What familiar 5-letter word has 3 letters in common with BLUNT and 4 letters in common with QUAIL?
Sunday Puzzle is a regular weekly series. It features puzzles suitable for group puzzle-solving. The puzzle clues and answers often refer to social change activists and actions, to classic anti-war and civil rights movement songs, to books worth reading, and other educational tidbits of the kind you generally won't find in regular newspaper puzzles.
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.
And starting this week, Sunday Puzzle for beginners posts at a convenient new time: Saturday evenings between 9:30 and 10:00 pm Eastern time.
The main feature in the Sunday Puzzle diaries is usually a JulieCrostic, so that will usually be the main feature in these Sunday Puzzle for beginners diaries as well. In fact, you'll find two JulieCrostics in today's diary -- a 4x3 and a 2x5 -- both waiting for you right below the fold.
JulieCrostic # 1 for March 5, 2011:
Today's first JulieCrostic has 4 rows, with three answers per row.
Fill in words to match the clues in the 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 your answers were HEARD, ARCHED, and CRASHED you'd place a "C" in the box between HEARD and ARCHED and an "S" between ARCHED and CRASHED.
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.
1. Type of cherry
2. Dispenses
3. Full of holes
4. Yours and mine
5. Time spent at work
6. People singing together
7. Traveled
8. String
9. Bleach
10. Rescue
11. Ointment
12. Unpaid workers
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + *
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + *
JulieCrostic # 2 for March 5, 2011:
In general, the more columns a JulieCrostic has the easier it is to solve. Once you solve one or two words in a row, it's usually pretty easy to crack all the other clues for that row. For example, here's one with five answers per row:
1. Part of DC with a baseball field
2. Mind-reading
3. Tarts
4. Grace and dignity
5. Woman with a choice
6. That is
7. Rush
8. Infamous salute
9. South American nation
10. Sculpt
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + *
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + *
Sunday Puzzle workshop for March 5, 2011: how to solve an Ana-Gremlin
Ana-Gremlins are one-off anagrams. I start with a list of related items. Each item in the list has one of it's letters taken away; and each item in the list has received one letter which was taken from some other item in the list. I anagram these one-off items, and present these to you to de-anagram.
For instance, suppose I started with:
1. ONE
2. TWO
3. THREE
I could take an O away from ONE, add a W, and anagram it, to get NEW.
I could take a W away from TWO, add an E, and anagram it, to get TOE.
I could take an E away from THREE, add an O, and anagram it, to get OTHER.
Now I've got:
1. NEW
2. TOE
3. OTHER
I then re-arrange the list to put it into alphabetical order of the original words:
1. NEW
3. OTHER
2. TOE
The challenge for the solver is to take the new list of ana-gremlins and restore it back to the list of original words. Here's a chart of how that might look:
Two weeks ago in the regular Sunday Puzzle diary I posted an Ana-Gremlin which went unsolved. Here it is:
Each word in the following list gave one of it's letters away (to one of the other words) and received a new letter (from one of the other words) before being anagrammed. If you correctly unscramble them you will get a set of six related words. How they are related is for you to figure out. As an aid in solving, the items on the list are in alphabetical order.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1. BAKE
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2. MOTH
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 3. YAM
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 4. WOMAN
5. CRAW _ _ _ _ _ _ _
6. ROGUE _ _ _ _ _ _ _ !
This may look hard to solve, but I provided a large amount of help. There were 3 puzzles in that diary and all shared a theme. The acrostic, when solved, read "Welcome to Sunday Puzzle". The Crypto-Gremlin, when solved, provided a quotation from Lord Chesterfield in which the word welcome played a key role.
The theme was the word welcome -- and that's the word represented by the dashes in the puzzle.
So here's your chance to solve the puzzle. I've provided a grid for you to fill in (and even filled in the first line for you. Can you fill in the rest?