The Jumble Tumble

Spoiler Alert: This blog discusses the answer to the Daily Jumble for October 15, 2013

I love solving the Daily Jumble as it appears in the Comics and Games section of The Seattle Times. However, on some days, I have a rather hard time guessing the "punny" phrase at the end - since the final set of letters can be arranged to form legit words other than the correct answer. For example, consider the Jumble that appeared on October 15, 2013

After rearranging the letters of the four jumbled up words we have

1. RODEO
2. BRISK
3. ICONIC
4. PIRACY

 This leaves us with the following 11 letters to come up with the final phrase

R, E, B, S, K, I, O, N, P, R, A

Now, if we examine the cartoon closely, we observe that the man who's touring Alcatraz seems to have has fallen down a flight of stairs and appears to be in pain. There's some lightning-type lines around his right leg. So, it's probably safe to assume that he is hurting quite bad.

Next, we note that the first word in the phrase comprises 6 letters and the second word has 5. The word "PAIN" might be a good guess but it's only 4 letters. Going off that if we were to add the letters "S", "P", and "R" in front of "PAIN" we obtain the word "SPRAIN". This seems like a great guess since its' 6 letters and fits in well with the tourist's plight. With the letters

S, P, R, A, I, N

gone, we are left with the following letters

R, O, B, K, E

The one word that jumps out given these letters is "BROKE". With this in mind, the final phrase could be

SPRAIN BROKE

But, not really. The two words make sense individually in this context but don't fit in overall.

Let's try again. Observe that if we add "N" to "BROKE" we obtain  "BROKEN" - which again seems like we're heading in the right direction. Since the man says he can't walk, it's possible that his leg is broken. So, with the letters

B, R, O, K, E, N

unavailable, we're left with this set of letters

A, P, I, R, S

now there are a couple words that can be formed with these letters. One is "PAIRS" and yet  another is "PARIS" (it's a proper noun - but anyway). Close, but no cigar. Neither of these paired up with "BROKEN" make sense.

They say third time's the charm so let's give this a final shot. Since the tourists are at Alcatraz - which is a famous jail - perhaps if we look for a synonym of this word we might finally solve the puzzle. We observe that we can indeed form the word "PRISON" with the gamut of letters at our disposal. This is exactly the word we're looking for. This leaves us with the letters

R, E, K, B, A

Previously, we used the words "BROKE" and "BROKEN". So, bearing this in mind, it seems that "BREAK" might be a good bet. Arranging these two words beside each other we have

PRISON BREAK

and this indeed the solution. Huzzah!

So, yeah, guessing the daily puzzle isn't always so straightforward. Sometimes you have to tumble first in order to Jumble!