Sunday Puzzle is a regular weekly series. The puzzle party begins Sunday mornings at 9:30 am Eastern time / 6:30 am Pacific time, and you're invited.
But the puzzles in the Sunday Puzzle series can sometimes be a little intimidating to newcomers. So now there's also Sunday Puzzle for beginners to give new people an introductory version of the types of puzzles you'll find in the regular series. Sunday Puzzle for beginners posts Saturday evenings at 8:30 pm Eastern time / 6:30 pm Pacific time.
Each week in Sunday Puzzle for beginners you'll find: introductory versions of the types of puzzles you'll find in the regular series, to help you gain skill and confidence in your puzzle-solving abilities and to help prepare you for our Sunday morning parties.
Today's puzzle is a 20-clue JulieCrostic. You'll find the clues right below. If you don't know what a JulieCrostic is or how to work one, don't worry; you'll find a complete explanation of the rules (along with an example of a solved puzzle) right below as well. Come on down and have some fun!
Part 1: today's JulieCrostic
This puzzle has 5 rows, with 4 answers per row.
1. do away with
2. surprise attack
3. Nixon cabinet member
4. kind of tire
5. regret
6. written symbol used in magic spells
7. care for
8. tear apart
9. fruit drink
10. another name for Howard
11. another name for Elgin
12. another name for a name
13. neither's partner
14. showing signs of age and use
15. another name for Jerry
16. another name for Sylvia
17. definite article
18. warm up
19. dirt
20. enthusiastic
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Part 2: example of a solved puzzle
Here are the answers and clues to the puzzle from last week.
1. peer L 2. leper A 3. leaper O 4. parolee
5. dyke O 6. Dokey N 7. donkey U 8. unyoked
9. ties S 10. sites D 11. desist N 12. dissent
13. eros T 14. store F 15. foster D 16. frosted
The verticals spell out LOST ANDF OUND -- "lost and found"
And here are the CLUES to last week's puzzle:
1. person who's as good as you are
2. person who's an outcast
3. person who's an acrobat
4. person who's out of jail
5. levee or embankment (especially in Europe)
6. writer of Buffy, Angel, and Charmed stories
7. ass (but not Rush Limbaugh!)
8. no longer part of a team
9. neckwear
10. places on the web
11. stop
12. disagree
13. love
14. place to buy things
15. encourage
16. sweetly decorated
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Part 3: the rules for JulieCrostics
Read the clues provided below, then fill in words to match the clues in the appropriately numbered spaces in the diagram.
Each word in a row has all the letters of the previous word in that row, plus one new letter. Write the new letter in the space between the answers. For example, if the answers in a row were TREE, METER, and REMOTE you'd place an "M" in the box between TREE and METER and an "O" between METER and REMOTE.
When you have filled in all the spaces correctly, the columns formed by the added letters should spell out related words. It might be a person's name, such as CHARLES DICKENS (spelled out in two columns). It might be the title of a book or movie, such as GONEW ITHTH EWIND (spelled out in three columns). It might be almost anything. Your challenge is to figure out what the verticals say and what they mean.
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part 4: DKU notes
The Sunday Puzzle diaries are intended to be educational as well as fun, so I like to include occasional clues or answers which refer to noteworthy people, events, writings, songs, and works of art which I hope will be of interest to Kossacks. These are known as Daily Kos University (DKU) clues.
I tend to go light on DKU clues in these beginner diaries, aiming instead mostly for straightforward definitions and synonyms. But I like to toss in the occasional DKU clue here, too, to give folks a taste of what to expect Sunday mornings.
Here are a pair of DKU notes related to last week's puzzle.
DKU note # 1:
6. writer of Buffy, Angel, and Charmed stories
The answer to this clue is Cameron Dokey, a writer of Young Adult novels, especially of novels based on TV series such as
Charmed, Buffy and
Angel. (I confess that I am not that familiar with her books, and used her as a clue answer mainly because her name matched the set of letters I needed to use for the 5-letter word in that row. But it's always good to be able to work in a reference to
Buffy and
Angel and other Joss Whedon creations.)
DKU note # 2:
7. ass (but not Rush Limbaugh!)
Rush Limbaugh clues are sort of a tradition at Sunday Puzzle. If the clue says
ass, the answer is likely to be
Rush (and vice versa).
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Part 5: Unsolved puzzle
There's an unsolved puzzle in last week's Sunday Puzzle diary. I'll be re-posting it tomorrow morning to give folks a second chance at solving it, and am planning to post the answer in comments (along with a demonstration of how this can be solved fairly easily) if no one solves it.
If you'd like a chance to solve the puzzle before the diary goes up tomorrow morning, so that you can be the first to post the answer in comments, here's your chance.
This is the puzzle:
We idgedzd man phth id berdoa lakhm luhtd mdrldokhm.
-- Shown Yoerhtle
It's a crypto-gremlin -- a special kind of cryptogram which can't be solved by online cryptogram-solving programs but can be solved easily through logic and creative thinking. The bolded sentence is an interesting quotation which I saw in a news story; the unbolded words below the quotation are the name of the person who made this statement.
For an explantion of what crypto-gremlins are and how to solve them, go here and scroll down to the Sunday Puzzle Workshop section.
For a strong hint on how to solve this particular puzzle: look at the word man.
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Hope you have fun! I'll be around in comments for an hour or so in case anyone has any questions or needs help (and I'll check in periodically throughout the week, in case any late-comers show up -- so don't hesitate to leave a comment or ask a question, no matter how many days after the diary goes up you happen to be reading this.)
And if you enjoy puzzles and parties, don't forget about the regular Sunday Puzzle party tomorrow morning. Hope to see you there!