Hed of the week: Active aggressive

Yeah, I used to have a foundation like that too.

If you have any idea what's going on beneath the lede hed in today's St. Pete Times, congratulations. Otherwise, here's the story.

"Night ends" is a bad way to spend 50% of your hed, in that -- like "sun rises" it happens more or less on schedule every day. But "scores settle" is the real problem. Bricks settle. People can settle, though they usually settle somewhere.* But scores don't settle. The score (account, bill, whatever) is settled, but people, or aggrieved nation-states, or angry deities, settle the score. The passive is a perfectly good choice. It's the shortest way to capture this:

Legislating had given way to gamesmanship, settling scores and an embarrassing Republican Party family feud that overshadowed Gov. Rick Scott's first session.

And if you can't jiggle the coding enough to make "scores settled" fit, maybe you should stop limiting news heds to words of six letters or fewer.

* So "scores settle into bar" would be fine.