Hello, puzzlers!
Last night at the warm-up, we were excited to see and welcome some new faces, we are hoping that these new people become part of our friendly and fun group!
Today is the first Sunday of the month, which is traditionally our Puzzle Potluck. That means everybody brings a puzzle to share. If you have a puzzle, just go ahead and post it in the comments, and I will copy it into the diary here. Or you can send it to me via Kosmail.
For new puzzlers and visitors, we have a traditional puzzle style here which may or may not have been invented by our founder Julie Waters.
Here is Julie's explanation on this puzzle style, which we call a "Juliecrostic"
The rules for an acrostic are simple: for each row, the answer is of increasing length, such as a five-letter word, a six-letter word and a seven-letter word. Each next size word is formed by adding a letter to the previous answer and scrambling.
In the box in-between each answer, put the extra letter. I.e., if your answers were:
ITEMS, MISTER and RED MIST
You'd place an "R" in the box between ITEMS and MISTER and a "D" between MISTER and RED MIST.
When you solve the whole puzzle, you will get related words in the down columns.
And here is her puzzle, complete with her colors. Julie, we miss you so much!
And over the puzzle piece for the potluck table of treats!
First, from Banjolele, a thematic Juliecrostic:
Theme: Homeschooled via the Web
1. Macanese marketplace?
2. Update or change
3. Architectural term
4. Exemplar
5. Mauritanean milieu?
6. Type of Memory
7. Origin
8. Botanical term
9. Serbian shorts?
10. It’s a Latin thing
11. Kratos’ foe
12. Weights
13. Panamanian channel?
14. Musical genre
15. Famous Jack
16. A knife
17. Singaporean shortcut?
18. Juice
19. Hangs
20. Tales
21. Abbreviated Albanian?
22. Rest
23. Where the Bulldogs are
24. Hesitate
25. Spanish sphere?
26. Dashes
27. A residential stable
28. Felinguistics
Next, from the Blueberry North, a puzzle from Nova Land!
Here's my potluck contribution. To make it a little more challenging I won't tell you what kind of puzzle this is (but regular Sunday Puzzlers should be familiar with what it is and how it works).
The number in parentheses indicates the number of words in the answer phrase. (When two numbers appear, the second number is the number of words in the original phrase.)
1. travel from Trafalgar Square to the Temple Bar (4)
2. travel to side protected from wind (2)
3. similar to Romney's business (2)
4. vehicles lean over, causing onlookers to jeer (4)
5. device sailor uses to transmit voice (2, 1)
[
note on 4: in the familiar form of the original phrase, a key word is singular rather than plural; but there's no reason the phrase can't refer to the plural of these things instead]
[note on 5: there are 2 words in the answer, but only one in the original, because I added a space (in addition to whatever else I did) thus causing a single word to become two words]
I think this is a fairly easy puzzle. But if you do have trouble, here's a short JulieCrostic the answer to which will provide a large hint to the theme of this puzzle.
1. suffer
2. famous painted woman
3. roger
4. produced in installments
5. communist hall
6. praise extravagantly
7. nasty people
8. looked for
9. michelle obama's title
10. candy bar
11. romney follower, made famous by thorndike in 1915
12. residence for a religious community
13. place with smooth floor
14. one who finishes a comic
15. more charitable
16. indicator that one owes money
17. gauge reading
18. like romney trying to be personable, i've got no clue for this!
Here is something from me, Pucklady. This is a rotating cypher. I started with a simple letter-substitution cypher, but at the end of every word (whenever a space in encountered), I rotate the cypher forward one letter.
Yk g nzhh zigkoxr blsscz hgec pob kwev qge vyr kffd, ay xqoohd kpyv kwx xzd evb sjp gxcz. Xrqr I. Zsuusyn
A math puzzle from science!
There is a unique four digit number, n. it has the property that the last four digits of n-squared are the same as the digits of n. What is it?
From sny - a logic puzzle!
Heres a logic puzzle. I kind of rushed it at the last minute, so I hope I didn't screw up. Its a 2 parter.
PART 1
You have been captured in a room with 3 doors, A-C and a sign that says "you are allowed to ask one yes/no question". Your captor (lets call him Paul) makes the statement, "one door has a tiger behind it, but one is your path out". Since you know that the only tiger in the area was trained to eat humans and the only ultimately negative outcome in this situation is death-by-tiger, you really don't want to face it. Unfortunately, you know that Paul always alternates true and false statements. What do you ask him?
PART 2
You went through a door, through a dark winding tunnel. You approach the end of the tunnel and find that you suddenly pop through a trap door and find yourself back in the original room. Paul gives an evil laugh, but agrees to give you one more yes/no question.