Posted July 30, 2013.

I have found that students enjoy the Daily Jumble.

The Daily Jumble for July 30 2013 is on line; if you are reading this on another day, go to the archive (under the cartoon) and select July 30.

Get Jumble

You will have to tolerate a 30 second commercial. You can solve the puzzle with logic and permutations and a few rules about letter frequency in English. We will develop these techniques as we go along and collect them in one place. Today, and for a few days, I will give solving hints and then, I will post the Jumble on one day and solving hints the next. If you get the answer yourself, just by looking at it, you can skip this:

These are the puzzle words:

KLISY
YEHAV
DISGIN
LAFNEL

and the picture shows a woman varnishing a table, she says "one more coat will do it" and the caption is: "She would apply coats of varnish until the table was ________" There are 8 caption spaces.

First rule: Y often occurs at the end of a word. So stick Y at the end and you have:

_ _ _ _ Y and KLIS left over. There are three consonants, SLK and there are reasonable six permutations of three things three at a time:

KLS KSL SLK SLK LSK LKS with an I. If you sound out the consonants, SLK sounds like "silk" so you get SILKY. SI are circled, so now the caption looks like:

SI  _ _ _ _ _ _ with 6 more letters to go.

For YEHAV, put the Y at the end and you have EHAVY. This just looks like HEAVY, H and E are circled, so caption becomes SIHE _ _ _ _ with four letters to go.

Skip to LAFNEL. There are four consonants LFNL and there are 24 permutations of 4 things 4 at a time. This is awkward, but observe that LL is a frequent double consonant. So try:

FNLL and AE left over. One permutation is FLLN which sounds like "fallen;", we have an E and EN is a frequent word ending, so we have FALLEN. F and N are circled, giving a caption of SIHEFN_ _, two letters to go.

In DISGIN, we have ING, which is a frequent word ending. So, rearrange to DIS ING and DIS is left over. There are 6 permutations of DIS and we get:

DISING DSIING IDSING ISDING SDIING SIDING, the last is the only English word. I and D are circled, so now the caption is SIHEFNID, 8 letters. ED is a frequent word ending, re-arrange to:

SIHFN ED. Now, SH is a frequent consonant pair, so try six permutations of FNSH, the very first,
FNSH ED with the left over I suggests FINISHED, which with "She would apply coats of varnish until the table was" FINISHED is the caption.

Note that the caption is a word-play: "Finished" can mean "completed" or "a surface coating."

------------------------------------------------------
Methods that often help:

Letters and letter combinations that often occur at the end of words: Y, ED, ING.

If there are 3 consonants in a word, there are six permutations: for example, WXZ, WZX, XWZ, XZW, ZWX and ZXW.

If there are 4 consonants in a word, try consonant pairs such as LL or SH, if available.

More to follow.