It's time once again for the weekly Daily Kos puzzle party!
On tap tonight: a new 60-clue JulieCrostic. Come on down and see if you can solve it.
There's a fair chance I won't be able to be here when this diary posts. I need to attend an all-day meeting on Saturday and won't get home until Monday morning. I should be able to go online at some time Sunday evening -- so if I'm not here when the diary posts, don't assume the gremlins have done something to me and I won't be showing up at all. But there's a birthday celebration Sunday evening for one of the people I'm visiting so I may be late to the puzzle party.
But don't worry -- y'all should be able to solve tonight's puzzle without difficulty even if I'm not around. Yes, the gremlins have been acting up a lot this month, making things a bit more complicated. They've even been one-offing the verticals in the Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up puzzles, which they used to leave along. They changed March Madness to Marsh Madness, The March of Dimes to The March of Dames, and The Merchants' War to The March Ants' War. And last week they changed Beware the ides of March to Beware the idea of March! But I finally got fed up and told them in no uncertain terms to cut it out...
... and amazingly, after they finally finished laughing, they actually agreed to show some restraint. They promised that they would only one-off the verticals in one of this weekend's puzzles -- either the one in Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up or the one in Sunday Puzzle -- not both.
I assumed they'd leave the warm-up puzzle alone and go after tonight's puzzle. But last night they one-offed the verticals of the warm-up puzzle. So that means tonight's verticals should be safe.
The gremlins did their usual petty mischief -- grouping the clues in bundles of 3 regardless of how many answers there are in a row; removing all capitalization; and occasionally fiddling with the punctuation. But they didn't add additional JulieCrostics the way they did last week. So it looks like for once this month you'll actually get to solve the puzzle as I posted it...
Hmmm. The gremlins seem to be snickering. Oh, well -- let's just ignore them and maybe they'll go away.
1. what republicans need to do more often
2. cricket, crab and rat
3. crappy cars
4. become mushy
5. gold or silver
6. dish with a disposable wrapper
7. bed
8. spice book
9. tea partiers
10. round desserts
11. catalogue of women, works, and days
12. livened up
13. ostentation
14. fine filaments
15. flashy
16. place for boats
17. value
18. scribe
19. award-winning poet and anti-war activist
20. church group
21. noble
22. bundle
23. censure
24. strolls
25. hasty
26. clip
27. having trouble speaking
28. rise to the occasion
29. breadth
30. cars
31. funny magazines
32. marian of the mist
33. surrounded by
34. accomodate
35. single things
36. say someone is as honest as o'keefe
37. lots
38. white house deputy chief of staff during late 20th and early 21st century
39. for the most part
40. ballplayers
41. x
42. fate
43. damn faintly
44. consumed
45. cloud over
46. pine chest
47. fine or looney
48. defeat an incumbent
49. rush's predecessor
50. lyman frank and maud
51. let it be something new
52. member of the house
53. amusing
54. kind of bill
55. shudder
56. red
57. cold storage unit
58. wingless insects
59. intestinal bacterium
60. kind of force