Can you unscramble the title of this post? I couldn't, my fourth-grade daughter couldn't, and the Franklin Crossword Puzzle Solver couldn't, either...at least not until the gizmo worked through nine other jumble possibilities.
"Peomtecl." It's like you were typing really fast with your fingers on the wrong keys.
How about this word: can you get it? "Bypaolrb." Or what about this: "urosce." It isn't rescue...which was what I thought at first ... and needed. These were part of C's "SuperKids Word Scrambler" homework, and I was quickly realizing neither of us was a very super unscrambler.
C nodded in the direction of the end table, where her grandfather keeps a stash of crossword enablers. "Should we try Baba's Unscrambler?" she asked.
"It's too late to call Baba," I said, misreading her cue. "It's 9:30 in Florida and he's already in bed."
C nodded to the end table again. "No, we don't need to call him. I mean the electronic thingy he uses for crossword puzzles."
She reached beneath the table to reveal a handheld gizmo that's about the size of a Blackberry. Clearly more familiar with this little prize than I, she flipped it open and said somewhat innocently: "Look, it does jumbles, too."
To use it would be cheating...I know. It was worse than using the calculator on my cell phone to help her solve multiplication problems. It was worse than calling my FiL and asking him to do the unscrambling...But we'd been out for 13 hours due to school, after-school activities, and C's younger sister's Winter Fine Arts Show. It was getting late for honesty.
I grabbed the gizmo. "If we're going to cheat, I'm going to be the one holding the evidence," I said. I typed the letters for one of the offending jumbles: "Bypaolrb." And do you know what came up first?
"Bipolar."
Not noticing it wasn't even the correct use of letters, I exclaimed: "This can't be a word you know!" I showed the answer to C, who raised her left eyebrow in confusion (she can do a really dramatic single-raised eyebrow).
"What does it even mean?" she asked.
"It's a disease!" I said ... and didn't add: It's a disease I might be catching just this minute!
We scrolled several more words until we landed on one that made sense: Probably.
We used the Franklin Crossword Puzzle Solver to help with two more words (In C's defense, she got 17 of the 20 scrambles on her own). "Urosce" is "course." And "peomtecl" is "complete."
And now that this day is complete, I'm probably going to become bipolar, of course.
ps: it's snowing again, and really lovely.
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