Wordplay

This week’s Winning Wednesday winner is Brenda Llanas. In order to win the double prize of the Behold the Dawn keychain and Wordplay pen, she answered the multiple choice question “A destrier—a particular kind of horse—was mostly likely to be used by whom?” The correct response was B “A knight.”

Clouds drifted across the moon, besmearing peerless gold with sodden gray. Annan dismounted some two hundred paces down the shore from the women’s camp and handed his reins to Marek. “Use those sharp eyes of yours to some purpose, eh, bucko?”
“To live is to serve, Master Knight.”
“If you don’t swallow that wagging tongue you may not live.”
“A silent existence doesn’t strike me as worth the effort of keeping.”
Annan straightened his tunic and loosened the dagger at his back. “A lot of questions could be answered tonight.”
“Or else we’ll never get the chance to be asking anymore. I still say this Templar is dangerous. Holy Orders don’t go around wanting people stabbed in the back.”
“We’ll see.”
Marek started to rein the horses back. “When you get into trouble, see if you can’t give a try to getting out of it on your own, huh?”
Annan trudged through the damp sand. Waiting, feet almost in the foam of the surf, stood a man, the shrouded moon flickering against the Templar cross on his chest. Annan filled his lungs and stopped some five paces from the knight.

This week’s Winning Wednesday winner is Liberty Speidel. In order to win the Warhorse Bumper Sticker, she answered the question “In what year did Pope Innocent II ban the tourneys—the huge mock battles which were the predecessors of the slightly more civilized jousting tournaments?” The medieval Church objected to the gladiatorial tournaments much more strongly than did the secular powers, and in 1130, Pope Innocent II banned all tournaments and threatened competing knights with such dire consequences as excommunication and refusal to Christian burial should they be killed on the tourney field. Before the end of the 12th century, three more popes reissued Innocent II’s prohibition, but even the censure of the church couldn’t dim the sport’s popularity.

Annan ran a hand over the saddle, checking the Baptist’s flat-bladed sword where it lay snug in its fastenings on the near side. “Fetch the food purse.” Mairead had kept it near her during the night, and he hadn’t asked for it. What he had told her about having nothing to fear from him would sink in better if he stayed away from her.
He gave the cinch a final check and tossed another glance at the sky. With blessings from both the weather and the saints, he and the lady could be in Orleans within the month—if the horse held out that long. He patted the courser’s shoulder. The horse blew through his nostrils and tossed his head. He was a far cry from the bay destrier Annan had lost outside Acre, but then the bay’s stamina probably wouldn’t compare with the courser’s on a trek of this sort.
Without looking at him, Mairead handed him the heavy leather purse. “The horse should have a name.” It was the first offhand comment she had offered since he had met her two nights ago.

True story: Sometime last year, I encountered a man named Howard (name changed to protect the not-so-innocent) who had written a fantasy novel that he couldn’t seem to sell. And he just couldn’t understand it. “My work is 100-percent cliché free! I hate, loathe, and despise clichés. I’ve scoured my work and eliminated every single cliché. This is the most original story ever written!”

…in narration, there may be times when you need to use a familiar, pet phrase—yes, a cliché—to summarize a complicated situation. But before going with the cliché, give some thought to the possibility of “turning” it, altering it slightly to render the phrasing less familiar. In a celebrated novel we edited, the writer used the phrase “they vanished into thin air” to avoid a lengthy, complicated explanation. We suggested a change to “they vanished into thick air,” which fit the poetic, steamy atmosphere of the European city in which the scene was set.

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version.

This week’s Winning Wednesday winner is Teresa Webb. In order to win the Behold the Dawn Tote Bag, she answered the question “What did noblemen do with their trenchers—the dried bread “plates” off which they ate—when they were finished with a meal?” The correct response was B “Gave them to the poor.”

• Diners were served in a fixed order: first the visiting clergy, then the visiting nobles, then the lord and his lady, then the retainers.

• Spoons were provided by the host, but guests were expected to bring their own knives to the table (forks weren’t invented until the late fourteenth century and weren’t common until the Renaissance).

• The blessing was traditionally spoken by the youngest family member or by a visiting clergyman.

• Cucumbers, leeks, and raw fruits were avoided as unhealthy.

• Buttering one’s bread with one’s thumbs was considered bad manners.

• The two customary meals of the day were served at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

• Spoons were placed facedown “to keep out the devil.”

• Good manners dictated that one wipe one’s sticky fingers on one’s bread.

The knight’s sword struck Annan’s with all the furor of a young body and determined mind. With a flick of his wrist, Annan separated the blades even as he galloped past. The knight turned back to confront him, and he brought his sword before his face in a salute, perhaps recognizing Annan as the famed Scottish tourneyer. Then he sheathed the sword and drew, from beneath the brocade of his horse’s caparison, a new weapon. The setting sun, burning gold through the dust of the field, glinted against the iron tip of a war hammer.
Annan’s blood pumped heat into his muscles. The rules of this tourney banned the war hammer from competition; its lethal heft would crush armor and shatter flesh and bone alike. His fist tightened on his sword hilt, the leather finger of his gauntlet creaking against the steel of the crossguard. Marcus Annan wasted no mercy on duplicitous knaves.
The purple knight laid his spurs to his horse. The war hammer rose above his head, its point flashing once across the face of the dying sun. Annan charged to meet him.

This week’s Winning Wednesday winner is Mitch. In order to win the Charlemagne Sword Letter Opener, he correctly answered the question “What famous British king led the Third Crusade?”. 

A) Ate them.

Annan found an inn on the edge of town, close to the tourney, where the competitors’ gossip would be rifest. He left his horse bedded down in the stable and sought an empty table amid the shouted jests and dancing lantern shadows.
Sitting with his sword arm to the door, he nursed a pot of watered-down ale and waited until the innkeeper’s wife slid a trencher onto the table before him. “Eat hearty, luv.”
He leaned back just enough to keep out of her way and grunted his reply. The simple fare of black bread and hard cheese was hardly the best he’d seen proffered during a festival week, but as he stared at it in the wavering light, it didn’t really seem to matter. His teeth ached, and even the motion of swallowing his ale hardly seemed worth the effort.
He swirled the dregs, wondering absently how much sludge he would find in the bottom. Someone at a table behind him erupted in raucous laughter, but he afforded them not a glance. It was careless to ignore his surroundings, he knew. If he’d ever caught Marek doing the same, he’d have scalded the laddie’s ears.
But he was tired. He was losing his edge. And if that was something to be worried about, he couldn’t remember quite why.

Writing is not a visual art. It is a symphony, not an oil painting. It is the shattering, not the glass. It is the ringing, not the bell. The words you write make sounds, and when the sounds satisfy the reader’s ear, your writing works.

He motioned through the wide doorway to the sun in the front-parlor window. The sun-backed, reversed letters did form a Help Wanted sign, and along with her name and phone number she had written in bold black the position available: maid/cook.

1. 1. It means both utilizing and looking past the obvious.
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3. 2. It means a skillful use of specific nouns and vibrant verbs. The letters are “reversed” and “sun-backed.” The orange rind is “nubbly,” the fruit “opalescent beads.” The window “shatters.”

1. 1. Each Wednesday, a question related in some way to the book’s medieval theme will be posted.
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3. 2. To enter, use the form in the left-hand column to email your best guess. Deadline is Tuesday, July 7, 6:00 p.m. MST.
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5. 3. One name will be selected from the correct entries and announced the following Wednesday.
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7. 4. Feel free to enter every week!