Remember Junior Jumble? This was one of those little newspaper features that could keep you busy almost as long as the comics!
Jumble itself dates all the way back to 1954, when the word game originally appeared as Scramble. Henri Arnold and Bob Lee later took over, and a kid-friendly Junior Jumble followed. The idea was simple: unscramble the words, take the letters from the circled boxes, then use the cartoon clue to figure out the final joke.
This particular one is especially neat because it’s from July 4, 1976 — the Bicentennial. Naturally, George Washington was the subject, with the final answer playing off the old legend that Washington could never tell a lie.
I also love the way they hid the answer at the bottom. Instead of simply turning the newspaper upside down, you had to hold it up to a mirror to read it. I have to admit, looking up those answers so many times as a kid is probably how I taught myself to read backwards!
And Jumble didn’t disappear with the newspapers of our childhood. It’s still being published today, with the children’s version now known as Jumble for Kids.
How many of you used to grab a pencil and try to solve Junior Jumble before looking at the answer?
