The Weekly Whoop #2: Clue #1

Confusion is the point. There's ambiguity in the joint.

The air stinks of ambiguity

Hello, whoopers!

Let me begin the first clue for The Weekly Whoop #2 with some thoughts. They might stink of lateness and morning breath, but they are the ones I got.

I don’t remember the first time I encountered lexical ambiguity and the other ghosts that haunt riddles, but I do remember when I first heard the term lexical ambiguity.

It was on The Blacklist way back in 2014.

James Spader was working his slow charm, talking a lot of nonsense that makes sense¹. It wasn’t a departure from his work in Boston Legal, but then again, it was.

I remember it like I watched it last week (because I did). It was in the final episode of The Blacklist’s first season, Berlin: Conclusion.

Like most of the rest of the show, the episode is silly in a good way, especially the incident that evoked lexical ambiguity². Amir Arison’s character blurts out, ‘It’s a lexical ambiguity.’ That’s how I learned there’s a formal term for the thing.

The deets are these:

A villain from Russia, dubbed Berlin, is handcuffed to a guard on a prison transport plane that crashlands in the US.

Yeah, read that again.

Anyway, as the plane nosedived, Berlin wanted to free himself from the guard. So he cut his hand off.

That’s how the other prisoners on the plane, the ones who survived the plane crash, recount the incident to the FBI interrogators.

FBI folks think Berlin cut the guard’s hand off. Now, this guard is in a hospital. Cue in some confusion and then a realization of the ambiguity.

Berlin cut his own hand³ and the guy in the hospital ain’t no guard. It’s Berlin!

He cut his hand off.

Anyway, here’s the clue:

She lived in town of goat,
she had a small town home.
The real-life namesake,
she made a harey tome.

DM me for clarifications and shooting the shit.

Love,
waveman

1. They call it Redspeak after the nickname of Spader’s character, Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington. He was RRR before there was RRR.

2. Of course, there are many other instances of lexical ambiguity in The Blacklist.

3. Because that’s how they do it in Czaristan, bruv. They be all tough and shit there, and also stupid.