hint that may clarify the trick a bit. In the middle, yellow puzzle, you are meant to match the geographic place names on the left with their maps on the right. On #1, you solve it by pronouncing the name of the letter or symbol, then thinking of it as a syllable. C(see) @(at) L(el). Seattle.
I call Cliff the King of Wordplay because we’ve been friends for ages and he has donated dozens of very surprising and clever puns and other types of wordplay to Bizarro over the years. (Below are two of my faves.)
Cliff’s designation as king of it is in no way meant to diminish Wayno’s considerable abilities in this field. Personally, I think of Wayno as the Emporer of Wordplay from an adjacent empire.
PUZZLE ANSWERS:
Left: window says, “A tattoo for you.” Arm says, “A tattoo.”
Middle: 1. Seattle (e) 2. Hawaii (a) 3. Aegean Sea (b) 4. Yucatan (f) 5. Kuwait (c) 6. Illinois (d)
Right: “Do you have a recipe for a seasick sailor?” “Yes. An eel, a sea anemone, and Imodium.”
Now that our brains have been whisked, let’s pour the frothy mixture onto Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…
Next, he’ll want to be excused from tap dancing.
Wayno’s blog post this week is particularly interesting. It features some vintage art from his underground art days, discusses how poorly the rules of transformative fair use are understood by all-too-many Internet users, and his weekly “pipe pic” is not to be missed!
Here’s an example of a youngster who has a poor understanding of transformative fair use and later made millions from it. (As explained in Wayno’s post this week.)
We all wish more Americans were into symbolic violence these days.
In truth, lemmings do not jump off of cliffs en masse and Teds do not talk.
FINAL SPOILER ALERT: the secret symbol you can’t find in that last cartoon is the crown at the bottom of the fancy tea cup. Don’t shake your fist at me, blame Wayno.
That steamin’ cup o’ joe signals the end of our humorous tea party, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for sticking around until the crumpet crumbs were swept up. If you like what we do and appreciate we offer it for free, without clickbait or ads, please consider thanking us with a little something via the links below. I’ll thank you out loud when I see your name in the email notification.
Until next time, remember that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, etc…
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels