Sunday Puzzle is a regular weekly series. The puzzle party begins Sunday mornings at 9:30 am Eastern time / 6:30 am Pacific time, and you're invited.
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. Sunday Puzzle for beginners posts Saturday evenings at 8:30 pm Eastern time / 6:30 pm Pacific time.
Two puzzles today. As usual, there's an introductory-level JulieCrostic. And starting today, a new weekly feature which gives everyone who visits this thread an opportunity to post an answer: LadyLadders.
Let's start with today's JulieCrostic. If you've never worked a JulieCrostic before, you'll find a complete explanation of how they work below the fold. If you're already familiar with the basics, jump right in.
1. Jargon
2. Spider-Man's is green
3. Throwing something in an arc
4. Tilting to one side and then the other, repeatedly
5. Highest point of a hill, a wave, or a rooster
6. Uncomfortable garment
7. People who accompany others to provide protection, guidance, or company
8. Items which protect tables
9. Wash with water
10. Prospectors
11. About 900 have been killed and about 9,000 wounded so far in the Iraq War
12. Religious school
Today's puzzle has three rows, with four answers per row. The answer spelled out in the verticals is the title of one of my favorite anti-war songs from the 1970s.
Yes -- it's an anti-war song, even if the title doesn't look like it at first. You'll understand once you see the lyrics. (I can't find either the song or the lyrics available anywhere online, alas! But next week when I post the solution I'll post the lyrics as well, so you can at least enjoy reading them.)
Here are the rules for JulieCrostics:
Read the clues provided below, then fill in words to match the clues in the appropriately numbered 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 the answers in a row were TREE, METER, and REMOTE you'd place aN "M" in the box between TREE and METER and an "O" between METER and REMOTE.
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.
As an example, here are the clues for last week's puzzle and the completed answer grid:
1. Sam and Tom
2. Mid-day meals
3. Sends forth
4. Fathering
5. Broadcasts of television programs
6. Hopeful
7. Oil
8. Foreshadow
9. Austrian pediatrician who was a pioneer in the study of autism
10. Symbol of oppression
11. Amazing source of strength in certain cartoons
12. Latin-American
13. In abundance
14. For instance, Andrew Beckett (in movies), Willow Rosenberg (on television), or Renee Montoya (in comics)
15. Parable or fable
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LadyLadder # 1: from wise to wiser
LadyLadders are an invention of pucklady, so this first use of them in SPfB is in her honor.
Here are the basic rules:
You start with a short word and work your way to a longer word. Each step, you add one letter and change one of the existing letters and rearrange them to form a new word.
For example, to get from CAT to TIGER, you might go
CAT
GATE
TIGER
Or here's a longer example pucklady also provided:
How to get from CAT to ELEPHANT
CAT
MACE
CRANE
CANAPE
CHEAPEN
ELEPHANT
Got the idea?
One nifty thing about LadyLadders is that there will generally be many ways to get from the starting word to the finishing word so everyone who wants to gets to post a solution of their own!
(And as a bonus: on Sunday mornings I'll post the week's LadyLadder, along with all the solutions you folks post in the regular Sunday Puzzle diary, and challenge folks to come up with solutions which don't use any of the words used in the Saturday night ladders. The more solutions the Saturday night crew posts, the harder it will be for the Sunday morning crew. Yes: you get a chance to try to stump the experts!)
The challenge for today is to go from OWL to PUCKLADY.
Because of the letters of PUCKLADY, that's a little harder to do than these ladders will usually be. (But remember: you're free to use words that other people have also used in their ladders; it's only the Sunday morning crew, including me, who aren't going to be allowed to duplicate a word that's been used. That means you'll probably be able to stump us this week if several of you post solutions!)
If you have any trouble, there's helpful advice for how to come up with a solution in the tip jar, below. Have fun, and I hope to see you in the comments!