A Tangle of Knots: Prologue–V

by Lisa Graff
Author Lisa Graff cooks up a plot with magical ingredients and just the right amount of sweetness as she tells this tale of an orphan with a talent for baking and a mysterious past. Will this list of words be a piece of cake for you?

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Prologue–V, The Owner–Marigold, V–Epilogue
40 words 284 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. wield
    have and exercise
    A Talent is only rewarding if you wield it well.
  2. talent
    natural abilities or qualities
    It’s a horribly useless Talent, tying knots. Could have been blessed with a Talent for finance or medicine. Even a log-splitting Talent might have done me some good.
  3. predicament
    an unpleasant or difficult situation
    “If you don’t know the trick, it’s a muddled predicament. But in fact each loop of every knot is carefully placed, one end twisting right into the other in a way you might not have expected. I find them rather beautiful, really.”
  4. irreplaceable
    impossible to substitute for
    The suitcase, and the one slim, irreplaceable slip of paper inside it, was gone.
  5. emerge
    come up to the surface of or rise
    No one knew exactly when Cady’s Talent for baking had first emerged—just as no one knew exactly where she had come from.
  6. stunning
    strikingly beautiful or attractive
    Cady’s cakes were never the most beautiful, or the most stunning.
  7. scrumptious
    extremely pleasing to the sense of taste
    (Miss Mallory’s perfect cake, as far as Cady was concerned, was just as scrumptious as she was—a nutty peach cake with cream cheese frosting.)
  8. intent
    giving or marked by complete attention to
    Cady had been so intent on her baking that she hadn’t even noticed the haze.
  9. obscure
    make unclear or less visible
    Out on the lawn, the thick mist obscured all but the legs of the picnic table, and puddles speckled the steps to the porch.
  10. intricate
    having many complexly arranged elements; elaborate
    “It was the most intricate braid I’ve ever seen, twisted in and about and around itself like a crown. Whoever gave you that braid was Talented indeed.”
  11. consistency
    uniformity or stability in arrangement, behavior, or quality
    There wasn’t much consistency in the life of an orphan—new housemates coming and going like waves on a shore—but Adoption Day parties were always the same.
  12. astonishingly
    in an amazing manner; to everyone's surprise
    The truth was that most of the orphans at Miss Mallory’s found their perfect families astonishingly quickly.
  13. feat
    a notable achievement
    Although his mother had amassed quite a fortune—an especially impressive feat for a woman with no Talent—it hadn’t been enough to last him fifty-three years.
  14. stealthily
    in a manner marked by quiet and caution and secrecy
    As the man dug for his wallet, the Owner, quietly and stealthily, slipped his right hand into his own pocket to find the small glass jar he always kept ready for a ripe opportunity.
  15. imperceptible
    impossible or difficult to sense
    His palm grew icier and icier, until—plunk!— an almost imperceptible whisper of a noise escaped from the jar, and the Owner’s feet dropped—clonk!—to the ground.
  16. skill
    an ability that has been acquired by training
    Your pinata skills need work, its gaping fish mouth seemed to tell her.
  17. keen
    very good
    Mrs. Asher's Talent for knitting was so keen that she could finish an entire afghan in eight city blocks.
  18. convince
    make realize the truth or validity of something
    “Dad even convinced me my Talent might be vacuuming,” she told her brother, scraping a bit of orange tissue off the tabletop as she spoke.
  19. occurrence
    an instance of something happening
    It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, Will going missing. He had a Talent for it, after all.
  20. smug
    marked by excessive complacency or self-satisfaction
    He was sitting, calm and smug as ever, in the armchair by the window, reading a book.
  21. unconscionable
    greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation
    That someone as annoying as Zane Asher had been given the Talent of perfect spitting was truly unconscionable.
  22. success
    an attainment that achieves a favorable outcome
    “For your information, I got it at the state fair last week, and the man said it had a ninety-nine percent success rate for helping people discover their Talents within one year.”
  23. majority
    the main part
    After all, weren’t the majority of the people in the world without any Talent middle children, just like Marigold?
  24. functioning
    performing or able to perform its regular purpose
    She could hear the noise, with her own perfectly functioning ears, escaping her perfectly functioning mouth.
  25. chameleon
    a changeable or inconstant person
    The plot was interesting, at least, about a rogue treasure hunter with a Talent for changing his face—a chameleon, he was called.
  26. meticulously
    in a manner marked by extreme care of details
    She clicked shut the mailbox door and headed through the damp gray air to the picnic table by the front door, settled between the carefully groomed bed of petunias on the left and the meticulously weeded pansies on the right.
  27. accustomed
    in the habit of or adapted to
    But as she grew more accustomed to her Talent, Miss Mallory had become faster and faster at matching orphans, and these days, she felt lucky if a girl stayed with her for a handful of hours.
  28. precisely
    in a sharply exact manner
    And all at once, it had become clear to Miss Mallory that the child’s heartbeat matched up precisely with her own. Tra-thump. Tra-thump. Tra-thump. They were beating in time together, a perfect rhythm.
  29. scholarship
    financial aid provided to a student on the basis of merit
    There were times when she found herself thinking longingly of the days before three kids and her own yarn shop, when she’d worked at the Poughkeepsie Museum of Natural Sciences on a scholarship for Fair students.
  30. navigate
    direct carefully and safely
    At that very moment, for example, Will was inside the walls of the Ashers’ apartment building, navigating with the help of an outmoded dumbwaiter that probably no one but him knew existed anymore.
  31. tumult
    a state of commotion and noise and confusion
    Although it was less of a noise and more of a flip-you-on-your-head-pound-your-pancreas-to-pudding sort of tumult.
  32. admonish
    scold or reprimand; take to task
    “Amy, dear, don’t talk with your mouth full,” the woman who must have been Amy’s mother admonished. “And we don’t ask people about their Talents. It’s rude.”
  33. confirm
    establish or strengthen as with new evidence or facts
    (Here Amy’s father raised his polka-dot cup of milk in the air and cheered, as though to confirm that this was indeed his perfect cake.)
  34. magnificent
    characterized by grandeur
    And that made it difficult to get to know him, to figure out what might make their new little family go from fine to magnificent.
  35. stilted
    artificially formal or stiff
    “Marigold’s practicing oboe”—Cady flicked an elbow toward an upstairs window, from which faint, stilted notes of music had been puttering for the last several minutes—“but I don’t know about Zane and Will.”
  36. remarkable
    unusual or striking
    “That is just remarkable,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re right, that does sound like exactly the perfect cake.”
  37. suggest
    imply as a possibility
    It was a grin that suggested he knew more about the world than he was letting on.
  38. fate
    the ultimate agency predetermining the course of events
    “It’s the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are.”
  39. phenomenon
    any state or process known through the senses
    It was a common phenomenon, she’d been told, among parents who had lost their children.
  40. stumble
    encounter by chance
    She had not even a wisp of Talent, that’s what they said, and yet somehow she had managed to stumble upon the world’s most perfect peanut butter recipe.
Created on Fri May 27 17:03:06 EDT 2016 (updated Thu Sep 20 15:49:31 EDT 2018)

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