a good theme for lying

The Art of Deception: 30 Metaphors for Lying

In our daily interactions, the truth often gets twisted, bent, and sometimes even broken. Metaphors for lying are not just linguistic tools but windows into understanding how deception is woven into the fabric of communication.

They reflect the creativity, complexity, and sometimes the artistry behind the act of deceiving. In this article, we’ll dive deep into some of the most colorful and insightful metaphors for lying, exploring their meanings and seeing them come to life in sentences.

Lying is like weaving a tangled web of deceit, with each false word adding another thread. If you want to discover more similes related to lying, you can check out this resource: Similes for Lying . Additionally, if you’re interested in idioms associated with lying, you can explore them here: Idioms for Lying .

What is a Metaphor for Lying?

Before we embark on our exploration of metaphors for lying, let’s clarify what a metaphor actually is. A metaphor is a figure of speech where a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

English Language Level Placement Test – (TEFL)

Can you pass our Language Test?

Pass and receive an “ English Language Level Placement ” certificate.

What is a simile?

Identify the simile in the following sentence: “She swims like a fish.”

What is a metaphor?

Which of the following is a metaphor?

What is an idiom?

What does the idiom “break the ice” mean?

What is an adjective?

Choose the adjective in the following sentence: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

What is an abbreviation?

What does the abbreviation “e.g.” stand for?

What is a verb?

Identify the verb in the following sentence: “The cat sleeps on the sofa.”

“Out of the frying pan into the fire” is an example of:

Which of the following is an adjective?

The abbreviation “NASA” stands for:

Choose the metaphor in the following sentence: “Time is a thief.”

What does the idiom “hit the books” mean?

Which of the following sentences contains a simile?

“LOL” is an abbreviation for:

Identify the verb in this sentence: “They whispered secrets into the night.”

Enter your name and email to receive your certificate.

Your score is

The average score is 12%

Restart quiz

In the context of lying, metaphors often involve imagery or concepts that suggest deceit, concealment, or distortion of the truth. They offer a creative way to understand and describe the act of not telling the truth.

Here’s a summarized table of the metaphors for lying, including their meanings and usage in a sentence:

This table encapsulates the metaphors for lying with their meanings and contextual usage.

Metaphors for Lying

1. spinning a web of deceit.

Meaning: This metaphor suggests a deliberate and intricate creation of lies, similar to a spider weaving its web.

In a Sentence: He was adept at spinning a web of deceit, ensnaring everyone in his elaborate lies.

2. Wearing a Mask

Meaning: This implies hiding one’s true intentions or feelings behind a façade.

In a Sentence: Throughout the negotiation, she was wearing a mask, concealing her real agenda.

3. Telling a Tall Tale

Meaning: This refers to creating a story that is highly exaggerated or completely fabricated.

In a Sentence: The fisherman was famous for telling tall tales about his catches.

4. Playing a Double Game

Meaning: This metaphor indicates deceiving others by playing two opposing roles simultaneously.

In a Sentence: He was playing a double game, acting as a friend while secretly undermining their efforts.

5. Weaving a Web of Lies

Meaning: Similar to spinning a web of deceit, this indicates creating a complex and interconnected set of lies.

In a Sentence: The politician was accused of weaving a web of lies to cover up the scandal.

6. Covering the Truth with a Veil

Meaning: This metaphor suggests hiding the truth so that it’s not easily visible or understandable.

In a Sentence: The company’s report was an exercise in covering the truth with a veil.

7. Putting on a Charade

Meaning: This indicates putting up a false front or pretending something that’s not true.

In a Sentence: They were putting on a charade of happiness to hide their marital issues.

8. Hiding Behind a Facade

Meaning: Similar to wearing a mask, this metaphor implies concealing one’s true self or situation behind a deceptive outward appearance.

In a Sentence: Despite his cheerful demeanor, he was just hiding behind a facade.

9. Pulling the Wool Over Someone’s Eyes

Meaning: This is a classic metaphor for deceiving someone by preventing them from seeing the truth.

In a Sentence: She was so cunning, always able to pull the wool over her boss’s eyes.

10. Feeding Someone a Line

Meaning: This metaphor refers to telling someone a rehearsed or deceptive statement.

In a Sentence: He wasn’t really interested; he was just feeding her a line.

11. Keeping a Poker Face

Meaning: This metaphor describes maintaining an expressionless face to conceal one’s thoughts or feelings.

In a Sentence: Despite the turmoil inside, he kept a poker face during the entire meeting.

12. Speaking with a Forked Tongue

Meaning: This implies saying one thing but meaning another, often in a deceitful manner.

In a Sentence: Trusting him is difficult; he’s known for speaking with a forked tongue.

13. Living in a House of Cards

Meaning: This metaphor suggests building a reality based on lies and unstable foundations.

In a Sentence: His entire reputation was a house of cards, ready to collapse at the slightest scrutiny.

14. Juggling the Truth

Meaning: This refers to manipulating the truth or facts in a skillful or deceptive manner.

In a Sentence: The lawyer was adept at juggling the truth to favor his client.

15. Dancing Around the Truth

Meaning: This metaphor implies avoiding a direct answer or the truth in a skillful, evasive way.

In a Sentence: In every interview, the politician was just dancing around the truth.

16. Sinking in a Sea of Lies

Meaning: This represents being overwhelmed or consumed by the lies one has told.

In a Sentence: He created so many false stories that he was now sinking into a sea of lies.

17. Selling a Bill of Goods

Meaning: This suggests tricking someone into believing something that is not true.

In a Sentence: The salesman was really good at selling a bill of goods about the product’s nonexistent features.

18. Sugarcoating the Facts

Meaning: This metaphor means making something, often an unpleasant truth, seem more palatable or acceptable.

In a Sentence: She had a habit of sugarcoating the facts to avoid conflict.

19. Burying the Truth

Meaning: This indicates deliberately hiding or suppressing the truth.

In a Sentence: The organization was accused of burying the truth about the environmental impacts of its project.

20. Planting Seeds of Deception

Meaning: This suggests introducing small lies or deceptive ideas that will grow over time.

In a Sentence: He was planting seeds of deception in the team, sowing distrust among the members.

21. Crafting a False Narrative

Meaning: This refers to creating a misleading or untrue story or explanation.

In a Sentence: The media was criticized for crafting a false narrative about the incident.

22. Shuffling the Deck of Truth

Meaning: This metaphor implies rearranging or manipulating facts to suit one’s purposes.

In a Sentence: In his autobiography, he seemed to be shuffling the deck of truth to enhance his image.

23. Telling a Fib

Meaning: This is a more benign way of referring to a small or harmless lie.

In a Sentence: She told a fib about her whereabouts to surprise him on his birthday.

24. Spreading a False Rumor

Meaning: This involves disseminating information that is not true to others.

In a Sentence: Someone in the office was spreading a false rumor about layoffs.

25. Leading Someone Down the Garden Path

Meaning: This suggests deceiving someone into believing something that’s not true.

In a Sentence: He felt betrayed, having been led down the garden path with promises of promotion.

26. Putting Lipstick on a Pig

Meaning: This metaphor implies trying to make something bad or unappealing appear better than it actually is.

In a Sentence: No matter how much they tried to change the narrative, it was just putting lipstick on a pig.

27. Blowing Smoke

Meaning: This refers to misleading or distracting someone with false or exaggerated claims.

In a Sentence: He wasn’t really knowledgeable; he was just blowing smoke to appear competent.

28. Spinning a Yarn

Meaning: This implies telling a long, fanciful, or unbelievable story.

In a Sentence: Around the campfire, he was known for spinning a yarn that captivated all the kids.

29. Pretending to Walk on Eggshells

Meaning: This metaphor suggests acting overly cautious or sensitive to avoid conflict, often in a deceitful manner.

In a Sentence: She was only pretending to walk on eggshells around him, secretly plotting her next move.

Here are 10 quiz questions based on the metaphors for lying discussed in the article:

• A. Spinning a Web of Deceit
• B. Weaving a Web of Lies
• C. Telling a Tall Tale
• D. Dancing Around the Truth
• A. Exaggerating the truth
• B. Hiding one’s true emotions or intentions
• C. Spreading false rumors
• D. Being overly cautious
• A. A complex lie
• B. A small or harmless lie
• C. A malicious lie
• D. An exaggerated story
• A. Building a stable foundation of truth
• B. Maintaining a consistent story
• C. Building a reality based on unstable lies
• D. Concealing the truth under a strong facade
• A. Being completely honest
• B. Tricking someone into believing a falsehood
• C. Revealing the truth
• D. Being cautious about the truth
• A. Revealing the truth gradually
• B. Introducing small lies that will grow over time
• C. Being transparent and honest
• D. Exposing someone’s lies
• A. Being straightforward and genuine
• B. Pretending something that’s not true
• C. Telling a completely true story
• D. Being indecisive about the truth
• A. Burying the Truth
• B. Dancing Around the Truth
• C. Shuffling the Deck of Truth
• D. Keeping a Poker Face
• A. Telling a completely truthful account
• B. Telling a long, fanciful, or unbelievable story
• C. Being concise and to the point
• D. Exposing lies and deceit
• A. Being very clear and truthful
• B. Misleading with false or exaggerated claims
• C. Uncovering hidden truths
• D. Being very direct and honest

These questions cover various metaphors for lying, focusing on their meanings and applications as discussed in the article.

Metaphors for lying are not just linguistic flourishes; they are windows into the human psyche, revealing how we perceive and process the act of deceit.

They serve as powerful tools in language, allowing us to express complex ideas and emotions in a vivid and relatable way. Each metaphor, with its unique imagery and implication, enriches our understanding of the multifaceted nature of lying.

Cite this entry:

Phrasesdirectory.com. “ ,” Retrieved from Phrases Directory – Accessed

About the author

Dr. Julia Rossi

Dr. Julia Rossi , a luminary in the field of linguistics, earned her Ph.D. with a groundbreaking thesis that delved into the cultural and historical dimensions of idioms, metaphors, and similes. Her work, spanning decades, has brought to light the dynamic nature of idiomatic expressions, illustrating how they serve as cultural artifacts, revealing the collective consciousness of a society. Rossi’s publications, widely acclaimed in academic circles, have not only expanded our understanding of idioms but have also paved the way for a more nuanced appreciation of cross-cultural communication.

Word Of The Day

Ephemeral (adjective) :

• Lasting for a very short time; short-lived; transitory.
• Existing only briefly; temporary; fleeting.

Example sentence: “The beauty of the cherry blossoms is ephemeral, lasting only a few weeks each spring.”

English Vocabulary Flashcards

Latest posts, 25 metaphors for love.

Love, a complex and multifaceted emotion, has been a timeless subject of exploration and expression. One way humans have sought to understand and convey the nuances of love is through…

17 Metaphors For Life + Quiz

Navigating the complexities of life often requires a metaphorical lens through which we can view our experiences. Metaphors for life provide a rich tapestry of imagery that encapsulates the essence…

25 Metaphors for Music: A Journey Through Sonic Landscapes

In the realm of musical expression, metaphors play a vital role in conveying the richness and depth of the auditory experience. Exploring metaphors for music allows us to delve into…

One of Us is Lying

93 pages • 3 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Before You Read

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-18

Chapters 19-23

Chapters 24-26

Chapters 27-29

Chapter 30-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

The Harmful Effects of Stereotyping and Gossip

One of Us is Lying critiques stereotyping and gossip by highlighting how corrosive they can be for both the individual and community. Both stereotyping and gossip can be dehumanizing and prevent people from seeing each other as whole and complex. Further, they are hypocritical. Stereotyping denies the reality that people are complex and contradictory, as evidenced in Bronwyn being both a high achiever but also incapable of excelling at chemistry and Addy being both pretty and insecure. Gossip is hypocritical because anyone is capable of making mistakes, as the book demonstrates with each of the narrators, their families, and their friends. Significantly, the book emphasizes that gossip is characterized not by whether information is accurate but whether that information is shared for the entertainment of non-interested parties.

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By Karen M. McManus

Nothing More to Tell

Karen M. McManus

One of Us Is Back

One of Us Is Next

The Cousins

Two Can Keep a Secret

You'll Be the Death of Me

Featured Collections

BookTok Books

View Collection

YA Horror, Thrillers, & Suspense

YA & Middle-Grade Books on Bullying

YA Mystery & Crime

One of Us is Lying

By karen mcmanus, one of us is lying quotes and analysis.

"A sex tape. A pregnancy scare. Two cheating scandals. And that’s just this week’s update. If all you knew of Bayview High was Simon Kelleher’s gossip app, you’d wonder how anyone found time to go to class." Bronwyn Rojas, Chapter 1

The opening lines of the novel effectively convey the setting of the story. What we’ve got here is a high school drama for the age of social media. This quote from Bronwyn appears to be setting up Simon to play the role of the villain, but then again, she obviously reads Simon’s gossip, so how trustworthy is she? The opening is effective because while the reader gets some important information quickly, there is also enough ambiguity to allow one to pause for a moment and wonder if the information in Simon's app OR her narration is reliable. Considering the title of the book, that makes for a very good opening.

"'You're all walking teen-movie stereotypes...I'm the omniscient narrator.'" Simon (to Cooper, Nate, Bronwyn, and Addy), Chapter 1

This quote develops Simon’s characterization as well as serves as foreshadowing. Simon views himself as “above” his classmates, a disembodied voice who knows more than anyone else. This could very well describe his ambition for his app, About That. At the same time, his statement that he is “all-knowing” foreshadows his suicide. He knows in advance that he will die, and that the four other teens will be viewed through the lens of their stereotypes, blamed for his murder, and dragged through the mud.

“We can’t find his EpiPen.” Nate Macauley, Chapter One

Simon—the keeper (and teller) of all secrets of Bayview High—is choking with blue lips and bug eyes. And the one thing that is capable of stopping this situation from turning even worse cannot be located. The EpiPen is a life-saving necessity due to Simon’s serious allergy to peanuts. Everybody knows that. What nobody seems to know—later, after it is too late—is why Simon needed the EpiPen when nobody saw him eat anything, much less anything with peanuts.

"I got the idea for killing Simon while watching Dateline. I’d been thinking about it for a while, obviously. That’s not the kind of thing you pluck out of thin air. But the how of getting away with it always stopped me. I don’t kid myself that I’m a criminal mastermind. And I’m much too good-looking for prison." Anonymous blogger on Tumblr / (Jake), Chapter 4

Nate gets a text from a friend named Chad with a link to a Tumblr post. Nobody knows who posted it. Nate's friend is laughing; he thinks it a great joke. Nate does not find it so amusing. After all, he was among the small group of students sharing detention when Simon’s allergic reaction came out of nowhere and his EpiPen was nowhere to be found. As a suspect, Nate is not amused at all.

This quote shows the blogger, later revealed to be Jake, framing the other students. He suggests that the killer has a motive that is longstanding, suggesting Simon may have had dirt on them. Furthermore, he implies that the killer is "good looking," an adage that could apply to any of the suspects. Finally, even making the post shows a high degree of coldness and arrogance. While the suspects do not have these traits, Jake certainly does.

“There are four kids involved...and every single one of them except you is backed by parents who are materially comfortable and present in their children's lives. You're the obvious outlier and scapegoat.” Officer Lopez to Nate, Chapter Eight

This relates to the themes of the criminal justice system. Although Officer Lopez is a member of law enforcement, she knows full well that the law does not only punish the guilty. Because Nate is young and poor, he lacks the resources to defend himself. The criminal justice system favors those who know its rules and can bend them. She advises him to be aware of his structural position, and to prepare himself for close scrutiny. Her words turn out to contain foreshadowing, as he is eventually arrested.

"If it ever came out that I'd actually done something to Simon, plenty of people would hate me. But there'd also be people who'd make excuses for me, and say there must be more to my story than just getting accused of using steroids. The thing is, they'd be right." Cooper, Chapter 13

This relates to the theme of the criminal justice system as well as to the novel’s commentary on privilege. Although Cooper is gay, he is also a white male. He knows that people will always make excuses for him, even if he is guilty of murder. At the same time, he knows that people would “be right” if they said there was more to him, a nod to his identity as an LGBT individual. Indeed, when Cooper is outed to his classmates, he suffers the kind of discrimination that was previously unfamiliar, and worries it will affect his chance to play baseball professionally.

"Sexism is alive and well in true-crime coverage, because Bronwyn and I aren't nearly as popular with the general public as Cooper and Nate." Addy, chapter 17

This quote relates to the novel’s interest in stereotypes and structural bias. While Cooper and Nate are viewed as sexy and mysterious when they are under suspicion for murder, Bronwyn and Addy get different treatment. When men are accused of crimes, it is associated with masculinity; even school shooters have fans. Women, however, are viewed as monstrous. This is just one way in which Bronwyn and Addy’s gender presents challenges that are different than Cooper and Nate’s.

"The whole thing barely took a minute—just enough time for one of our classmates to record a phone video that wound up on TMZ that night. They ran it in slo-mo with the song 'Kids' by MGMT playing in the background, like we’re some kind of hip high school murder club without a care in the world. The thing went viral within a day." Cooper Clay, Chapter 18

The novel is a high-school drama as well as a murder mystery. Unifying both of those elements is the focus on social media and the slippery way that it can transform from a tool allowing a teen to control their identity to an infernal machine defining identity for you. Each member of the “murder club” begins as a kind of stereotype, but each is gradually revealed to be something much more complex, and those hidden reserves of character reflect how social media inhabits nearly every waking moment as a means to exploit and be exploited; to seek fame and become infamous; to share gossip and be gossiped about.

The disconnect between TMZ 's portrayal of the four teens and their insecure, fearful realities displays this disconnect.

"You find out who your real friends are when stuff like this happens. Turns out I didn't have any, but I'm glad Cooper does." Addy, Chapter 23

This relates to the novel’s themes of gossip and truth. Although Addy and Cooper both conceal the same truth from their friends—they were cheating—they are treated differently. Addy’s friends call her a slut and openly attack her on the track, tripping her. Meanwhile, Cooper’s friend Luis is understanding. Of course, the situations are somewhat different, in that Cooper has been closeted. However, this double omission (cheating and sexuality) does not affect his friendships. When you have “true” friends, Addy implies, gossip can be taken with a grain of salt, and even hidden truths do not end a friendship.

"I think a lot about Simon and about what the media called his 'aggrieved entitlement'—the belief that he was owed something he didn't get, and everyone should pay for it. It's almost impossible to understand, except by that corner of my brain that pushed me to cheat for validation." Bronwyn, epilogue

This novel thinks about the effect of structural inequality on teenagers. Simon is not in a position of structural inequality; as a straight white male, he benefits more from the dominant social structures than the four teens he frames. However, he is not as popular as Cooper, as handsome as Nate, or as academically gifted as Bronwyn. He believes he is entitled to everything they have, and when he does not get it, he kills himself and seeks revenge. This can be seen as evidence of the way that “toxic masculinity” harms everyone, including men themselves.

One of Us is Lying Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for One of Us is Lying is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Addy's former friends laughed openly when they saw that she had

from the text:

I snort. “Yeah, right.” With the possible exception of Ashton, who’s biased, nobody likes my hair. My mother is appalled. My former friends laughed openly when they saw me the next day. Even Keely smirked. She’s moved right on to...

“But I put it in my backpack instead” (McManus 112). Why do you think Bronwyn does this? Explain your thinking with details from the text.

I think they still think these phones could be of use, the same cheap phones that corralled us all in detention last week.

What Character(s) stand up for their beliefs in order to protect others?

Bronwyn Rojas is the character that was labeled as "the brain” by Simon. She is an overachiever with big dreams and a bright future. She is the biracial daughter of an Irish mother and a Colombian, immigrant father who expect her to attend Yale....

Study Guide for One of Us is Lying

One of Us is Lying study guide contains a biography of McManus, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About One of Us is Lying
• One of Us is Lying Summary
• Character List

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Download 100 Best Middle Grade Books. Send it!

Join our Patreon Community for EXCLUSIVE content

Reading Middle Grade

Books for Kids and Grown Ups

REVIEW| I’M TELLING THE TRUTH, BUT I’M LYING: ESSAYS

Summary: I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying

Bassey Ikpi is a Nigerian-American writer and poet whose work I first discovered after she attended Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Farafina writing workshop in 2014. But she’s been in the business for many years before. You may have also read her work more recently on Catapult . She’s always been vocal on social media about her life with Bipolar II and her debut essay collection is no different.

I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying follows Bassey’s life from early childhood in Nigeria, moving to join her father in the States, and being an anxious child in the US. After dropping out of college due to anxiety and depression in her early twenties, Bassey  becomes a spoken word artist. She’s well-known for traveling and performing with HBO’s Russell Simmons   Def Poetry Jam.

However, things begin to cycle out of control on tour. Prolonged insomnia, an inability to focus, desperate depression, and other symptoms eventually lead to a Bipolar II diagnosis.

Bassey is unflinchingly honest in this essay collection — nothing is off the table. She discusses her childhood and her experience with multiple dissociative episodes. Central to her book’s title — and disconcerting — is the fact that she has fragmented (and sometimes, false) memories of certain life events. Also in focus is her mental illness and her often difficult relationship with her family. Her writing is also lyrical and utterly engrossing ; I read this book in one sitting! When describing hypomanic periods, the writing style is fast paced, and she renders anxious periods in meandering prose.

Bassey’s life up until this point has been so eventful, I could read a book about every essay in this collection. She opens with an enrapturing introduction, Portrait of a Face at Forty which is exactly what the title says, but in words. Her first actual essay, This First Essay is to Prove to You That I Had a Childhood takes readers back to Bassey’s childhood and her complicated relationship with her mother. The Hands That Held Me is an ode to the shining love she feels for her father, despite the occasional frustration with his response to her mother’s violent anger towards Bassey.

In Tehuti , she details a toxic relationship doomed by unrepentant cheating. Even after her diagnosis, treatment is rocky as Bassey chronicles in Side Effects May Include. Yet, as heavy and raw as this book can feel, there are hopeful parts. Just the fact that this book exists is hopeful. There are kind neighbors and true friends, like Derek, as well as Bassey’s family who do show up for her when it matters. At the end, Bassey’s essays flow into a complete picture and this collection feels more like a memoir than just essays .

Overall: I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying

Have I mentioned that I adore this cover? The fact that the title can be read in both up-to-down and in reverse is apt to Bassey’s often muddled memories.

This book is a vital addition to the league of creative non-fiction about mental illness. Bassey Ikpi’s I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying is a candid look at the life of a woman finding her way in the world with the burden of mental illness. It shows how complex families and relationships can be, especially with a dash of mental illness in the mix. Further, books like this are important for helping unaffected individuals get a sense of what having a mental disorder feels like. Above all things, Bassey’s debut proves that while mental illness is lifelong, the battle is never lost as long you keep fighting to live.

[bctt tweet=”Bassey Ikpi’s I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying is a candid look at the life of a woman finding her way in the world with the burden of mental illness.” username=””]

I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying is gritty, heartbreaking, and necessary . I would strongly recommend this book to everyone looking for a well-crafted essay collection.

Disclaimer: I received an electronic ARC of I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying from Harper Perennial via Edelweiss. My review contains my unbiased opinion.

Buy This Book

[bctt tweet=”I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying by @basseyworld is gritty, heartbreaking, and necessary. I would strongly recommend this book to everyone looking for a well-crafted essay collection.” username=”afomaumesi”]

More Reviews

• Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
• The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
• The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

Have you read this book or any of Bassey Ikpi’s essays? What did you think? What are your favorite non-fiction books on mental illnes? I’d love to know!

Don't Forget to Share!

• About Afoma Umesi

Afoma Umesi is the founder and editor of Reading Middle Grade where she curates book lists and writes book reviews for kids of all ages. Her favorite genre to read is contemporary realistic fiction and she'll never say no to a graphic novel.

Related Posts

Afoma Umesi

FREE DOWNLOAD

Join My Friday Kidlit Newsletter

Sign up to receive weekly roundups, kidlit resources, and more! I'll send you my printable list of 100 best middle grade books to start!

Reader Interactions

What do you think leave a comment cancel reply, join reading middle grade on instagram.

Sharing the best middle grade (and adult) book recommendations @ whatafomareads

MOST SEARCHED

• Book Reviews
• Middle Grade Book Reviews
• Middle Grade Books
• Picture Books
• Book Lists By Grade
• Early Chapter Books
• Books for Teens

QUICK LINKS

• Book Lists by Age
• Books by Theme

LET’S CONNECT

• KidLit Facebook Group

Discover more from Reading Middle Grade

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Join Our Newsletter!

When Lying Is a Good Thing: You Can't Handle the Truth!

March 2005 -- "You can't handle the truth!" says Jack Nicholson in the climax of the 1992 movie A Few Good Men . This is a good theme for movies because it names a universal concern: that moment when I know a crucial piece of information that I may or may not decide to let you in on.

It is also an important theme for a philosophy student to think about, for the same reason. It is an issue in which art is doing what art is supposed to do—making us aware and making us care about a moral issue—and philosophy is doing what it is supposed to do—helping us make the right decision.

Generally, honesty is a good thing. Everyone says so, but Objectivists—having a new moral code to explain, defend, and apply—have to come up with convincing new reasons to defend honesty, reasons based on self-interest. The Objectivist position has to cover four different kinds of cases: fraud perpetrated on others for gain, dishonesty toward oneself, dishonesty to defeat the bad guys, and dishonesty toward others for their own good.

D.W. Griffith considered movies a new language. He had a point: we have now had a hundred years to learn the grammar of film—establishing shots, close-ups, reaction shots, fast editing, and so on—and also a common vocabulary of film. Moviegoers all over the world, speaking no common verbal language, all know what is meant by the scene in which Rhett carries Scarlett up the stairs, or Victor Laszlo leads the crowd at Rick's in singing the "Marseillaise," or Citizen Kane's giant lips say "Rosebud!"

When is telling a lie a good thing?

Films, like any form of fiction, give us more information in their parables than a philosopher's one- or two-line hypothetical, and give it more convincingly. A college seminar can shoot the bull so airily about the hypothetical question: Should the relationship of parent to child be considered one of ownership? I was present at that actual discussion, and the group decided yes, parents own their children. It was just a college seminar question, after all, and they were not in the least bothered by their own outrageous conclusion. But would the same group of students have felt so cool and unattached if they had been watching the episode of M*A*S*H* in which a Korean farmer sends his daughter ahead of him as he plows his field…which is mined? His family is hungry, and he can spare one daughter more easily than he can spare the spring planting, apparently. The student will be more engaged emotionally by a film than by a dry discussion of abstractions, and will therefore take ideas more seriously.

Wall Street is a typical cinematic product of the altruist world. The moral, in a nutshell, is that greed leads to downfall. American capitalist materialism, yadda, yadda, yadda. But the real mechanics of the story focus on dishonesty: if you are dishonest toward others, they are not going to just take it; they will defend themselves, and since dishonesty means pitting yourself against facts and truth, you lose .

In few instances might dishonesty be warranted? Two possible excuses for not telling the truth are that your listener needs to be led to discover this particular truth himself, and that in war no honesty is owed to one's sworn enemy. The first is heard in the familiar words of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Why didn't she tell Dorothy the simple procedure for getting back to Kansas? "Because you wouldn't have believed me," she explains. "You had to learn it for yourself." That reasoning flies if your listener is a child and you have responsibility for that child's enlightenment, but not if your listener is an adult.

The chilling mirror image of Glinda's "You wouldn't have believed me" argument is President John F. Kennedy's retort when his girlfriend, Judith Exner, threatened to blow the whistle on their affair: "No one will believe you." Young Bill Clinton was taking notes.

The second excuse, that this is war, was explored in a movie called Sergeant Rutledge (1960). An African-American army sergeant on a cavalry post in Arizona goes AWOL after a white girl is raped and murdered. A white captain captures the sergeant, brings him back for trial, and finds that a white man actually committed the crime. Why, then, did Rutledge flee? Because he was black, and circumstantial evidence placed him at the time and place of the crime. As a black man, he had no hope for a fair trial, and riding for the Mexican border was his only realistic option. Fleeing for the border makes a suspect look guilty, but a black man knows he is going to be lynched anyway, so he has nothing to lose. Like lying, fleeing is the act of a guilty man, but the sergeant cannot be blamed for deciding that, in effect, "this is war": race war. Rutledge can expect no justice and is therefore under no moral obligation to act innocent, just as in war you owe the enemy no honesty—you must deceive him at every opportunity.

Wearing a mask also signifies a lack of innocence. But the Lone Ranger wears a mask, not because he is a bandit, but because he must hide his identity from the bandits until he can capture them. This creates the wearisome necessity of constantly reassuring everyone he meets and telling them not to be alarmed by the mask. Like Sergeant Rutledge, he cannot act normally because he is at war. It is, he hopes, only a temporary necessity.

When it's war and you must deceive the enemy, but your Christian upbringing makes you uncomfortable telling lies, you cross your fingers. The Lone Ranger himself was the victim of this maneuver in one episode of the TV series, and when the little boy who told the lie confessed that he had crossed his fingers when telling it, the Ranger retorted that that is a little boy's trick. Nothing shames a little boy like telling him that his behavior is that of a little boy. Interestingly, the crossed fingers—another form of what Catholics are doing when they cross themselves—can also be used to show that you are telling the truth, as well as protecting yourself from God's wrath when lying, as the boy does. In Leni Riefenstahl's famous documentary, Triumph of the Will (1935), you can see the serried ranks of newly graduated German army officers taking their oath (to Hitler personally, not to Germany) with the right hand held up and the first and second fingers crossed. It signifies that they are calling upon Christ to witness their oaths.

Seven Days in May (1964) shows several types of honesty parables. Colonel "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas), having uncovered a plot to overthrow the government, informs the president (Fredric March) of the impending coup and is sent back to the Pentagon with "the thankless task of informer." Casey has to deceive his boss, General Scott (Burt Lancaster), who is planning the coup. This is deception in self-defense—that is, in defense of the Constitution, and to defeat the bad guys. This is war. A Colonel Henderson, working for Scott but unaware of the treasonous purpose of his orders, is asked by an investigating senator: "Do you know Colonel Casey at the Pentagon?"

"Sure, I know Jiggs," replies Henderson.

"Do you trust him?"

"You name it, he can have it. Why?"

Sometimes dishonesty is warranted.

Now, that is an interesting way to put it: "he can have it." Henderson means that he would trust Casey with anything he owns. And it is only because of that trust, which Casey has earned, that Henderson springs the senator from captivity and gets him back to Washington, thus helping to foil the plot. That shows one of the big arguments for honesty—from the point of view of self-interest. Casey has built up a track record of honesty and trust that pays off big time in the clinch. And you never know when the clinch might come.

But when the president confronts Scott with evidence of his treason and demands his resignation, the president tells the general that nothing will be said about the real reason for the resignation. He will announce their differences over foreign policy as the rationale for demanding that Scott resign. "If the real reason ever got out, this country would go right down the drain," he says. So the president does not, in the clinch, trust the people with this information—that they had come within an ace of a coup d'etat. This act of distrust would come back to haunt that president, I imagine, because I don't think anything that big could be kept from the people very long, and the president would look the worse for having foolishly tried to conceal it. The people would not, thereafter, say of that president, "You name it, he can have it."

In the TV movie The Missiles of October (1974)—as in the real-life events on which it is based—President Kennedy tells his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, that he must keep Pierre in the dark about what has been going on during the past few days. "Sorry, Pierre," he says, "but I can't put my press secretary in the position of lying to the press. Believe me, you are happier not knowing." It seems a strange distinction to make, since Pierre knows that he is lying to the press—he just doesn't know exactly what he is lying about.

MERCY LIES OR JUST RATIONALIZATIONS?

On the subject of honesty, Peter Keating, in The Fountainhead , is just one of many characters who show the consequences of dishonesty toward oneself. As usual, the novel says it better than the film. Despite all the palaver about the so-called rape scene in that novel, there are many other scenes that no one talks about. One of my favorites is the sad scene toward the end where Keating shows Howard Roark his paintings. Roark gives Keating the bad news straight: You waited too long. If you had started painting when you were young—if you had done with your life what you wanted to do, not what your mother pushed you into—you would have been happy and successful today as a good painter, instead of washed up as a mediocre architect. Roark has been asked for the truth, and he gives it. He is more honest with Keating than Keating has been with himself. Keating fails to take Polonius's advice to his son in Hamlet: he was not true to himself, and he was false to every man.

Executive Suite examines several problems in business ethics. An investor looks out the window and sees that a certain chief executive officer has dropped dead of a heart attack on the street. He immediately calls his broker and sells his shares in the CEO's company. He is very pleased with himself, but the other man in the room shakes his head and says, "Some ways it don't seem right to make money."

Well, is it or isn't it? The seller could say that he was just lucky to have learned of the CEO's death before anyone else did. He is trading on the difference between what he knows and what others know—and that is what lying and related matters of honesty boil down to. When you lie, or omit to tell all you know, you are trading on the difference between what you know and what your victims know. You are getting them to do something inimical to their own interests by telling them an untruth or allowing them to go on believing an untruth. You are setting yourself against them, either as an enemy or at least as a competitive adversary playing hardball. You can say to your victims, "Next time you will know to investigate before you invest." But perhaps you are really saying, "Next time you will know not to trust me." That is where you cross the line from adversary to enemy, and from building a track record—a reputation—that will pay back later in support from others to building a track record that will get you shunned by the people you need to do business with in the future. There will be consequences you cannot avoid—which is the theme of Wagner's "Ring" cycle. No one ever wove a more tangled web than Wotan.

Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Even if you could, you put yourself in the position of needing your victims to be at once smart enough to produce what you want and dumb enough to be cheated out of it repeatedly. This is the weakness of the liar pointed out in John Galt's speech. And if you counter that by saying you need only limited success at this strategy, then you are admitting low self-esteem and even low self-interest. A man determined to achieve great success needs business associates who are too smart to be fooled. Andrew Stockton, in Galt's Gulch, tells Dagny Taggart that he knows he is hiring, in Ken Danagger, a possible future competitor. "That's the only sort of man I like to hire," Stockton says.

Deception is sometimes necessary in wartime.

Here, Ayn Rand 's morality is revealed as one of positives over negatives, thou shalts over thou shalt nots. Yes, you might get away with lying and cutting a few corners some of the time in business, but if your focus is on doing what you should, rather than on not doing what you shouldn't, then you will get good at what you do, which will minimize your need, as well as your perceived need, to do what you shouldn't. Lawyer Milton Gould , called the foremost litigator of his time, cultivated friendships with judges. When asked by a reporter whether he had ever traded on these friendships in the courtroom, Gould replied, "Does Willie Mays have to bribe the pitcher?" This—the Willie Mays principle—cuts through many a Gordian ethical knot. Instead of agonizing over temptations, grow to the point where the temptations don't loom so large because you simply don't need them. Temptations loom large only because you don't.

Now let's turn to the so-called little white lie. Some cinematic characters give defenses for their lies, and part of the power of fiction lies in forcing the viewer to wrestle with his own conscience and ask himself, "What would I have done?"

In A Few Good Men , Jack Nicholson plays a Marine commander who believes he is doing his job, but he has misidentified his responsibilities and prerogatives. They include upholding the honor of the Corps, but not faking that honor by covering up a crime. Accused of not telling the truth about a crime committed in [under?] his command, he replies to the prosecutor, "You can't handle the truth!"

As you would expect, this theme has been used many times in movies and before that in plays. Two thousand years ago it was the theme of Oedipus Rex , of which at least three movies have been made. One 1967 Italian job starred our own Alida Valli (Kira in We the Living ). In that play, the hero has to live with an uncomfortable truth. The interesting moral quandaries I have in mind, though, are those of characters who must decide what truths another character should die with.

Or vice versa, in the case of a dying man deciding not to tell his wife he is dying. In The Pride of the Yankees (1942) Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper) has just been told he has ALS and is going to die. He tells his sidekick (Walter Brennan) and his doctor not to tell Mrs. Gehrig (Teresa Wright). They agree, but of course when she walks in and looks at their long faces and evasive eyes, she immediately asks, "When is Lou going to die?"

I was appalled to learn, several years ago, that lying to the dying is actually the traditional medical practice in Russia. In the United States, the doctor tells you and your family your prognosis and gets you all started making the decisions that you have to make about your impending death. This serves practical purposes if you are an adult, but doctors still tell the truth to all but the youngest children, just because they are human beings. But in Russia, honesty bows to mercy and the adult is treated like a child who "can't handle the truth."

The temptation to pre-edit another human being's reality, out of a desire to spare him anguish, is explored in scenes from several other films. In Old Gringo (1989), Ambrose Bierce (Gregory Peck), an American writer who disappeared in 1914, fictionally pops up in revolutionary Mexico. In one scene, he is volunteering as a nurse in a field hospital of Pancho Villa's army. A wounded soldier fearfully asks Bierce, "Am I going to die?" Without hesitation or apparent emotion, Bierce simply says, "Yes." The soldier dies. Someone asks Bierce why he didn't tell the man a merciful lie. Bierce explains: "This man was a poor peasant. He's been lied to all his life. He deserved the truth, for once in his life."

In The Right Stuff (1983), John Glenn (Ed Harris) is in orbit, and an indicator light at Mission Control shows that the heat shield on his capsule may be loose. He is about to retrofire, which will slow his capsule from orbital speed and bring it down into the atmosphere, where it will burn up if the heat shield falls off. The man in charge—apparently one of Werner von Braun's Peenemuende group and used to mindless Prussian obedience—tells the capcom not to let Glenn know of this danger. But the capcom is Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn). (In NASA the "capcom"—capsule communicator—is always another astronaut and does all the talking to the astronauts in flight.) It has been established before this that the astronauts, especially Shepard, are at odds with the scientists over whether the astronaut in the Mercury Program is to be a pilot, and actively fly the spacecraft, or just a passive "subject" of experiments in flight. Shepard glares daggers at the white-coated scientist and growls, "He's a pilot! Tell him the condition of his vehicle!"

But in both the movie and real life, this was not done. Glenn was told to skip the part of the flight plan where he jettisons the retro package after retrofire. Since the retro package was strapped onto the heat shield, its straps might help hold the shield on if it really were loose. Glenn asked whether there was a reason for this, and the capcom replied, "Not at this time."

Glenn made it. The heat shield stayed on. Apparently this was just another of the many false alarms caused over the years of space flight by over-sensitive indicator lights.

Movies have also explored possible addenda to American brutal honesty and respect for individual sovereignty. In Apollo 13 (1995), Ed Harris is back at NASA, but as Gene Kranz this time, not John Glenn. Kranz was the no-nonsense lead flight director who vowed to stay at his post until Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise were brought back safely to Earth in their crippled spacecraft.

Again, re-entry is the problem. Guidance tells Kranz that the spacecraft is "shallowing" as it approaches Earth, that is, it is coming in at too shallow an angle. The angle is still in the acceptable range, but if it gets any shallower the spacecraft will hit the top of the atmosphere and skip off it like a flat stone on water. Then the astronauts will run out of oxygen before they can retrofire again.

But this time it is even worse than that: since the service module is not working, they have had to use the lunar module's engine to retrofire, but now they have jettisoned the lunar module and have nothing with which to retrofire again in any case. One chance is all they have. That being the case, when guidance tells Kranz about the shallowing, Kranz asks, "Is there anything they can do about it?"

Guidance says no.

Kranz grimly replies, "Then they don't have to know about it, do they?"

Why tell a truth that can make no difference?

Like Pancho Villa's peasant soldier, the astronauts have no decision they can make and therefore no practical need for this information. But unlike him, they have not been lied to all their lives, and so they do not qualify for Bierce's last-minute grace (kind of a secular extreme unction). And, unlike him, they will, it is hoped, be back on Earth in a few minutes anyway, whereupon they can brief and debrief all they want. It would serve no purpose but cruelty to tell them of the shallowing now rather than a few minutes from now. Dignity and sovereignty are not compromised, only prioritized for a few minutes.

One more movie that comes to mind is a Spencer Tracy film, although I don't know the title. I saw only a minute of it on TV years ago. In the scene, Tracy is comforting a dying man and telling him of God's mercy. The man says, "You mean all that stuff wasn't just bunk?"

"Oh, no," Tracy replies, and assures the man that all the Sunday school stories about God's love and grace are true after all. The man dies happy.

This situation is totally different from telling a dying man he is dying, so he can get his affairs in order. Even if he could have delivered a lecture on the nature of faith and reason, Tracy should not have done so, if this man were a lifelong believer and about to die in a minute anyway. Now is not the time to try to undo in a minute the teachings of a lifetime. Let him go in peace. As the doctor in Gone with the Wind tells Scarlett: "Melanie is going to die in peace! I don't want you easing your conscience by telling her things that don't make any difference now!"

And yet…and yet… shouldn't Melanie and the dying man make that decision for themselves? Don't they have that right? Not for the sake of Scarlett's unburdening her conscience or Tracy's desire, if any, to show off his rhetorical skills and erudition, but because those two characters, like the peasant, have a right to the truth. The problem is, though, what are they going to do with that truth in their last moments on Earth, when they may have other issues they want to talk about more? But that is also their decision.

If I am ever in that position, I say let the truth be told though the heavens fall. But if I have only seconds left, and I am listening to Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, I might tell you to can it for now and shut up.

Eggs, Global Warming, and Science

Suing disney over wait times takes time. why is that legal.

• Canon Press
• Search for: Search

Blog & Mablog

Theology That Bites Back

Themes in Proverbs: Truth and Lies

Introduction:.

“These six things doth the Lord hate: Yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, Feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, And he that soweth discord among brethren” (Prov. 6:16–19).

Summary of the Text:

Wisdom and folly are eternally at odds. Lies and the truth do not mingle together, they do not mix. They have no concord together. Whether you take this list as a list of graded sins, ranked sins, or not, it is striking that liars make the list twice, and two other items on it likely involve falsehood. The thing about them all is that God hates them all. And if they are ranked pride and lying come in ahead of murder.

Remember that when someone struggles with lying, it is because in the first instance he is lying to himself. God desires truth in the inward parts (Ps. 51:6). Honesty begins in the gut, and if it is not found there it will not be found anywhere. I want to urge you young people to take particular heed. You are growing up in a community with high standards, and when you fall short as you sometimes will, it will frequently be very easy to compound the sin with deception—to cover your trail, not to mention your tail. Contrary to popular mythology on this, hypocrisy is a peculiar failing of the young.

And so it is plain that God hates lying. “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: But they that deal truly are his delight” (Prov. 12:22). How does He hate it? Let me count the ways . . .

Righteous Hatred is A Function of Love:

We know from Scripture that God is love. And because He is love, He loves the truth and everything consistent with the truth. But it is not possible to love the truth without treating lies as a loathsome thing. “Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; And the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth; And wickedness is an abomination to my lips” (Prov. 8:6–7). Treating the truth as excellent runs parallel to treating wickedness (lies included) as an abominable thing.

We see the same thing in the exhortation given to the recipient of this book of Proverbs. “Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: Bind them about thy neck; Write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man” (Prov. 3:3–4).

When you find the truth, hang on to it . “Buy the truth, and sell it not; Also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding” (Prov. 23:23).

As a Good Example:

God hates lying and wants us to do the same. “A righteous man hateth lying: But a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame” (Prov. 13:5).

Theologians distinguish between God’s communicable attributes and His incommunicable attributes. There are attributes He can share with us (like love, or kindness) and there are attributes He cannot give to us (like omnipresence). Love of the truth is communicable .

His Hatred Results in Action:

When we say that God hates lying, we are saying more than that He has a particular opinion about it. No, His attitude toward lying is going to result in action toward liars. “A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish” (Prov. 19:9).

Lies Lie About Lying:

God hates lies because they lie, not only about the world, but also about what the lies themselves are doing. Lies lie about themselves first . “Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; But afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel” (Prov. 20:17). “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death” (Prov. 21:6). One of the central lies told is that a lie is the truth . . . and that the one who is speaking the truth is the one telling lies.

Giving Ear to Lies:

God hates lies so much, He rebukes not only those who tell them, but also those who listen to them. “If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked” (Prov. 29:12). “A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue” (Prov. 17:4). If a ruler listens to lies, he incentivizes those who would come to court loaded up with them. And a person who acts wickedly is the kind of person who listens to lies. Providing an ear for liars is creating a seller’s market for them.

Lying is Destructive:

God knows all the damage that lying does. He knows the harm it inflicts. He knows the ruin that will result from it. And so He detests every false word. “A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin” (Prov. 26:28).

God of the Permanent Things:

What God loves is loved forever. What God hates is necessarily going to perish in the way. “The lip of truth shall be established for ever: But a lying tongue is but for a moment” (Prov. 12:19). Lies seem to be very powerful, but if we apply the vantage of Scripture they are like a small bit of misty fog by the road in the morning. They just blow by.

Where This Hatred Lands:

Remember that what God hates, He hates in only two places. He either hates lies in the cross of Jesus Christ, pouring out His wrath on every form of lying there, or He hates lies by pitching them, along with the people who tell them, into the lake of fire. What is that lake for?

“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars , shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Rev. 21:8).

And when Peter denied Christ, what was he doing? He was lying. And did Jesus take the penalty for that ? Absolutely (1 Pet. 1:19).  So the only question facing us, residents of a world filled with lies, is where the wrath of God will fall on those lies. Will wrath fall on lies that were placed on the beloved Son, or will it fall on lies that are floating downward into the abyss with no bottom? If you would be free, you must embrace the truth, and the only Truth that a sinner can embrace is the truth as it is found in Jesus.

One of the central lies told is that a lie is the truth . . . and that the one who is speaking the truth is the one telling lies.

Lying is bad enough, but for liars to call the truth a lie, and the honest liars, is especially diabolical.

• Trial Skills
• Jury Selection

Million Dollar Jury Trial Case Themes You Can Steal

By elliott wilcox.

Depending on which case theme the jurors adopt, they will start looking for evidence that supports that viewpoint.  That’s why it’s so important to invest time developing your themes.  The better your theme “hooks” the jurors, the more likely you are to win.

Unfortunately, many trial lawyers never create strong themes for their cases.  They know they’re supposed to use themes, but they have no idea how to develop them, or even where to start looking for ideas, and so they never use them.  In this article, you’ll discover a great resource for developing case themes.

If you go to the movies on a regular basis, you probably see dozens of movie posters every year advertising the upcoming attractions.  Using splashy graphics, powerful images, and the draw of seeing your favorite celebrity, Hollywood does its best to grab your attention, spark your interest, and arouse your desire to go see the movie.  In addition to the imagery, however, they also use another powerful technique to promote the movie.  That technique is the use of a tagline.

A tagline is simply a short phrase or two that helps explain the movie.  A good tagline will resonate with the moviegoer, sticking in his head even after he walks away from the poster, and subtly push him to go see the movie.  Every once in a while, however, someone writes a great tagline, and it jumps to the forefront of our collective conscience.  Here are a few examples of great taglines:

• “In space, no one can hear you scream.” (Alien)
• “You’ll believe a man can fly.”  (Superman)
• “We are not alone.”  (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)

These types of taglines don’t write themselves.  Every year, Hollywood spends millions and millions of dollars promoting their films, hiring some of the best copywriters available to develop great taglines.  That’s great news for you, because you can develop some of these taglines into incredibly powerful case themes, without having to spend millions of dollars developing them.

In this article, you’ll find dozens of different taglines taken from movie posters and promotional pieces.  Read through them (or, better yet, read them aloud) while thinking about your case.  They’re not arranged in any particular order, and they’re not necessarily the best (or the worst) movies ever created, but they’ll serve as a great jumping-off point for writing your own themes.

• “The first casualty of war is innocence.”  (Platoon)
• “With great power comes great responsibility.”  (Spiderman)
• “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”  (Kill Bill)
• “Get ready to root for the bad guy.”  (Payback)
• “If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.”  (Nightmare on Elm St.)
• “Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven.”  (A Clockwork Orange)
• “If you can’t be famous… Be infamous.”  (Chicago)
• “His whole life was a million-to-one shot.”  (Rocky)
• “His triumph changed the world forever.”  (Gandhi)
• “This time he’s fighting for his life.”  (First Blood)
• “He’s having the worst day of his life… over, and over…”  (Groundhog Day)
• “It was the Deltas against the rules… the rules lost!”  (Animal House)
• “There’s everything you’ve ever known about adventure, and then there’s The Abyss.”  (The Abyss)
• “The snobs against the slobs.”  (Caddyshack)
• “Every man dies.  Not every man really lives.”  (Braveheart)
• “If adventure has a name…  It must be Indiana Jones.”  (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
• “Get in.  Get out.  Get even.”  (The Italian Job)
• “Just because they serve you doesn’t mean they like you.”  (Clerks)
• “Somewhere, somehow, someone’s going to pay.”  (Commando) [Feel the alliteration?  Can you use similar repetitive word sounds?]
• “The truth is out there.”  (The X-Files)
• “There are degrees of truth.”  (Basic)
• “Lie.  Cheat.  Steal.  Rinse.  Repeat.”  (Matchstick Men)
• “Four friends made a mistake that changed their lives forever.”  (Sleepers) “When friendship runs deeper than blood.” (Sleepers)
• “Fifty million people watched, but no one saw a thing.”  (Quiz Show)
• “When he said ‘I do,’ he never said what he did.”  (True Lies)
• “Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”  (Shawshank Redemption)
• “Seen from a distance, it’s perfect.”  (Life as a House)
• “Not that it matters, but most of it is true.”  (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
• “Their only crime was curiosity.”  (Hackers)
• “His story will touch you, even though he can’t.”  (Edward Scissorhands)
• “There’s a good reason some talent remains undiscovered.”  (Waiting for Guffman)
• “Everybody loved him…  Everybody disappeared.”  (Jerry Maguire)
• “He was never in time for his classes…  He wasn’t in time for his dinner…  Then one day he wasn’t in his time at all.”  (Back to the Future) [Do you feel the power of the “3-peat”?  Is there a phrase you could repeat occasionally throughout your opening?]
• “Don’t answer the phone.  Don’t open the door.  Don’t try to escape.”  (Scream)
• “No one stays at the top forever.”  (Casino)
• “It’s a hot summer.  Ned Racine is waiting for something special to happen.  And when it does…  He won’t be ready for the consequences.”  (Body Heat)
• “Freedom is not given.  It is our right at birth.  But there are some moments when it must be taken.”  (Amistad)
• “United by hate, divided by truth.”  (American History X)
• “An outrageous story of greed, lust and vanity in America.”  (Bonfire of the Vanities)
• “ In the heat of passion two things can happen. The second is murder.”  (The Postman Always Rings Twice)
• “Every dream has a price.”  (Wall St.)
• “It’s not who he is underneath but what he does that defines him.”  (Batman Begins)
• “He didn’t come looking for trouble, but trouble came looking for him.”  (El Mariachi)
• “He’s out to prove he’s got nothing to prove.”  (Napoleon Dynamite)

Here are some more taglines pulled from lawyer movies:

• “The truth can be adjusted.”  (Michael Clayton)
• “Justice has its price.”  (A Civil Action)
• “Sooner or later a man who wears two faces forgets which one is real.”  (Primal Fear)
• “There have been many courtroom dramas that have glorified The Great American Legal System.  This is not one of them.”  (My Cousin Vinny)
• “Power can be murder to resist.”  (The Firm) “They made him an offer he should have refused.”  (The Firm)
• “A district attorney out for a conviction.  A new lawyer out of her league.  A young boy who knew too much.”  (The Client)
• “No one would take on his case… until one man was willing to take on the system.”  (Philadelphia)
• “In the heart of the nation’s capital, in a courthouse of the U.S. government, one man will stop at nothing to keep his honor, and one will stop at nothing to find the truth.”  (A Few Good Men)
• “This man needs the best lawyer in town. But the problem is… he is the best lawyer in town.”   (…And Justice for All)
• “Sometimes it’s dangerous to presume.”  (Presumed Innocent) “Some people would kill for love.”  (Presumed Innocent)
• “The story of what four men did to a girl… And what the town did to them!”  (Town Without Pity)
• “Some people will do anything for money.”  (The Fortune Cookie) “Some people will do anything for $249,000.92.”  (The Fortune Cookie) [The first phrase is a common theme that all of your jurors have heard before, but the second phrase is more specific.  Does it feel more powerful hearing the actual number?]
• “Nothing matters more than winning.  Not even what you believe in.”  (The Candidate)
• “There are two sides of this mystery.  Murder…And Passion.”  (Jagged Edge)
• “An act of love, or an act of murder?”  (Body of Evidence) “This is the murder weapon. Her name is Rebecca.”  (Body of Evidence)
• “They locked him up. They crushed his spirit. But they couldn’t hide the truth.”  (Murder in the First)
• “You may not like what he does, but are you prepared to give up his right to do it?”  (People vs. Larry Flynt)
• “In a world of lies, nothing is more dangerous than the Truth.”  (Shadow of Doubt)
• “The first scream was for help.  The second is for justice.”  (The Accused)
• “Suppose you picked up this morning’s newspaper and your life was a front page headline… And everything they said was accurate… But none of it was true.”  (Absence of Malice) [This is obviously an improper Golden Rule argument, but you could re-write it to focus the attention on your client]
• “On the other side of drinks, dinner and a one night stand, lies a terrifying love story.”  (Fatal Attraction)
• “Trials are too important to be decided by juries.”  (The Runaway Jury) [PLEASE don’t use this one in court!!!]

Taglines, catch-phrases, and themes have a powerful persuasive effect in the courtroom.  Invest some time developing your case theme, and then try it out in public.  Don’t just tell your colleagues and assistants about the theme.  Share the theme with your friends and family.  Ask the checkout clerk at the grocery store what she thinks about it.  Ask your mechanic if the theme makes sense to him.  Tell it to your bartender or the person on the barstool next to you.  The important point is to refine your theme until it captures the essence of your case, giving the jurors a compelling lens through which to view the trial.  Continue refining your theme, and you’ll soon become the most persuasive trial lawyer in the courtroom!

Comments policy: Be cool. Uncool things (infantile comments, racist crap, spam links, etc) will be removed.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

6 thoughts on “ Million Dollar Jury Trial Case Themes You Can Steal ”

excellant site…would like to somethiing on trial notebook organization

not that its importand but when writing a complaint I write like I am talking to a judge…then I bore my wife (or someother layperson with hearing. If my adult children can understand with out any legal background I figure a good job was done… do not bother them with case law but just the basics.

Seems good if I am writng to a company (or person) and want them to understand and no lawyer is involved this seems to work out and get a settlement with out any big deal. DOES NOT always work.

• Pingback: Closing Arguments: Tying up Loose Ends » Mock Trial Now
• Pingback: Blogroll « Trial Theory

Good article -we have all heard it but rarely see it in the courtroom. I try not to enter the courtroom with out my theme and tag line. My problem is creating one for mundane cases. Thanks for the reminder and examples.

I enjoyed reading this quite a bit actually. Do you think that it’s important to not only have a strong theme that is stated during the opening and repeated throughout trial, but to have witnesses and attorneys (during directs and crosses) to drop the theme? Or even drop a tagline or variation of the tagline? Do you think doing this is like a breadcrumb approach for the jury to follow along? Thanks for the feedback.

i am really not unmoved by the Taglines, catch-phrases which are used above. could you please sent more. stay blessed for now and ever.

• World of Warcraft
• Baldur's Gate
• League of Legends
• Counter-Strike
• Ethics Policy
• Ownership Policy
• Fact Checking Policy
• Corrections Policy
• Affiliate Policy

They’re good people Strands NYT hints and answers (June 5)

Today’s Strands is challenging if you get too specific with the “they’re good people” theme. Instead of trying names of Popes or the Dalai Lama, look for names that imply good things in a broader sense.

This is one of The New York Times Strands puzzles and it’s easier to find the answer words than the Spangram . I’ll guide you through the Spangram first, however, so you can easily find the final answers afterward. Here are some hints to solve today’s puzzle.

They’re good people Strands Spangram hints and answer

Hint 1: spangram location and directions.

The Spangram starts in the left column , ends in the right column , and goes left to right, top to bottom.

Hint 2: First and last letters

The first letter of the Spangram is “ V ,” the last is “ S .”

Hint 3: Meaning

Names derived from moral qualities or virtues , often given to inspire or reflect admirable traits.

They’re good people Spangram answer

Today’s Strands Spangram is VIRTUENAMES , starting from the “V” in the left column and ending on the “S” in the right column.

They’re good people  Strands  word hints and final solution

Now that you know the theme is “they’re good people,” and the Spangram is about virtue names, you should start looking for names that are also virtues , such as Serenity or Joy—though these are not part of the answer. Today’s Strands can be particularly amusing if you know people with these names who aren’t nice to be around. If that’s the case, fake it for the puzzle’s sake. There are six virtues. Click or touch the boxes to reveal the chosen hint.

Word hint 1

Symbolizes optimism and the expectation of positive outcomes.

Word hint 2

Represents trust, belief, and confidence, often in a religious or spiritual context.

Word hint 3

Reflects elegance, kindness, and divine favor

Word hint 4

Means fairness and righteousness.

Word hint 5

Symbolizes happiness, joy, and bliss.

Word hint 6

Reflects wisdom, caution, and careful judgment.

Here are all answers to “they’re good people” Stands of June 5 with all words in their exact placements.

• VIRTUENAMES (Spangram)

One of Us is Lying

Karen mcmanus, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

From the novel’s very first page, Karen M. McManus establishes that the world of Bayview High is ruled by a volatile network of gossip, secrets, and lies. The novel’s title is deceiving—it’s not just one of the protagonists, but all four, who are lying to each other and often to themselves. Over the course of the novel, McManus puts her characters on separate but connected paths: away from lives lived in fear of their secrets being exposed, and towards lives lived in the light of the truth. Through her exploration of the economy of gossip and subterfuge that rules Bayview—and how her four protagonists manage to subvert and overcome it—McManus ultimately argues that communities ruled by truth, openness, and transparency are infinitely stronger than those united by cruelty, fear, and deceit.

Simon Kelleher , a Bayview High student who runs a popular gossip blog called About That , describes the blog—a source of fascination but also of fear and dread for the student body—as a “public service.” Simon, who knows that the people at his school will always “lie and cheat,” has seized upon the emotionally and socially fraught world of high school. Through his blog, he has helped to foster an environment—and an economy—in which gossip is both manna and poison; everyone reads the app voraciously and believes it unequivocally, but everyone is terrified of winding up in one of its posts. Simon is both hated and revered at Bayview; Cooper Clay admits in the novel’s early pages that Simon has the power to turn the tides of the social stratosphere at Bayview based on what he writes on his app, and has destroyed friendships and relationships throughout the student body because of gossip he’s spread and secrets he’s revealed. Cooper himself is “freaked” at the thought of what Simon could do to him using the app. Simon—a powerful, fearsome figure in the novel’s first few pages—is quickly dispatched when he dies early on due to a supposed allergic reaction. The suspicious circumstances surrounding Simon’s death quickly lead to a murder investigation in which Cooper, Addy , Bronwyn , and Nate —the four students who were in detention with him at the time of his death—are prime suspects. The students’ guilt is presupposed even more when it is revealed that Simon had queued up an About That post featuring explosive secrets about each of them. Bayview High is a place where gossip is powerful enough, even in the eyes of outside investigators, to derail someone’s life—to the point that they’d consider murder a welcome alternative to having their secrets revealed and leveled against them. In establishing the extremely high stakes of life at Bayview, McManus elevates the atmosphere of uncertainty within the novel and suggests that cruel gossip and the revelation of peoples’ darkest secrets is actually so traumatic that it drives people to commit heinous acts. As the novel progresses, the ways in which this suggestion is true will come to light—though none of her characters are murderers, they have all organized their lives around ferociously guarding their secrets and attempting to inure themselves against the gossip that hounds their classmates.

Once everyone’s worst fear has been realized—their secrets have been dragged out into the open—the secrets themselves are revealed to be far less destructive than the atmosphere of oppression and intimidation that made the secrets seem like such valuable currency in the first place. Bronwyn owns up to and apologizes for her cheating scandal, and as a result receives a missive on Twitter from her dream school, Yale, stating that they’re looking forward to receiving her application; Cooper, who is outed, struggles for a while with his father’s confusion and disappointment at the revelation of his son’s homosexuality but eventually receives more offers than ever from top college baseball teams around the country (and is able to openly date his partner, Kris); Addy fears she has been turned into a pariah because of the revelation that she cheated on her long-term boyfriend, Jake , but the resulting breakup actually removes her from a dangerous and controlling situation; Nate, who has in fact been violating his parole by selling drugs, is at last given the motivation to stop leading such a shady life when the whole fracas throws him and Bronwyn together, and he longs to improve himself in order to be with her. Though Simon posthumously retains his hold on Bayview through About This, a blog secretly being run by Jake in order to stoke the flames of the investigation, the divisions that seeped into the student body under Simon’s “reign” slowly begin to dissolve as the Bayview Four look past their own failures (and each other’s) and work together to pursue the larger truth—the truth of what happened to Simon, and of how he came to rule their school in the first place.

In the end, McManus’s characters have had all of their deepest and darkest secrets dragged out into the light—even if many of the revelations happened against their will. Though the exposition of their most painful secrets has been a taxing ordeal, McManus shows that her characters are stronger in the end now that their secrets are out in the open, and no one can use those secrets to manipulate them or to try and strike fear or shame into their hearts. The friendships and connections the four of them have formed have forever changed not just their own lives, but the lives of their larger school community—which has witnessed firsthand how destructive secrets, gossip, and lies truly are.

Gossip, Secrets, and Lies ThemeTracker

Gossip, Secrets, and Lies Quotes in One of Us is Lying

A sex tape. A pregnancy scare. Two cheating scandals. And that's just this week’s update. If all you knew of Bayview High was Simon Kelleher's gossip app, you'd wonder how anyone found time to go to class.

"Old news, Bronwyn," says a voice over my shoulder. "'Wait till you see tomorrow's post."

Damn. I hate getting caught reading About That, especially by its creator. I lower my phone and slam my locker shut. "Whose lives are you ruining next, Simon?"

Simon falls into step beside me as I move against the flow of students heading for the exit. "It’s a public service," he says with a dismissive wave. […] “Anyway, they bring it on themselves. If people didn’t lie and cheat, I’d be out of business.”

The phone almost slips out of my hand. Another text from Chad Posner came through while I was reading. People r fucked up .

I text back, Where’d you get this?

Posner writes some rando emailed a link , with the laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying emoji. He thinks it’s somebody’s idea of a sick joke. Which is what most people would think, if they hadn’t spent an hour with a police officer asking ten different ways how peanut oil got into Simon Kelleher's cup. Along with three other people who looked guilty as hell.

None of them have as much experience as I do keeping a straight face when shit's falling apart around them. At least, none of them are as good at it as me.

Four days after we're featured on the local news, the story goes national on Mikhail Powers Investigates . I knew it was coming, since Mikhail’s producers had tried to reach my family all week. We never responded, thanks to basic common sense and also Robin’s legal advice. Nate didn’t either, and Addy said she and Cooper both refused to talk as well. So the show will be airing in fifteen minutes without commentary from any of the people actually involved. Unless one of us is lying. Which is always a possibility.

Maeve and I are sprawled on my bed watching the minutes on my alarm clock tick by until my debut as a national disgrace. Or rather, I am, and she’s combing through the 4chan links she found through Simon’s admin site.

"Check this out," she says, angling her laptop toward me.

The long discussion thread covers a school shooting that happened last spring a few counties over. A sophomore boy concealed a handgun in his jacket and opened fire in the hallway after the first bell. Seven students and a teacher died before the boy turned the gun on himself, I have to read a few of the comments more than once before I realize the thread isn’t condemning the boy, but celebrating him. It’s a bunch of sickos cheering on what he did.

"Maeve." I burrow my head in my arms, not wanting to read any more. "What the hell is this?"

"Some forum Simon was all over a few months back."

I raise my head to stare at her. " Simon posted there? How do you know?"

"He used that AnarchiSK name from About That," Maeve replies.

Sexism is alive and well in true-crime coverage, because Bronwyn and I aren’t nearly as popular with the general public as Cooper and Nate. Especially Nate. All the tween girls posting about us on social media love him. They couldn’t care less that het a convicted drug dealer, because he’s got dreamy eyes.

Same goes for school. Bronwyn and I are pariahs—other than her friends, her sister, and Janae, hardly anyone talks to us. They just whisper behind our backs. But Cooper's as golden as ever. And Nate—well, it’s not like Nate was ever popular, exactly. He’s never seemed to care what people think, though, and he still doesn’t.

Another long silence descends while I try to gather my thoughts. I should be angrier, probably. I should demand proof of his trustworthiness, even though I have no idea what that would look like. I should ask lots of pointed questions designed to ferret out whatever other lies he’s told me.

But the thing is, I do believe him. I won’t pretend I know Nate inside and out after a few weeks, but I know what it's like to tell yourself a lie so often that it becomes the truth. I did it, and I haven’t had to muddle through life almost completely on my own.

And I’ve never thought he had it in him to kill Simon.

It’s a mundane, innocuous conversation compared to yesterday’s lunch, when we caught up on my police visit, Nate's mother, and the fact that Addy got called to the station separately to answer questions about the missing EpiPens again. Yesterday we were murder suspects with complicated personal lives, but today we're just being girls.

“I'm getting what I deserve, right? That’s what everybody thinks. I guess it's what Simon would’ve wanted. Everything out in the open for people to judge. No secrets."

"Simon . . ." Janae’s got that strangled sound to her voice again. "He’s not . . . He wasn’t like they said. I mean, yes, he went overboard with About That, and he wrote some awful things. But the past couple years have been rough. He tried so hard to be part of things and he never could. I don’t think . . ." She stumbles over her words. "When Simon was himself, he wouldn’t have wanted this for you."

I sit with Mary in the interrogation room after Detective Chang leaves, thankful there’s no two-way mirror as I bury my head in my hands. Life as I knew it is over, and pretty soon nobody will look at me the same way. I was going to tell eventually, but in a few years, maybe? When I was a star pitcher and untouchable. Not now. Not like this.

"Cooper." Mary puts a hand on my shoulder. "Your father will be wondering why we're still in here. You need to talk to him."

"I can't," I say automatically. Cain't .

"Your father loves you," she says quietly.

I almost laugh… He loves when I strike out the side and get attention from flashy scouts, and when my name scrolls across the bottom of ESPN. But me?

He doesn’t even know me.

[Nate] crosses to our table and dumps his backpack next to Bronwyn. She stands up, winds her arms around his neck, and kisses him like they're alone while the entire cafeteria erupts into gasps and catcalls. I stare as much as everyone else. I mean, I kind of guessed, but this is pretty public. I'm not sure if Bronwyn’s trying to distract everyone from Cooper or if she couldn’t help herself. Maybe both.

Either way, Cooper's effectively been forgotten. He's motionless at the entrance until I grab his arm. "Come sit. The whole murder club at one table. They can stare at all of us together."

We're not getting anywhere with this conversation. But I'm struck by a couple of things as I listen to them talk. One: I like all of them more than I thought I would. Bronwyn’s obviously been the biggest surprise, and like doesn't cover it. But Addy's turned into kind of a badass, and Cooper's not as one- dimensional as I thought.

And two: I don’t think any of them did it.

Maeve's hand finds mine as Mikhail drops his last bombshell—a screen capture of the 4chan discussion threads, with Simon’s worst posts about the Orange County school shooting highlighted:

Look, I support the notion of violently disrupting schools in theory, but this kid showed a depressing lack of imagination. I mean, it was fine, I guess. It got the job done. But it was so prosaic, Haven't we seen this a hundred times now? Kid shoots up school, shoots up sell film at eleven. Raise the stakes, for God's sake. Do something original.

A grenade, maybe. Samurai swords? Surprise me when you take out a bunch of asshole lemmings. That's all I'm asking.

I'm not sure you could call it journalism, but Mikhail Powers Investigates definitely has an impact over the next few days. Somebody starts a Change.org petition to drop the investigation that collects almost twenty thousand signatures. The MLB and local colleges get heat about whether they discriminate against gay players. The tone of the media coverage shifts, with more questions being raised about the police’s handling of the case than about us. And when I return to school on Monday, people actually talk to me again. […] Maybe my life won’t ever be fully normal again, but by the end of the week I start to hope it'll be less criminal.

"Let's go back to what we know," Bronwyn says. Her voice is almost clinical, but her face is flushed brick red. “Simon was one of those people who thought he should be at the center of everything, but wasn’t. And he was obsessed with the idea of making some kind of huge, violent splash at school. He fantasized about it all the time on those 4chan threads. What if this was his version of a school shooting? Kill himself and take a bunch of students down with him, but in an unexpected way. Like framing them for murder." She turns to her sister. "What did Simon say on 4chan, Maeve? Do something original. Surprise me when you take out a bunch of lemming assholes."

I look up from the papers. "Why?" I ask, bile rising in my throat. "How did Simon get to this point?"

"He'd been depressed for a while," Janae says, kneading the fabric of her black skirt between her hands. The stacks of studded bracelets she wears on both arms rattle with the movement. "Simon always felt like he should get a lot more respect and attention than he did, you know? But he got really bitter about it this year. He started spending all his time online with a bunch of creepers, fantasizing about getting revenge on everyone who made him miserable. It got to the point where I don’t think he even knew what was real anymore. Whenever something bad happened, he blew it way out of proportion."

I'm barely dragging myself forward, and the noises behind me get louder until a hand catches my arm and yanks me back. I manage to scream once more before Jake clamps his other hand over my mouth.

"You little bitch," he says hoarsely. "You brought this on yourself, you know that?"

"Maeve, I don't care about Twitter," I say wearily. I haven’t been on there since this whole mess started. Even with my profile set to private, I couldn’t deal with the onslaught of opinions.

"I know. But you should see this." She hands me her phone and points to a post on my timeline from Yale University: To err is human @BronwynRojas. We look forward to receiving your application .

I think a lot about Simon and about what the media called his "aggrieved entitlement”—the belief he was owed something he didn’t get, and everyone should pay because of it. It's almost impossible to understand, except by that corner of my brain that pushed me to cheat for validation I hadn't earned. I don’t ever want to be that person again.

More From Forbes

Today’s nyt ‘strands’ hints, spangram and answers for wednesday, june 5.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Today's NYT Strands hints and answers.

Looking for Tuesday’s Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here:

Hey, folks! We’ve made it to the midpoint of the week. You deserve a break, so why not do that with the latest round of Strands ?

Today’s NYT Strands hints, spangram and answers are coming right up.

How To Play Strands

The New York Times’ Strands puzzle is a play on the classic word search. It’s in beta for now, which means it’ll only stick around if enough people play it every day.

There’s a new game of Strands to play every day. The game will present you with a six by eight grid of letters. The aim is to find a group of words that have something in common, and you’ll get a clue as to what that theme is. When you find a theme word, it will remain highlighted in blue.

You’ll also need to find a special word called a spangram. This tells you what the words have in common. The spangram links at least two sides of the board, but it may not start or end there. While the theme words will not be a proper name, the spangram can be a proper name. When you find the spangram, it will remain highlighted in yellow.

As Russia s Armored Vehicles Get Worse Ukraine s American Made M 2s Destroy Them Faster

Microsoft issues new warning for 70% of all windows users, google slashes pixel 8 pro price in a major new promotion.

Every letter is used once in one of the theme words and spangram. You can connect letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally, and it’s possible to switch directions in the middle of a word. If you’re playing on a touchscreen, double tap the last letter to submit your guess.

If you find three valid words of at least four letters that are not part of the theme, you’ll unlock the Hint button. Clicking this will highlight the letters that make up one of the theme words.

Be warned: You’ll need to be on your toes. Sometimes you’ll need to fill the missing word(s) in a phrase. On other days, the game may revolve around synonyms or homophones. The difficulty will vary from day to day, and the puzzle creators will try to surprise you sometimes.

What Is Today’s Strands Hint?

Scroll slowly! Just after the hint for today’s Strands puzzle, I’ll reveal what the answer words are.

The official theme hint for today’s Strand puzzle is...

They're good people

Need some extra help? Here’s another hint...

Morally minded monikers

There are seven theme words to find today, including the spangram.

What Are Today’s Strands Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Strands answers.

I’ll first tell you the spangram and show you where that is on the grid. I’ll then tell you the other words and show you how they fit in.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Strands spangram is...

VIRTUE NAMES

Here’s where you’ll find it on the grid...

New York Times Strands screenshot, showing the highlighted term VIRTUE NAMES.

The rest of today’s Strands theme words are...

Here’s what the completed grid looks like...

Completed Strands grid for June 5 featuring the words PRUDENCE, FELICITY, VIRTUE NAMES, HOPE, GRACE, ... [+] JUSTICE and FAITH.

My first instinct on reading the theme clue was to go looking for the word "saint," but no dice with that one. I did see JUSTICE in the bottom left corner, though, with HOPE just above. Hmmm. I then found FAITH along the bottom... so to speak.

Those three words kindly helped the spangram stand out, as it snaked around them. GRACE, FELICITY and PRUDENCE then sealed things up.

I used no hints and the spangram was the fourth theme word I found.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Strands clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Thursday’s game if you need them.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.

NYT Strands today — hints, spangram and answers for game #94 (Wednesday, June 5 2024)

N eed a bit of help with NYT Strands today? Today's puzzle — "They're good people" — is a touch confusing at first, but once you get a few answers on the board, the link should be clear.

Below, we've compiled some useful hints for Strands #94, as well as the answers, should it come to that. We'll start off with some clues, before building up to the full answer for Strands #94, so read on if you need a little help.

Warning: Spoilers lie ahead for Strands #94.  

Today's NYT Strands answer — Today's theme and hints

The official theme for NYT Strands #94 is... " They're good people ".

And here's an unofficial hint from me: "Why are you called that?"

If you're still in the dark, here are some useful words to give you those valuable clue tokens:

Still struggling? The spangram will give you a hint about the connection word. Today, it starts with 'V' and ends with 'S'.

Scroll down to find out what it is...

It's VIRTUENAMES.

Today's Strands answers

So, what are today's Strands answers for game #94

Drumroll, please...

...and the spangram was VIRTUENAMES.

Strands #94

“They're good people”

Hi Strands fans. This one was fun! The theme - "They're good people" - was just cryptic enough to give the brain a little exercise, without creeping into being frustrating.

The link, of course, is common names that also happen to be a virtue - or VIRTUENAMES as Strands puts it. This wasn't immediately obvious to be when I found JUSTICE snaked around the bottom left-hand corner, however, and I struggled for a while afterwards. I wondered if it was to do with the justice system, and spent a while looking for things like 'court', 'judge' and 'jury'.

But then it clicked that JUSTICE can also be a person's name (albeit not a common one in the UK, where I am). From there, I was away, immediately looking for HOPE which was directly above it.

Then I saw 'virtue' starting on the left-hand side, and realized it was part of the spangram: VIRTUENAMES. That also cordoned off FAITH in the bottom right-hand corner.

I had three left to uncover, all in the top half of the board. GRACE was immediately above FAITH, leaving me with just two to untangle. FELICITY, right above GRACE, was first to fall, which just left PRUDENCE to connect.

Yesterday's Strands answers

Reading this in a later time zone? You can find the full article on yesterday's Strands answers for game #93 right here .

trending now in US News

Spirit Airlines flyer tracks down her stolen luggage to airport...

Mega Millions player wins $560M jackpot -- ending 3-month drought

Hochul ditches hated congestion pricing plan in stunning reversal...

Ex-Food Network chef finally booted from NYC apartment after...

Prez, 81, forgets facts, mixes up Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin...

Hunter Biden used drugs ‘every 20 minutes,’ became ‘angry,...

Woman claims to be 8-year-old Pa. girl who vanished from bus stop...

Chicago mom, 41, on date night loses unborn baby after being...

House lawmakers vote to sanction international criminal court officials over netanyahu arrest warrant.

• View Author Archive
• Get author RSS feed

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed legislation to sanction International Criminal Court officials involved in seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu . 

In a 247-155 vote, 42 Democrats joined all Republicans in backing the bill which would force President Biden to deny entry into the US, revoke visas and impose financial sanctions on members of The Hague involved in the effort to arrest Netanyahu, 74, and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, 65, over alleged war crimes related to Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on the Jewish state. 

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) voted “present.” 

“Today, House Republicans passed the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act which will hold the corrupt ICC accountable to protect Israel and our allies from baseless attacks from antisemitic unelected bureaucrats at the ICC,” Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said in a statement. 

“The ICC is an illegitimate court that equivocates a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical terror groups that commit genocide,” she added. 

The measure comes after ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced last month that his office would pursue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif over the Israel-Hamas war.

Neither the US nor Israel are members of the ICC. 

The White House expressed concern about the potential for arrest warrants to be issued against a US ally, but did not support the House sanctions package. 

“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 8282, the ‘Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act,’” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement of administration policy on Monday. 

“This legislation could require sanctions against court staff, judges, witnesses, and US allies and partners who provide even limited, targeted support to the court in a range of aspects of its work,” the Biden administration argued.

“The Administration is deeply concerned about the ICC Prosecutor’s heedless rush to apply for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials,” the statement continued. “At the same time, the Administration opposes the imposition of sanctions against the ICC, its personnel, its judges, or those who assist its work.”

The White House further argued that “there are more effective ways to defend Israel.” 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told reporters Tuesday that he expects the bill to be “dead on arrival” in the Senate. 

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) did not respond to The Post’s request for comment. 

Share this article:

Advertisement

America’s best decade, according to data

One simple variable, more than anything, determines when you think the nation peaked.

How do you define the good old days?

Department of Data

The plucky poll slingers at YouGov, who are consistently willing to use their elite-tier survey skills in service of measuring the unmeasurable, asked 2,000 adults which decade had the best and worst music, movies, economy and so forth, across 20 measures . But when we charted them, no consistent pattern emerged.

We did spot some peaks: When asked which decade had the most moral society, the happiest families or the closest-knit communities, White people and Republicans were about twice as likely as Black people and Democrats to point to the 1950s. The difference probably depends on whether you remember that particular decade for “Leave it to Beaver,” drive-in theaters and “12 Angry Men” — or the Red Scare, the murder of Emmett Till and massive resistance to school integration.

“This was a time when Repubs were pretty much running the show and had reason to be happy,” pioneering nostalgia researcher Morris Holbrook told us via email. “Apparently, you could argue that nostalgia is colored by political preferences. Surprise, surprise.”

And he’s right! But any political, racial or gender divides were dwarfed by what happened when we charted the data by generation. Age, more than anything, determines when you think America peaked.

So, we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person’s birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.

The good old days when America was “great” aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn’t sold out.

Not every flavor of nostalgia peaks as sharply as music does. But by distilling them to the most popular age for each question, we can chart a simple life cycle of nostalgia.

The closest-knit communities were those in our childhood, ages 4 to 7. The happiest families, most moral society and most reliable news reporting came in our early formative years — ages 8 through 11. The best economy, as well as the best radio, television and movies, happened in our early teens — ages 12 through 15.

Slightly spendier activities such as fashion, music and sporting events peaked in our late teens — ages 16 through 19 — matching research from the University of South Australia’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, which shows music nostalgia centers on age 17 .

YouGov didn’t just ask about the best music and the best economy. The pollsters also asked about the worst music and the worst economy. But almost without exception, if you ask an American when times were worst, the most common response will be “right now!”

This holds true even when “now” is clearly not the right answer. For example, when we ask which decade had the worst economy, the most common answer is today. The Great Depression — when, for much of a decade, unemployment exceeded the what we saw in the worst month of pandemic shutdowns — comes in a grudging second.

To be sure, other forces seem to be at work. Democrats actually thought the current economy wasn’t as bad as the Great Depression. Republicans disagreed. In fact, measure after measure, Republicans were more negative about the current decade than any other group — even low-income folks in objectively difficult situations.

So, we called the brilliant Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers who regularly wrestles with partisan bias in polling.

Hsu said that yes, she sees a huge partisan split in the economy, and yes, Republicans are far more negative than Democrats. But it hasn’t always been that way.

“People whose party is in the White House always have more favorable sentiment than people who don’t,” she told us. “And this has widened over time.”

In a recent analysis , Hsu — who previously worked on some of our favorite surveys at the Federal Reserve — found that while partisanship drove wider gaps in economic expectations than did income, age or education even in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama years, they more than doubled under Donald Trump as Republicans’ optimism soared and Democrats’ hopes fell.

Our attitudes reversed almost the instant President Biden took office, but the gap remains nearly as wide. That is to say, if we’d asked the same questions about the worst decades during the Trump administration, Hsu’s work suggests the partisan gap could have shriveled or even flipped eyeglasses over teakettle.

To understand the swings, Hsu and her friends spent the first part of 2024 asking 2,400 Americans where they get their information about the economy. In a new analysis , she found Republicans who listen to partisan outlets are more likely to be negative, and Democrats who listen to their own version of such news are more positive — and that Republicans are a bit more likely to follow partisan news.

But while Fox and friends drive some negativity, only a fifth of Republicans get their economic news from partisan outlets. And Democrats and independents give a thumbs down to the current decade, too, albeit at much lower rates.

There’s clearly something more fundamental at work. As YouGov’s Carl Bialik points out, when Americans were asked last year which decade they’d most want to live in, the most common answer was now. At some level then, it seems unlikely that we truly believe this decade stinks by almost every measure.

A deeper explanation didn’t land in our laps until halfway through a Zoom call with four well-caffeinated Australian marketing and consumer-behavior researchers: the Ehrenberg-Bass folks behind the music study we cited above. (Their antipodean academic institute has attracted massive sponsorships by replacing typical corporate marketing fluffery with actual evidence.)

Their analysis began when Callum Davies needed to better understand the demographics of American music tastes to interpret streaming data for his impending dissertation. Since they were already asking folks about music, Davies and his colleagues decided they might as well seize the opportunity to update landmark research from Holbrook and Robert Schindler about music nostalgia.

Building on the American scholars’ methods, they asked respondents to listen to a few seconds each of 34 songs , including Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back” and Johnny Preston’s “ Running Bear .” Then respondents were asked to rate each song on a zero-to-10 scale. (In the latter case, we can’t imagine the high end of the scale got much use, especially if the excerpt included that song’s faux-tribal “hooga-hooga” chant and/or its climactic teen drownings.)

Together, the songs represented top-10 selections from every even-numbered year from 1950 (Bing and Gary Crosby’s “Play a Simple Melody”) to 2016 (Rihanna’s “Work”), allowing researchers to gather our preferences for music released throughout our lives.

Like us, they found that you’ll forever prefer the music of your late teens. But their results show one big difference: There’s no sudden surge of negative ratings for the most recent music.

Marketing researcher Bill Page said that by broadly asking when music, sports or crime were worst, instead of getting ratings for specific years or items, YouGov got answers to a question they didn’t ask.

“When you ask about ‘worst,’ you’re not asking for an actual opinion,” Page said. “You’re asking, ‘Are you predisposed to think things get worse?’”

“There’s plenty of times surveys unintentionally don’t measure what they claim to,” his colleague Zac Anesbury added.

YouGov actually measured what academics call “declinism,” his bigwig colleague Carl Driesener explained. He looked a tiny bit offended when we asked if that was a real term or slang they’d coined on the spot. But in our defense, only a few minutes had passed since they had claimed “cozzie livs” was Australian for “the cost of living crisis.”

Declinists believe the world keeps getting worse. It’s often the natural result of rosy retrospection, or the idea that everything — with the possible exception of “Running Bear” — looks better in memory than it did at the time. This may happen in part because remembering the good bits of the past can help us through difficult times, Page said.

It’s a well-established phenomenon in psychology, articulated by Leigh Thompson, Terence Mitchell and their collaborators in a set of analyses . They found that when asked to rate a trip mid-vacation, we often sound disappointed. But after we get home — when the lost luggage has been found and the biting-fly welts have stopped itching — we’re as positive about the trip as we were in the early planning stage. Sometimes even more so.

So saying the 2020s are the worst decade ever is akin to sobbing about “the worst goldang trip ever” at 3 a.m . in a sketchy flophouse full of Russian-speaking truckers after you’ve run out of cash and spent three days racing around Urumqi looking for the one bank in Western China that takes international cards.

A few decades from now, our memories shaped by grainy photos of auroras and astrolabes, we’ll recall only the bread straight from streetside tandoor-style ovens and the locals who went out of their way to bail out a couple of distraught foreigners.

In other words, the 2020s will be the good old days.

Greetings! The Department of Data curates queries. What are you curious about: How many islands have been completely de-ratted? Where is America’s disc-golf heartland? Who goes to summer camp? Just ask!

If your question inspires a column, we’ll send you an official Department of Data button and ID card. This week’s buttons go to YouGov’s Taylor Orth, who correctly deduced we’d be fascinated by decade-related polls, and Stephanie Killian in Kennesaw, Ga., who also got a button for our music column , with her questions about how many people cling to the music of their youth.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

wordplay, the crossword column

Hot Off the Presses

Alana Platt makes her New York Times debut.

By Sam Corbin

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

MONDAY PUZZLE — I trust that many of you, being puzzle lovers, have already stumbled upon a New York Times game called Strands. It’s a word search gone rogue that relies on wordplay for its themes. The current version is still a beta, but I mention it here because the impish spirit that makes its puzzles so much fun is present in spades in today’s crossword, constructed by Alana Platt.

Ms. Platt’s theme entries, much like the hidden phrases in a word search puzzle, aren’t easy to see. Even after solving the revealer, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. But after my “aha!” moment, I bounced around the grid again just to enjoy the cleverness of the finished product. Congratulations to Ms. Platt on a dynamic debut. I hope to see more from her soon.

Today’s Theme

Although I don’t eat any “Artfully arranged meats” (35A), this was the only themed clue that jumped out right away. The answer had to be CHARCUTERIE — though another version of this arrangement may be called a “ girl dinner .” “Cousin of a pushpin” (32D) wasn’t too obscure, either: THUMBTACK.

A phrase for “Helping to manage a nonprofit, say” (56A) tells us, in some witty way, “where to find” the entries above. ON THE BOARD describes where a THUMBTACK may be found — a bulletin board, anyway — and how CHARCUTERIE is presented. WOOD GRAIN (10D), the “Texture in a cross section of timber,” is found on a floorboard. And I hardly need to tell you where to find a CHESS PIECE (17A).

I love that the grid is also a kind of board, which makes Ms. Platt’s revealer even more of a wink.

Tricky Clues

19A. How novel to have a crossword clue that reads like a riddle: “What’s black and white and wet all over?” An ORCA. Other answers that don’t fit in the grid include: photographs in a darkroom, a soggy newspaper or a nun after a water balloon fight.

32A. TRIP OUT seems like a try-hard way to say, “Get high on acid.” But what do I know? The closest I ever got to such an experience was probably watching the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.”

40A. When a trivia clue requires trial and error, as in the case of “Around 37 million people shop at it every day, roughly equivalent to the population of Canada,” there’s no harm in allowing your imagination to run a little wild. I tried Wegmans first (people love this supermarket) and then Sephora (people love makeup) before crossings led me to the correct entry, WALMART.

60A. The Ogden Nash line “So they flew through a flaw in the ___” begins a pattern of alliteration, so there’s a good chance this entry will begin with FL-. And it does! The answer is FLUE.

1D. A more common phrase to describe “a quick visit” might be “drop in” — did you try that first, too? — but tacking on “as to a show” is what cues us to the correct answer, DUCK IN. In other words, there’s a difference between a quick stop and a quick stoop.

4D. I can’t remember the last time that I placed “Two fingers in the shape of an ‘L’” on my forehead in order to call someone a LOSER. Maybe I never did. But the reference lives on forever in “All Star” by Smash Mouth. Who says I’m not a “Shrek” fan? (A few commenters, in fact, on a recent column .)

35D. If you’ve come to this column to complain about “Alternative to iced coffee,” come sit with me. The distinction between iced coffee and COLD BREW is more than a nominal one, though the terms are often used interchangeably: While most iced coffee is first brewed hot, COLD BREW is made by steeping coffee grounds in room-temperature water for up to 24 hours, then diluting the concentrate.

Constructor Notes

This is my debut puzzle! I am a graduate student at the University of Texas at Dallas, majoring in accounting. I also make crossword puzzles for my school newspaper, The Mercury. My other hobbies include fabric and fiber arts (knitting, crochet and sewing) as well as traveling. My family has always engaged in wordplay — typically puns and sound-alike words — so this type of theme came naturally to me. My favorite puzzles to make are those that lead to an “aha!” moment for solvers at the reveal.

Join Our Other Game Discussions

Want to be part of the conversation about New York Times Games, or maybe get some help with a particularly thorny puzzle? Here are the:

Spelling Bee Forum

Wordle Review

Connections Companion

Improve Your Crossword Solving

Work your way through our guide, “ How to Solve the New York Times Crossword .” It contains an explanation of most of the types of clues you will see in the puzzles and a practice Mini at the end of each section.

Want to Submit Crosswords to The New York Times?

The New York Times Crossword has an open submission system, and you can submit your puzzles online . For tips on how to get started, read our series “ How to Make a Crossword Puzzle .”

‘Board’ to Tears?

Dry your eyes: Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key .

Trying to get back to the main Gameplay page? You can find it here .

Sam Corbin writes about language, wordplay and the daily crossword for The Times. More about Sam Corbin

It’s Game Time!

Take your puzzling skills in new directions..

WordleBot , our daily Wordle companion that tells you how skillful or lucky you are, is getting an upgrade. Here’s what to know .

The editor of Connections , our new game about finding common threads between words, talks about how she makes this daily puzzle feel fun .

We asked some of the best Sudoku  solvers in the world for their tips and tricks. Try them to  tackle even the most challenging puzzles.

Read today’s Wordle Review , and get insights on the game from our columnists.

We asked Times readers how they play Spelling Bee. The hive mind weighed in with their favorite tips and tricks .

Ready to play? Try Wordle , Spelling Bee  or The Crossword .

Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Fitness & Wellbeing
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance Deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

General election 2024 - live: Shock YouGov poll puts Reform two points behind Tories in fresh blow to Sunak

In another blow for rishi sunak, nigel farage’s decision to stand could see reform compete for tory seats, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox

Get our free view from westminster email, thanks for signing up to the view from westminster email.

Reform UK is shaking up the general election campaign pulling to within two points behind the Tories in a shocking YouGov poll.

The latest survey conducted just before the ITV debate has put Labour leading the race with 40%, the Tories on 19%, Reform UK on 17%, the Liberal Democrats on 10% and the Greens on 7%.

If that wasn’t enough nightmare for Rishi Sunak , he is being investigated by the UK’s official statistics regulator for his claim that Labour will hike household taxes by £2,000.

But Mr Sunak’s frosty attack hasn’t landed well among shadow ministers, who have accused him of lying to voters. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said lied 12 times during the debate.

Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler wrote to Labour on Monday to dismiss the claim. The figure “includes costs beyond those provided by the civil service and published online by HM Treasury ”, he told shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones.

But it appears the PM is stubbornly sticking to the accusations and warned voters that Labour would cause a “£2,094 tax hike” if they win.

Chaos as Tory chairman put on a shortlist of one to ensure he gets a seat

A fresh embarrassment has emerged for Rishi Sunak after party chiefs were forced to put his hand picked chairman Richard Holden on a shortlist of one to ensure he had a seat to fight, David Maddox reports.

Mr Holden is on a shortlist of one for the Billericay and Basildon seat in Essex which had a majority of 20,412 in 2019.

The move has caused fury in the local association which, it is understood, had already been in a stand-off with CCHQ because it wanted its own shortlist and not the one imposed by party bosses.

But now the party has used emergency election rules which allow them to impose a single candidate 48 hours before the deadline.

But it is understood that the local association chairman has cancelled the special general meeting to make the selection in protest.

Liberal Democrats propose Bill to clean up rivers

The Liberal Democrats have proposed a new Bill to clean up the UK’s rivers, with its Scottish party leader accusing the Government of being “neck-deep in failure”.

The legislation – announced on Wednesday – would update sewage networks, monitor sewage dumps and set targets for reduction and completely ban sewage being released into bathing waters or other protected areas.

Analysis from the party claims sewage was released 21,000 times into bathing waters in 2022.

The Lib Dems have made cleaning up the UK’s rivers a key staple of their election campaign.

Speaking following a visit to the River Almond, near Edinburgh, Scottish party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “We want a clean water act for Scotland to update the sewage network, proper monitoring to find all the dumping and a complete ban on this filthy practice in protected areas such as bathing waters.

“People are sick of governments neck-deep in failure who just can’t get the basics right. Every Scottish Liberal Democrat you elect will be a local champion focused on cleaning up the sewage scandal.”

George Galloway probably thinks I’m a bit woke, says Corbyn

The veteran socialist was asked if he was tempted to join George Galloway’s Workers Party, he said: “I admire George’s work on Gaza and Palestine and his lifetime determination on that.

“But there are issues on social policy and social justice where he and I have a different view, we know that. He probably thinks I am a bit woke.”

Politics Explained | Has Nigel Farage’s intervention turned this into the ‘immigration election’?

The proposal by the former Ukip leader to cut immigration to zero has cast a spotlight on the Tories’ own record.

In  this piece , Andrew Grice asks what sort of impact this could have on the wider campaign.

He writes: “Farage’s prominent role, and his ability to grab media attention, will probably propel the issue higher up the agenda. Some Labour figures fear, as Peter (now Lord) Mandelson put it, that Farage could ‘skew the debate’ towards his agenda and ‘syphon off some of the oxygen’ from Labour’s campaign.

“But the issue is likely to be less salient than it was in 2019, when Boris Johnson pledged to ‘take back control’ of Britain’s borders after Brexit.”

Read the full article .

Treasury minister denies Sunak lied over Labour tax plans

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott has denied the Prime Minister misled voters and insists the independent analysis found a black hole in Labour’s pledges’ funding.

She said: “What is absolutely clear is that due to independent analysis Labour have a £38bn black hole in their policies.

“That will lead to £2,000 in extra taxes for every family up and down the United Kingdom.

“This is underpinned overwhelmingly by Treasury analysis so if people think Labour are going to win this election they need to start saving.”

Starmer: Rishi Sunak broke ministerial code by lying during debate

Sir Keir Starmer has labelled Mr Sunak a liar and claimed he breached ministerial code after accusing Labour of a plot to hike taxes by £2,000 per household.

The row was sparked from a dossier from the Tories which laid out what they believe is the cost of Labour’s policies.

Keir Starmer told  LBC : “He breached the ministerial code because he lied and he lied deliberately.

“Because we have made clear that our plans are fully costed, fully funded, they do not involve tax rises for working people – so that’s no income tax rise, no national insurance rise, no VAT rise.

“And the Prime Minister, with his back against the wall, desperately trying to defend his awful record in office, resorted to lies and he knew what he was doing, he knew very well what he was doing.”

Blocked Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen will stand as an independent

Blocked candidate Faiza Shaheen will stand against Labour as an independent

Faiza Shaheen will take on Tory grandee Iain Duncan Smith as an independent candidate

Minister said Treasury chief had signed off on the attack personally

A senior minister said the Treasury permanent secretary had personally signed off on the Tories’ £2,000 tax attack line, just minutes before his letter rubbishing it was made public, Archie Mitchell reports.

Energy secretary Claire Coutinho told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is something which has been signed off by the Treasury by the permanent secretary of the Treasury as the amount of the proposals that the Labour Party have put forward so far.

“£2,000 [of tax hikes] is the last thing that people need.”

Just minutes later it emerged Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler wrote to the Labour Party on Monday to trash the claim.

The figure “includes costs beyond those provided by the civil service and published online by HM Treasury”, he told shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones.

“I agree that any costings derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service,” Mr Bowler added.

In a scathing letter, he said: “I have reminded ministers and advisers that this should be the case.”

Mr Bowler set out how the costings relied upon by Mr Sunak were nothing to do with impartial civil servants, and stressed that the Treasury was “not involved in the production of presentation of the Conservative Party’s document ‘Labour’s Tax Rises’ or the calculation of the total figure used”.

‘Red-handed’

One LSE student laughed off Rishi Sunak’s claim that NHS waiting lists are improving.

“If you go to the NHS, it’s impossible to get anything – it’s getting worse and worse,” he said.

Postgraduate urban planning student Petar, 23, from Serbia, thought Sunak was caught “completely red-handed” on waiting lists.

“If something could put an end to the debate in terms of who was the winner, I think that was it,” he said.

The prime minister was backed by one social sciences PhD candidate, who said: “Rishi Sunak is in a hard position – he’s doing his best.” He added: “The thought of a Labour government terrifies me.”

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre