Machiavelli was instaget. Didn't have any backup thoughts. I see the sense in guessing Martin Luther, though he wouldn't have tempted me away from the correct response.
Tuesday's clue found my mind working the way it's supposed to on these things. I started with the connection between nutrition and health and came up with "You are what you eat". I liked that ok except that it didn't seem to have anything to do with fruit. As I brainstormed connections between nutrition and health that involve fruit, the correct sentence-phrase came to mind.
Wednesday found my mind working the way it's
not supposed to but often does. I got tangled up in the clue and thought, like Casey and Matt, that they wanted the English month name that corresponded to what they were talking about. I spent the rest of my time trying to decide if July or August would work better. When Mrs P announced her guess, I knew she was right. This clue kept me from checking the box of glory.
Biathlon came to me pretty quickly and made perfect sense. No chance I would've misspelled it, especially not in a way that would have cost me the get. I was a little surprised they negged Tyler's response. I remembered that "penthathalon" had been accepted previously, but couldn't recall if it was in an FJ or if it was merely the
pronunciation that had been okayed. Arguably, there shouldn't be a difference between accepting the spelling and the pronunciation. But practically, it can be hard to tell if someone inserted the schwa if they keep it short.
I argued in favor of the original "pentathalon" ruling on the grounds that this spelling arguably led to the correct pronunciation in a way that the correct spelling does not:
opusthepenguin wrote: ↑Wed Jun 05, 2013 9:33 pm"Pentathlon" looks like it should be pronounced PENT-uh-thlon. The actual pronunciation has a different emphasis that is very difficult to render without tossing in a schwa right after the "-ath". It's pronounced pen-TATH-uh-lon, with a very short length to the "uh". "Pentathalon" is not an unreasonable phonetic rendering. I wasn't at all surprised they accepted it and felt they were right to do so.
I would make the same argument for "biathalon" and feel they should have accepted it. I think some of the best arguments for accepting pentathalon (and by extension biathalon) were made in the infamous emanciptation game thread. To wit:
seaborgium wrote: ↑Thu Aug 01, 2013 11:44 amI was okay with the "pentathalon" ruling because the way we pronounce L is frequently identical to the way we pronounce schwa-L, especially when the L becomes its syllable's only vowel. And it often does that when preceded by a consonant that doesn't accompany it at the beginning of any English word. So people pronounce "tri-a-thl-on" and then add a traditional vowel for that schwa sound they're making. (This goes a long way to explain why "pentathalon" was acceptable but apparent equivalent "
Saragasso" was not.)
and
davey wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:02 pm
Would you neg "
Katherine" or "
Katharine Bigelow"? The director's name is
Kathryn...."Pentathlon"'s variable iteration is similar. I can't think of a parallel for "Sargasso."
I expect this to change the minds of all right-thinking people who have hitherto been opposed to the acceptance of pentathalon and biathalon.
For Friday's get, I'll just repeat what I said in the game thread:
opusthepenguin wrote: ↑Sun Oct 10, 2021 2:51 pm
I started with kangaroo, then wondered about narwhal. Then I keyed in on the category and switched back to kangaroo. (When are they going to start putting the category name above the clue again?) 1799 would've been way too late for an early European narwhal sighting anyway. Once back in the southern hemisphere, I realized duck-billed platypus worked better and I vaguely recalled the anecdote related in the clue. Happened fast enough that I had plenty of time to mentally cross out kangaroo and write the full correct response. I'm glad we got confirmation that "platypus" was sufficient, but in my mind I wrote the whole thing. A quick google suggests there's only one kind of platypus, so no need to BMS but no penalty for BMSing either.
For the India bay I "rang in" thinking Bombay but switched to Bay of Bengal by the time I was ready to speak. For Obama, I clammed but would've said "Leakey". I was fixated on the anthropologist angle. I was familiar with the story of Chaplin, Pickford (who hated Chaplin), and others forming United Artists.
Came up with Winston Smith and guffawed at the Harry Potter guesses though in retrospect I see why the contestants went there. I wasn't sure if Dean was enough and was able to add Wormer so I did so. I've never seen a live platypus. I hope some day to see one. You can finish the poem yourself if you want.