Quandary Resolutions by beth

• #539 submitted 01/01/2010: meticulous, vociferation, beatific, panacea

  Dr. Cozen and his patent medicine, a putative panacea alleged to cure marthambles, beriberi, scabies, lumbago, St. Vitus' dance, dropsy, and coxsackie, enjoyed beatific success until Harriet published a meticulously researched debunking (which drew little attention at first, but set off a storm of indignant vociferations from unsatisfied customers that eventually closed the bad doctor's business).

• #384 submitted 12/04/2009: savoir-faire, piffle, leviathan, gallimaufry

  "Piffle, persiflage, folderol! Just what I'd expect from Leviathan!" said Harriet irritably, her usual savoir-faire lost in the face of the Registry's refusal to renew her license -- but her gallimaufry of words only baffled the clerk, who ventured, "Ma'am ... are you calling me a whale?"

• #152 submitted 10/31/2009: draconian, fetch, lycanthropy, eke

  Harriet's draconian approach to Halloween meant no trick-or-treater escaped from her clutches without a new word: ghosts learned to call themselves fetches, werewolves became lycanthropes, and no one eked so much as a skittle from the experience.

• #146 submitted 10/30/2009: draconian, morbid, pescatarian, tenebrous

  In her seagoing days, morbid and tenebrous dreams -- which she believed were brought on by too much salt-preserved meat -- led Harriet to become a pescatarian, but when she returned to land she couldn't tolerate the draconian restrictions of that diet, so she resumed her old omnivorous ways.

• #143 submitted 10/29/2009: machiavellian, warp and woof, hobnob, stentorian

  Harriet's habit of hobnobbing with D.C. insiders turned out to be a machiavellian ploy to influence the health care debate: she'd feed them fabulous meals while delivering stentorian pitches for a public insurance option and other pet causes --members of the house one week, senators the next, then joint committee staff -- proving that she understands the warp and woof of our legislative system.

• #137 submitted 10/28/2009: manichean, gregarious, luculent, conflate

  My gregarious nature made me believe that combining our dinner parties would lead to a better time being had by all (not to mention less cooking for me), but Harriet (who tends to conflate intelligence with moral excellence) declined with a luculent tirade on her manichean theory of socializing: to wit, my friends are dull and shallow and she'd sooner invite her friends to eat with axe murderers.

• #122 submitted 10/23/2009: galumph, gimcrack, haiku, rebus

  Harriet was explaining how she'd overcome haiku's syllable limits by using rebuses in her poems when Rudi came galumphing in on a gimcrack hobbyhorse he'd found in the cellar and warned her that such chimerical submissions would never be accepted by the poetry competition.

• #113 submitted 10/21/2009: peremptory, dumbfound, quash, scuttlebutt

  Harriet made a peremptory attempt to quash the rumor about Luigi by fiat, but the scuttlebutt wouldn't be silenced so she dumbfounded everyone by telling the truth.