Sunday Puzzle Warm-up is a companion to the regular Sunday Puzzle series, which features puzzles suitable for group solving. These Saturday evening warm-up diaries feature somewhat easier introductory puzzles to get folks warmed up for Sunday (and to try to lure in new folks).
For the past month the theme of Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up has been Hell To Pay, spotlighting some of the candidates mentioned in the Hell to Pay diaries. So far the answers have included Carol Shea-Porter (September 29th); Betty Sue Sutton (October 6th); Manan Trevedi (October 13th); and Tammy Baldwin (October 20th); and Rick Nolan, David Gill, and Joe Garcia (October 27). Last week the final Hell To Pay puzzle featured Ami Bera and Kathryn Boockvar.
With the election over, I'll be starting a new theme for the puzzles next week. Hope you enjoyed the election outcome, and hope you have fun with tonight's puzzles.
On tap tonight: a new acrostic; re-posts of a few puzzles which went unsolved at last week's potluck; and a sneak preview of a bonus acrostic I'll be posting tomorrow. Plus, as usual, the answers to last week's puzzle. Make the jump and join the party...
First up: a new JulieCrostic. Tonight's puzzle has 2 rows and 6 answers per row.
NOTE: If you're not familiar with JulieCrostics, don't panic! An explanation of how they work, and an example of a solved puzzle, are provided directly below tonight's puzzles.
1. Mary --- - ...
2. - ---- of salt
3. Russian villas or country houses
4. ---- --- carry
5. plaster replica of what's found at the end of the arm
6. dollies
7. heavenly body
8. look closely
9. speaks
10. baked
11.
12. what about 35% of people in the US consider themselves to be (according to Gallup poll of people's political leanings)
NOTE: clues 1, 2, 4, 5 and 11 all have 2-word answers.
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Unsolved Puzzles
There are several puzzles which have gone unsolved recently in Sunday Puzzle.
One of them, "Hal Humbug's Horrible Headache", is a bit too long to re-post here (but I encourage you to give it a look and try to solve it). (Search for Humbug in the linked diary and you should be able to find it easily.)
There's also a recent Crypto-Gremlin which has gone unsolved but which will be easier to solve in its original diary , so I'll give you this link rather than re-posting it here. (NOTE: this is probably the world's shortest-ever Crypto-Gremlin! That should make it very difficult to solve; and yet, it can be cracked easily with just a few minutes thought and effort.)
But here are some puzzles which went unsolved at last week's potluck party and which you might enjoy solving tonight. These are Catch Phrase puzzles, in which the provided clues translates into some familiar word or phrase.
For instance, if I posted:
T
H
G
I
N
K
K
R
A
D
E
H
T
then the answer would be
The Dark Knight Rises.
Got the idea? Great! Let's get to the puzzles.
I contributed six Catch Phrase puzzles to the potluck. Three were correctly solved:
1.
L
emoc
As science correctly posted, this is Lover Come Back, the title of a 1961 movie.
6.
BALL
TH
Science solved this one as well: Thunderball, a 1965 documentary about nuclear weapons and British efforts to limit their use.
2.
W
T
confused penguin
Teamwork between pucklady and science enabled them to correctly deduce that this is wonton soup.
An answer was posted for this one, but not the correct (or, at least, not the intended) answer:
5.
LAW
THE
Science and pucklady agreed that this one must be under the law. I don't see it! To my eyes, nothing in this clue appears underneath the word THE. The intended answer is: Above The Law. (ABOVE the word THE you can see the word LAW.)
That leaves two unsolved Catch Phrase puzzles. I'll re-post these for Sunday Puzzle tomorrow night, but here's your chance to solve them before then. Guesses of Jon Tester and beta tester were made for # 3; neither of these is correct. (Tester is not part of the solution.)
3.
|\ Al's 52nd element /|
STER
4.
HE
N
E, frequently
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Bonus JulieCrostic!
Tomorrow's feature puzzle in Sunday Puzzle is a 21-clue JulieCrostic. That's a little bit short, and may be too easy, so I'll be including an additional 15-clue bonus JulieCrostic. Here's a sneak peak at it, to give the warm-up crew a small head start in solving it. (If you solve this tonight, I'd suggest waiting to post the answers until tomorrow morning. But feel free to make non-spoiler comments to let folks know you've solved it, or to mention which clues you really liked or disliked.)
1. deputy communications director
2. title-holder
3. breadth
4. out of control
5. room decoration
6. group of related rooms
7. having protection for the eyes
8. find out
9. women without men
10. small chicks
11. showing respect
12. singers
13. friend
14. wined and dined
15. leader
HINT: I had no idea what the answer to # 5 meant, or that it even was a word, until I looked it up for this clue.
Additional HINT, if you need one: There's no Rush Limbaugh clue in this puzzle; but I very nearly included one. It wouldn't have been a clue giving a synonym for Rush; it would have been one giving Rush's definition of one of the answers. The clue would have been
quality of being a woman?
I won't tell you which clue it was -- that would be too much of a giveaway -- but I will tell you the clue is in the first row.
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That's all the puzzles and puzzle previews for tonight. But for those who are unfamiliar with JulieCrostics, here is an explanation of how JulieCrostics work plus an example of a solved puzzle:
How to solve JulieCrostics
For those of you unfamiliar with this kind of puzzle, what you do is solve the clues and write the answers in rows.
Each word in a row contains all the letters of the previous word, plus one new letter. Write the added letters in the space between the word which doesn't have it and the word which does. The vertical columns created by the added letters will spell out a word or phrase.
Helpful hint: from now through election day, the answers spotlight Hell To Pay candidates.
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As an example of how it works, here are the clues, grid and answers to last week's puzzle:
CLUES TO LAST WEEK'S PUZZLE
1. blooms
2. paints unskillfully
3. like Corsi's conspiracy theories, or the idea of Palin as a serious candidate
4. Charlie the talk show host
5. Samuel the inventor
6. Bill the journalist
7. group formed in 1957 whose membership included Steve Allen, Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda, and Marilyn Monroe
8. spice used in black jellybeans
9. crazy
10. first brother
11. legendary tower
12. talk too much and say too little
13. puts away food
14. walking sticks
15. large bodies of water
16. nickname for Barbara
17. witty remarks
18. soak up
19. hints
20. bring about
21. charge with wrongdoing
22. does wrong
23. goes down
24. lizards
25. limbs
26. storms
27. small mallets
28. Ives
29. speak without thinking
30. vicious
31. pound
32. wash
33. exhalation
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GRID FOR LAST WEEK'S PUZZLE
1. ---- [ ] 2. ----- [ ] 3. ------
4. ---- [ ] 5. ----- [ ] 6. ------
7. ---- [ ] 8. ----- [ ] 9. ------
10. ---- [ ] 11. ----- [ ] 12. ------
13. ---- [ ] 14. ----- [ ] 15. ------
16. ---- [ ] 17. ----- [ ] 18. ------
19. ---- [ ] 20. ----- [ ] 21. ------
22. ---- [ ] 23. ----- [ ] 24. ------
25. ---- [ ] 26. ----- [ ] 27. ------
28. ---- [ ] 29. ----- [ ] 30. ------
31. ---- [ ] 32. ----- [ ] 33. ------[
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ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK'S PUZZLE
buds A daubs R absurd
Rose M Morse Y Moyers
SANE I anise N insane
Abel B Babel B babble
cans E canes O oceans
Babs R barbs O absorb
cues A cause C accuse
sins K sinks K skinks
legs A gales V gavels
Burl T blurt A brutal
beat H bathe R breath
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The verticals read AMIBERAKATH RYNBOOCKVAR -- which, properly spaced, spell out Ami Bera and Kathryn Boockvar. Alas, Boockvar lost to Pennsylvanian incumbent Michael Fitzpatrick, but Bera is ahead of Californian incumbent Dan Lungren and appears likely to win that seat.