The image overlaying the thumbnail can be translucent which I don’t want. The overlaid image can be solid where it isn’t transparent but then you can’t click on the thumbnail. I’ve tried various rearrangements of the items in the templates for the page. I can have one desirable trait but not both. HTML doesn’t allowed nested links but I removed those.
Of course this was all to solve the problem of even being able to tap on the thumbnail so it would take you to a new page on a mobile device which has a touchscreen. It needs to be a double tap solution. Because on a computer where you have hover with a mouse the text appears over the image. On mobile you tap and no text just goes to the new page. You need to be able to tap once to see the text then tap again to see the page. There are themes that actually do this. I may have to switch to one of them.