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Welcome to
Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
The theme for the puzzles this month is good quotes.
Two weeks ago the featured quote (from Michael Westen of Burn Notice) was:
"The fact is, torture is for sadists and for thugs. It's like getting groceries with a flame thrower. It doesn't work, and it makes a mess."
Last week the featured quote (from George Washington) was:
"You are to take charge of two hundred and eleven privates of the British Army... Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren."
As you can see, the quotes so far this month have been quotes about torture. (And tomorrow night's Sunday Puzzle will feature two quotes about torture.) But tonight's quote is a little different.
Tonight's quote comes from a conservative. And not just any conservative. It's from a very important conservative leader.
Now, you may have heard the saying, 'A broken clock is always wrong'. [Either there's no display, or the display is 8888.] Well, Karl Rove may be a broken clock. Ann Coulter may be a broken clock. Michelle Bachmann may be a broken clock. Grover Norquist may be a broken clock. Sarah Palin may be a broken clock. But tonight's conservative is not a broken clock (a stopped clock, possibly, but not a broken one) because on the particular point made in the featured quote they happen to be spot on. Decipher tonight's code message (at the top of this introduction) and see if you don't agree.
For anyone new to Sunday Puzzle, please note that this code message is not a regular cryptogram; it's a Crypto-Gremlin. Crypto-Gremlins are a special kind of cryptogram -- ones which can't be solved by online programs which run through and test out every possible letter substitution, but which can be solved by reasoning and creative thinking.
If you're not familiar with Crypto-Gremlins you can find a detailed explanation of how they work here. (And you can find a handy tool to help you with letter substitutions here.
Ah, but what about those of you who don't like, or aren't good at, deciphering code messages? Well, you can still find out which prominent conservative got something right this week. (And once you know who it is, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding out which one thing the person got right.) The answer awaits you below, in tonight's JulieCrostic.
Here's tonight's JulieCrostic puzzle (so named in honor of Julie Waters, who founded the Sunday Puzzle series 7 years ago).
Tonight's puzzle has 6 rows, with 3 answers per row. When you've solved the puzzle the verticals will spell out the name of the person who made tonight's featured quote.
If you're familiar with how JulieCrostics work, you can jump right in; if you're new and don't yet know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions in the bottom part of the diary.
(Also if you're new, a request: please don't post any answers or other spoilers in comment subject lines. Instead, please put any guesses at possible answers into the comment itself. Thanks!)
Okay, I think that covers the basics. Here are the clues for tonight's puzzle. Have fun and I'll see you in comments!
1. Portuguese river
2. well-known Christian
3. clock or hate
4. well-known Hoover [or less well-known Gordon]
5. well-known Savage [hint: show host]
6. start of well-known sentence ending in answer to 5
7. admiration
8. surge
9. [musical clue] what you should do with falling rain
10. well-known way
11. well-known letter
12. ten to one, for example
13. turf
14. ten to one, for example
15. Democrats are donkeys, Republicans are elephants, Tea Partiers are... ?
16. another name for Felicia
17. another name for Stanton
18. kind of cane
For the benefit of anyone new to Sunday Puzzle, here are
instructions for solving JulieCrostics.
In JulieCrostics you are given a set of clues, such as these:
To solve the puzzle, figure out the answers to the clues and enter them into a grid of rows and columns, like so:
All the rows in the grid will be the same length (i.e. have the same number of answers). All the answers in a column will be the same length (i.e. have the same number of letters). And the words in each column are one letter longer than the words in the column to its left. That's because each word in a row has all the letters of the word before it plus one new letter.
For instance, if the clues for a row were
1. say what's not so
2. resting
3. concede
then the answers might be LIE, IDLE (= LIE + D), and YIELD (= IDLE + Y)
Write the added letter in the space between the word which doesn't have it and the word which does. For the row in the example you'd write:
1. LIE D 2. IDLE Y 3. YIELD
When you have solved all the clues and written down all the added letters, the added letters will form columns that spell out a message of some sort. It might be a person's name, it might be the title of a book, it might be a familiar phrase, or it might be a series of related words. Your challenge is to solve all the clues, fill in the vertical columns, and figure out what the vertical columns mean.
In the example given, the verticals read DAIL YKOS. With proper spacing and capitalization that spells out Daily Kos!