Jumble This: MERITSLOD

David and I know that we are officially old and boring when one of the highlights of our evening is crawling into bed and doing our version of "Got It Crossword" and a Jumbler puzzle or two. (The other highlight involves judging American Idol.) The Jumblers are the puzzles found in newspapers, like USA Today, where you unscramble four words and then use specific letters from those words to unscramble the final puzzle. And, "Got It Crossword" is our safe version of doing a crossword puzzle where one person can't just shout out the answer...we wait until we both know it (or both don't, which is sometimes the case) until we say it out loud. We do the "Got It" with a number of our trivia games that we enjoy...the Will Shortz Puzzlemaster books being our personal favorites for road trips.

So, last night, after completing our crossword puzzle and first Jumbler puzzle (in record time), we decided to do another jumbler. Our first challenge was to unscramble JOING. For the life of us, we could NOT figure out what word that was supposed to be. We finished the other words and I made David look in the back of the book to find the answer....JINGO. Who in the world has ever heard of a jingo (well, except for you, Marissa)?? I asked David if he had ever heard of it and he got all flustered, saying, "I know what it is, I just can't think of one...oh, wait, I've got one," and then he proceeded to sing, "G.E. We bring good things to life!" in the cheeriest tone I've ever heard. I barely had the heart to tell him that, no, that was a jingle, not a jingo!

I discovered today that a jingo is a "person who professes his or her patriotism loudly and excessively, favoring vigilant preparedness for war and an aggressive foreign policy." Thank you dictionary.com!

Oh, and today's Jumbler answer: Old Timers!