Julie is away, so I'm guest-hosting again this weekend.
The main puzzle this week is an acrostic, but you'll probably find a few other puzzles as well.
For instance, did you know that:
DFRI LET DerViFRI
T
It's true! And there's more below the fold ...
Let's get right to the feature attraction:
Puzzle # 1: Sunday acrostic.
(1.) I still don't know how to do formatting very well, so once again I will simply link back to one of Julie's previous Sunday Puzzle diaries which contains Julie's explanation for how these puzzles work.
(2.) Last time I guest-hosted this thread, I included several clues based on literary references. (And by literature, I am of course referring to comic books.) So this week you're probably expecting more of the same.
Well, that's certainly a possibility -- but I wouldn't spend too much time looking in that direction if I were you. I seriously doubt if there's more than one comics-related answer in this puzzle. (I mean, doing that again so soon would be too obvious. I'll need to find some way to lure you off-guard a bit before I do that again.)
(3.) There are three or four clues this week which some of you may need to use Google to solve, but for the most part the answers you are looking for are familiar words or names which you should be able to figure out simply by wracking your brains sufficiently.
Okay, that's enough introduction. Here are the clues (arranged neatly in groups of 3, for your convenience.) How fast can you solve them?
1- Pointed weapon.
2- Skilled at recall.
3- Grieves.
4- Torturer.
5- Foreign art.
6- Black Korean.
7- Leads to Hell.
8- '90s hit song, or once-common exclamation.
9- One way to distinguish John McCain from George Bush.
10- What John McCain has which George Bush lacks.
11- Sometimes white.
12- Famous ratio.
13- Sometimes perfect.
14- Minor disagreement.
15- Take it or drink it.
16- Hubert Horatio Humphrey's selfish conclusion.
17- Kind of well.
18- Fairy, informally.
19- Johnny Be Fair relationship.
20- Site of famous non-attack.
21- Talia relative.
22- Victoria's angels.
23- Oat and wheat, for instance.
24- One object of a famous quest.
25- Track.
26- Visit.
27- Revealer of secrets.
28- One who uses other people's words.
29- If you're enjoying this puzzle, it would be courteous to do so.
30- Goes up with women, according to Oppenheimer.
31- Kind of blue? (Not exactly...)
32- Dish.
33- Well-known and very prolific writer, to his fans.
34- First name of western hero or writer.
35- Butler, on television
36- Half, sometimes.
.
.
.
What's that? You say that was too easy, and that you've solved it already? Well, then, here are a few more puzzles to play with:
Puzzle # 2: Catch Phrases
Each of the following is a well-known phrase. (If you need help, please refer to this previous Sunday Puzzle diary, which contains several examples of this type of puzzle with answers and explanations.)
1- Let's start with a real easy one. This is a three-word phrase which gets 3/4 of a million hits in a Google search.
newborn
plank
2- Another easy one: two words, and close to 40 million Google hits.
R
A Y 2,000 150 pounds
3- Eleven words, 80 thousand Google hits.
The royal robin flush = the George Mary Mary W.
4- And to round things off, here's the puzzle which appeared above the fold. Six words, 25 thousand Google hits.
DFRI LET DerViFRI
T
.
Uh-oh. I think I hear grumbling...
.
What? Only 4 Catch Phrase puzzles, and all of them easy?
Oh, all right. I like puzzles too and know what it's like to run out of them sooner than expected. So here's one more puzzle to keep you occupied for a few minutes longer:
Puzzle # 3: Not the NPR Sunday Puzzle
Each week on NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday" there is a segment in which Will Shortz presents a puzzle, and plays puzzle-on-the-air with a randomly-chosen person who solved the previous week's puzzle.
Last week's puzzle was:
Think of a seven-letter word meaning "entrance." Switch the second and fourth letters and you'll get another seven-letter word meaning "exit." What are the words?
That's pretty easy (and the answer will be readily available by the time this diary is posted). But I came up with a slightly more challenging variant:
Think of a word meaning "entrance." Put a question mark at the end and you'll get a cryptic crossword clue for something which means "exit".
What are the answers I have in mind?