For those who enjoy Hangman puzzles, check out Puzzability and click on the Common Knowledge link. There you will find a daily group of hangman-styled words to guess. Once you have the list, a second phase uses those words to solve a new word that has something in common with those in the first phase.
If you want to do all the work on today’s puzzle, please stop here and go do that.
What I’m wanting from the rest of you is to try to find the common theme in today’s answer group:
river
chess game
piano tuner
hayloft
country road
place setting
It took much longer than usual for me to get the answer – which is a five-letter word – and only after consulting with my wife to get on the wavelength needed to solve it.
It’s uncommon enough that I thought some of you might get a kick out of it, especially if you’ve been trying to get a reasonable guess in for mittu’s brainbender.