This Week on Koble: Mar 20-26
Four picks from seven puzzles this week. liz rewrote Dylan Thomas, sam wrote a midnight text, Kirsty McLean closed a door, and babylonia turned thirty in the dark.
Koble #27: Green and Golden
Use no more than 9 words.
Source: Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill" (1945)
When the source text is Dylan Thomas, most people write Dylan Thomas back at you. "Happy and golden." "Young and easy." "The sun was lovely." Hard to blame anyone. The man wrote sentences you want to live inside.
liz kept the Thomas words but ended somewhere he never went. "All his." Those two words aren't next to each other in the original. She put them there and the whole sentence tipped over.
Before "all his," it's someone remembering who they used to be. After it, it's someone admitting who they used to be for. Young and easy and lovely, but not for herself. The comma is where the sentence pivots. Everything before it is the story you tell people. Everything after it is the one you don't.
Koble #28: The Wolves
End with 'you.'
Source: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (2000)
I keep coming back to "worth repeating." It means these are the stories that get told more than once. To friends. To yourself at 2am. And the only ones worth retelling are about the leaving. Not the good parts. Not the love. Just the getting out.
Nine words and you know exactly who sam was talking to.
Koble #32: Four O'Clock
Your writing must include 'light.'
"Bruised light." Afternoon light that's already going. "A deliberate door closes." Not slammed, not left open. Chosen. And then "nobody holds her" at the end, quiet, almost an afterthought. She closed the door on purpose. The emptiness on the other side, she didn't choose that part.
Koble #34: Earth Hour
Say it in 7 words or fewer.
This one made me laugh and then it didn't.
The puzzle is about Earth Hour. Lights off, sitting in the dark, the building breathing. babylonia ignored all of that and wrote about aging. "Turned thirty," not turned off the lights. And "lit a candle" works for both a birthday and a blackout. It's one of those sentences where you can't tell if it's celebrating or mourning, and I think that's the whole point of turning thirty.
A new puzzle drops every morning on Koble. Play today's and your sentence might end up here next week.