Some publishers are marketing condensed books for busy executives.  So how's this for a title: ASAP's Fables!

Jonathan commented:

Fun with quotation marks:

Capital "A" and "Capital A" mean two different things in the context of this old architecture diagram.  To learn the surprising answer, see my guest blog at the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.

Piecing together the secret of fire . . .


 

Theory: the Pac-Man video game was inspired by a lily pond.  The lily pads, with their triangular missing pieces pointing toward colorful flowers, inspired the munching mouth who chases ghosts.  When we flip Pac-Man art upside down, the ghost resembles a water lily blossom.

A detail of a lily pad photo from 53x.org.

A rotated detail of Pac-Man art, via.

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them?

• 7-letter words: 15
• 8-letter words: 2
• 9-letter words: 2

One 9-letter word is a fancy name for a magician, or someone who acts as an agent of the supernatural.

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

Smoke Screen

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

An ounce of ______ is worth a pound of ______.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

A unicorn in the style of the legendary Trojan Horse.

A very handsome heavy leather unicorn chamfron -- the perfect mask for an equine masquerade.

A unicorn skull found among picture frames?

Unicorn-themed color palettes from ColourLovers.com:

"Unicorn Disguised" by Qlaudia. The full palette description is here.

"I Was Born a Unicorn" by Gabr!ella. The full palette description is here.

"Purple Unicorn" by Peachbelle. The full palette description is here.

Piecing together the secret of Fatima . . .


 

Smiling

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them?

• 7-letter words: 7
• 8-letter words: 3

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused. One of the 8-letter words refers to bright patches of color.

Click to display solutions

The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar spotlighted Hamilton, the only city in the United States to legally have an exclamation mark attached to its name.  The scalawags at SPOGG suggested adding a question mark after Newark.  Here are my own punctuation-city suggestions:

• Boston— (that's a long dash, in honor of the marathon)
• {Las Vegas} (with braces, because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas)
• Colonial. Williamsburg ("Colonial period Williamsburg")
• &over, MA
  

What's the difference between collage artists and stamp collectors? Not a lick!

The other day someone laughed when I nonchalantly described a miniature trellis as being ten clipboards high.  I responded that, as a writer, it's only natural for me to define space in 8 1/2 x 11 inch units (though to use longer units would certainly be legal)!

Piecing together the secret of fate . . .


 

The trapping of garden gnomes is ignoble.

Gnomic genomes?  The picture explains everything!

Here's a fire hydrant gnome.

Do gnomes grow on trees?  Lauri Gröhn offers proof!

What's under a gnome's pointed red hat?

The Gnome Pebble, discovered by Nicolas P. Rougier, preserves a gnome's footprint.

Plaster gnome Danny will never be the same after taking a tumble down a stairway.  He was left tragically shattered down one side of his body, and his face and ear took a direct hit.

A lovely limestone gnome by Dan Brandemuehl.  And one in red cedar by Ray Brooks.

Gnomes placed in out-of-service urinals?

Sleeping with the Enemy

Q: Magicians famously work with doves and rabbits, but which animal invariably gets blamed whenever something goes wrong?

A: The escape-goat.

By the way, never put a goat in charge of the lights.

Here's a goat street performer, from Stories about Animals: With Pictures to Match, by Francis C. Woodworth, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Here's a goat screwing up the "walking through a mirror" illusion, from The Child's World by Hetty S. Browne, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Unicornisaurus Rex!

A hand-forged baby unicorn shoe.

A unicorn peacock.

"Unicorn with sunbeams" mosaic bollard

The "super magical unicorn no. 1" envelope art.

Sculptor Edward Netley makes amazing wireframe unicorns for the garden, each leaping over a fence.  They require eight weeks of twisting to take final form.  Regarding one of his sculptures, he explains: "A unicorn is not ridden! It allows one to participate in the ride. The elf shown here is barely balanced as the unicorn jumps the fence. A slight twist of the hind quarters is all that keeps the elf from falling to the ground."

The unicorn king coin by the British Royal Mint.

Unicorn-themed color palettes from ColourLovers.com:

"Unicorn Soup" by Kimib. The full palette description is here.

"The Unicorn is Dead" by Prettyghost. The full palette description is here.

"Awkward Unicorn" by Trademarkrain. The full palette description is here.

Piecing together the secret of fascination . . .


 

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them?

• 7-letter words: 9
• 8-letter words: 2

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused. One of the 7-letter words refers to cheerful symbols best viewed sideways.

Click to display solutions

What's the dirtiest water sport on earth?  Bog snorkeling!  Every year, a host of mud-caked competitors get at loggerheads in a sixty-yard peat bog for the coveted "World Champion Bog Snorkeler" title.  The international sporting event takes place every August in the dense Waen Rhydd Peat bog on the southern outskirts of the smallest town in Wales, Llanwrtyd Wells in Powys Mid Wales.

World Bog Snorkeling Championships.

The invisible revealed:

The invisible butterfly's wings are like stained glass windows.  (Much prettier than the transparent yellow-green soybean aphid, unless you happen to be a fan of the transparent yellow-green soybean aphid.)

Light from an invisible lamp.

Would "caller i.d." help with this invisible telephone user?

A costume headpiece that makes one's face invisible.  And another one (with glowing eyes).

Do invisible birds and unseen enemies cast shadows?

This invisible mother and child are part of the Salvation Army's "Invisible People" campaign.

The office hold-music spirit at work.  Cartoon courtesy of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

mosaic law (not Mosaic Law)

Silk Trap, Baited With a Woman

I dreamed I had the worst case of Semicolon Cancer in recorded history.

Later, I dreamed my playground had been taken over by miscreant semicolons.

Piecing together the secret of the forest . . .


 

Enigmatic smiles:

Figure 1 (obviously)
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Silence

Piecing together the secret of the emperor . . .


 

Do you know the secret teaching of the Buddha's enigmatic smile? Hint: Hold the image up to a mirror. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Showing Up Early/Unexpectedly

Two distinguished gentlemen riding a unicorn, by artist Michael C. Hsiung.

This man is a unicorn (and he couldn't be happier about it)!

A unicorn gargoyle at the castle-like Casa Loma in Toronto, and a desktop unicorn gargoyle.

Another view of Unicorn Peak and Mount Althuski from the summit of Cockscomb.

Is this where unicorns go when they die?  The Unicorn Cemetery.

A faerie riding a unicorn.

Unicorn-themed color palettes from ColourLovers.com:

"Unicorn" by BangBang. The full palette description is here.

"Fairy on a Unicorn" by Just Me. The full palette description is here.

"Lady & Unicorn" by Amael. The full palette description is here.

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them?

• 7-letter words: 12
• 8-letter words: 2

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

"Did a blurred view of the moon influence the smile of the Mona Lisa?" asks artist David Dodson.

The answer is yes! We put together this animation to show how the craters of a blurry harvest moon perfectly line up with the eyes, nose, cheek bones, and enigmatic smile of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

Ronan suggests, "So maybe the real question is ... what is the moon smiling at, eh?"




Derek Bair writes:

Sara Soares writes:

Omg!  I saw the moon last night and had never thought about it before. This is the first time to see your post.  But I was thinking the same thing.  Actually, Moon is "Luna" in Italian, but I was thinking he was playing with the words.  I don't know, maybe Lona Misa?  That's really far-fetched, but I know back then to paint a smile was "provocative" in that time, and they don't know who that picture was based on.  Leonardo was an out of the box thinker and if there is a possibility that's a self portrait of him, I think there is a possibility that it's the moon he drew.

The philosophy department at my university was so small it didn't have a chair.  Of course, the department did have the Platonic ideal of a chair.

By the way, here's a picture of someone sitting on one of Plato's chairs.  This blue chenille chair came up in my search for Plato's chair, but I doubt its authenticity.

Piecing together the secret of the Eleusinian Mysteries . . .


 

Graphic designer Paulus Bommarito "is part of a small but growing group of sun-gazers in metro Atlanta.  They are disciples of Hira Ratan Manek, a retired spice trader from India who says staring at the sun improves mental and physical health. Called HRM by his followers, Manek says he has rediscovered a practice used by many ancient cultures, from Greeks to Native Americans.  Manek, 70, advocates staring at the sun only near sunrise and sunset. Start with just 10 seconds, he says, and add 10 seconds each time.  He says sun gazing suppresses hunger and has allowed him to go more than a year without eating solid foods." —"Sun-Gazers" Praise Rays, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Saint Probat
Patron of the Exception that Proves the Rule.

Saint Probat sees to it that not all good things must come to an end.  She preaches against burning books, though abhors the idea of wasting good fire.  She is beloved by those who joke about their own race.  She ruled over Liam Neeson's thick German accent in Schindler's List.  She oversees sumo wrestling, Neapolitan Mastiffs, and celebrities who confess that they have developed schizophrenia.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Showing Someone Else’s Credentials

Hard science: diamond fabrication

Soft science: measuring zero decibel sounds

Soggy science: the study of deep sea sponges

Slippery science: Teflon

Piecing together the secret of Easter Island . . .


 

The phrase "replicable randomness" returns no Google results.  (At least not until the Google spiders find this blog entry.)

Musician 1 asks: B-double-flat ... why not A?

Musician 2 answers: A B-flat value is depressed.

Musician 1 retorts: You touch the A key.

Musician 2 concludes: Mechanical coincidence!

*From the cult BBC science fiction film Artemis 81 by David Rudkin.

Showing It to Someone New

Piecing together the secret of the earth . . .


 

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

I just got an e-mail from an author in the Netherlands who is completing his Dutch dictionary of one-letter words.  Stage Two of the Global Initiative has begun!

Q: What kind of calligraphy is so beautiful that it makes people swear in amazement?

A: Cursive.

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them?

• 7-letter words: 11
• 8-letter words: 8
• 9-letter words: 1

The 10-letter word involves turning a horse.

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions