Welcome to Sunday Puzzle, a weekly series for people who enjoy mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
On Saturday nights, in our companion series Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, we feature puzzles suitable for individual solving; On Sunday nights, in this regular Sunday Puzzle series, we feature puzzles intended to be challenging enough to call for a team effort to solve.
Tonight's puzzle is titled "A car which makes sense" and spotlights something worth knowing about (if you don't already). It's already available in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and parts of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina.
I confess that I know very little about cars (never bought a car, never owned a car, never learned to drive) so I'm probably the last person to look to for advice about cars of any kind. But the Sunday Puzzle gremlins (who voluntarily edit these diaries, despite my frequent pleas that they leave things alone) assure me that the diary title fits.
Oh, yes, the lead gremlin told me emphatically, This title fits. It fits perfectly!
She paused. There was an awkward silence. Finally one of the other gremlins squeaked: Well, actually we wanted to title the diary 'Good security and a car that makes sense, courtesy of Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up 2015-05-10 -- sorry, no Mothers Day puzzle today, we weren't paying attention to the calendar'. But the stupid DK programming thought that was too long and wouldn't let us use it. So we shortened it down, and this one fits.
Last week I contributed a riddle to the Potluck Puzzle Party. It went unsolved, so here it is again (slightly re-punctuated):
I'm at the door! I'm in your face!
Don't you know I run this place?
I'm a God! Get that straight.
Why is there an empty plate?
Provide an offering, on the double,
and make it good or you're in trouble.
I thought this would be an incredibly easy puzzle to solve, but so far no one here has posted the solution.
I'm posting the answer tonight, along with a line-by-line explanation, in comments. (So if you want to solve the riddle yourself, it would probably be wise to avoid reading the comment titled SPOILER: solution to last week's riddle...)
And now, here's tonight's JulieCrostic. If you're familiar with what JulieCrostics are and how they work, jump right in. If you're not familiar with JulieCrostics here are some NOTES FOR NEWCOMERS:
JulieCrostics are a special kind of acrostic puzzle, named in honor of Julie Waters who started the Sunday Puzzle series here seven and a half years ago. If you're not familiar with how JulieCrostics work you can find a detailed explanation in last night's Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up.
If you're new you should be warned that we have some mischievous gremlins who like to tamper with the Sunday night puzzle clues. In particular you should keep in mind:
* you can't trust the clue capitalization;
* you can't trust the clue punctuation;
* sometimes you can't even trust the word spacing.
Because of this, some of the clues may be hard to crack, and you may not understand the answer at first after it has been cracked. But the answers actually do make sense, once you look at them the right way. If you have any trouble understanding how an answer fits the clue, please leave a comment asking for an explanation.
The gremlins also like bundling the clues into tidy little groups of 3, regardless of how many answers there actually are per row. If the number of clues doesn't divide evenly by 3, they add a space-filler clue or two at the end to fill out the final bundle. If you see a clue at the end such as nothing to see, that could well be such a clue.
A small request: please don't put any any spoilers in the comment subject lines. Use the subject line of comments to identify what your comment will be about but keep any guesses as to clue answers or the verticals confined to the comment itself. That way folks who are still trying to crack a clue for themselves won't inadvertently see the answer before they're ready to see it. Thanks!
Okay, I think that covers all the basics. Here are the clues for tonight's puzzle. Have fun!
1. port of Rodriguez
2. kind of rice
3. containers often filled with water
4. care taker
5.
6. warmer and cosier
7. gain information about
8. remove clothing
9. treat employees like Wal-Mart and McDonald's do
10. what comes next in this series: h, i, j, k, l, m ...
11. what comes next in this series: NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC ...
12. Nick Fury, for example
13. unpleasant biter
14. often follows RIP
15. before (often comes before this)
16. turned off
17. more reasonable
18. Matt Damon, Patrick Wayne, and Glenn Ford
19. majorly annoyed
20. throw away
21. the midterms: Obama wins a new hope to serve man
22. famous female character always played by males
23. Superman, Batman, and The Shadow
24. often too low (as referred to in an earlier clue)
25. prepares for war again
26. sofa part
27. spike
28. take umbrage
29. grilled
30. more, Gore
31. [deleted]
32. charms
33. trapped