LAGCN = CLANG

RYERB = BERRY

FEYAST = SAFETY

SPIOME = IMPOSE

CARTOON ANSWER:

QUESTIONING THE DOG ABOUT THE RIPPED-UP NEWSPAPER WAS – – –

CLRRAETIOE = “RE-TORE-ICAL”

Happy Thursday, Jumble friends! Today’s puzzle is all about the cartoon and its challenging surprise answer. I’ll skip my usual rundown of the words and just go ahead and pick IMPOSE as the most difficult anagram of the day.

The setting for the panel is rather basic. We see a man and a woman in an ordinary looking living room where they discover a torn up mess on the floor. The culprit is a dog and he looks as though he’s been in this situation many times before. The woman is asking her pooch a question as if the evidence of a torn up newspaper might elicit some kind of a response. The dog can obviously sense her ire and he opts to hunker down on the floor instead.

The man can be seen on one knee and he’s holding a single scrap of newspaper. With a smile on his face he informs the woman that the dog managed to keep the Jumble puzzle intact which adds some levity to an otherwise tense situation. If you look closely at the tiny scrap of paper you just might be able to see that it’s actually the same Jumble that we’re doing today! I have no idea how Jeff can draw such a tiny cartoon within an already small cartoon and it just blows my mind. The detail work on his drawings is absolutely stunning and this fine example proves that he’s the most talented artist the Jumble has ever had. Period.

The final solution was an absolute brain buster and it took me quite a while to figure out. Looking at the combination of letters that the clue words provided didn’t give me any clear starting point so I began reading the dialogue and sentence over and over again. It finally came to me that the woman was asking a rhetorical question and some self-jumbling got me on the right path. Don’t feel bad if you weren’t able to pull this one off because the Jumble is rarely this difficult. Have a terrific Thursday, and I’ll see you tomorrow!