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 9:30 pm Eastern time / 6:30 pm Pacific time.
Each week Sunday Puzzle for beginners features a new acrostic (or JulieCrostic, as we call them in Sunday Puzzle).
If you've never done a JulieCrostic before, don't panic; you'll find complete instructions, as well as a completed puzzle as an example, in the diary below.
If you have done JulieCrostics before, you can jump right in. This week's puzzle has 5 rows, with 4 answers per row. Here are the clues:
1. Giving a measured amount
2. Something James Randi will pay a million dollars for if you can do it successfully
3. Stock market shift
4. Decline
5. Things of value
6. Naps
7. Helper
8. Most shameless
9. Go without food
10. Journeys
11. Put in too much seasoning
12. Things which take you up
13. People holding hands in a darkened room
14. Kind of triangle
15. Washes
16. Transparency
17. 20th century dictator
18. Hispanics
19. Some people like to paint these
20. Official residences of diplomats to foreign countries
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 NAIL, ALIGN, and MALIGN you'd place a "g" in the box between NAIL and ALIGN and an "M" between ALIGN and MALIGN.
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 followed by the completed answer grid:
1. Spike
2. Arrange in a straight line
3. Defame
4. Nutty as a Beck
5. Sew loosely
6. Diminishes
7. Fury
8. Excellent
9. Kind of belt
10. Polite
11. Because
12. Inbreeding
nail G align M malign
bats E baste A abates
rage T great R garter
nice S since T incest
The verticals are GETS MART -- which, when correctly spaced, read "Get Smart" -- a reference to the 1960s tv series starring Don Adams as Agent 86 and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99.