Welcome once again to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up -- your Saturday evening opportunity to socialize with other puzzlers and get your brain tuned up for tomorrow's puzzle party. Or, if you're not familiar with the Sunday Puzzle series, this is an opportunity to get in a little practice with the kind of puzzles we feature at the Sunday puzzle parties.
Last week's Sunday Puzzle featured a larger-than-usual number of unsolved puzzles from the previous weeks. Almost all of those have now been solved. There's still one JulieCrostic which hasn't been finished yet, so I'll include a progress report on that in tonight's tip jar in case folks want to give it another look while waiting for tomorrow.
Meanwhile there's a brand-new Saturday night JulieCrostic waiting for you in tonight's diary -- one that you can solve as part of the team tonight, or copy and solve on your own whenever is convenient. You'll find it right below the orange whatsit.
Here for your Saturday night enjoyment is tonight's JulieCrostic.
The theme of these puzzles this month is foods everyone loves. With all the pie fights this year in other diaries, I thought it would be nice to have something fun and non-controversial for these holiday season puzzles. And what's more fun and non-controversial than food?
So far we've had broccoli, okra, and grapefruit. What will be spotlighted in the verticals tonight? Will it be Mushrooms? Asparagus? Avocado? Rhubarb? Fried potatoes? Or something else? Solve the puzzle and find out!
[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 puzzle.]
1. control
2. foreign coin
3. Betty or Barney
4. news agency
5. pair of arms treaties
6. something seen on a graduate's head
7. minuscule quantity of blueberries or ice cream
8. create a picture
9. this gets stuffed with toys and candy
10. Superboy's mother
11. Ms. Barton
12. kind of knowledge
13. part of a necklace
14. made bread and cookies
15. enjoyed the sun
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY 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. In tonight's puzzle there are 5 rows with 3 answers per row.
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.
An example of how this looks is provided below.
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
last week's puzzle:
1. wolverine relative
2. article of clothing
3. piece which broke off
4. solve a Crypto-Gremlin
5. emergency alert [2 words]
6. taped
7. leaps
8. is plentiful
9. zoo, bird sanctuary, wildlife institute, insectarium, birdlover's magazine, asteroid, and painter
10. evil
11. technique often used by stage magicians and card sharps
12. skewering
13. people who are dead or soon will be
14. blacks, formerly
15. sex hormone
the answer to last week's puzzle:
marten G garment F fragment
decode R code red R recorded
bounds A abounds U audubons
malign P palming I impaling
goners E negroes T estrogen
The verticals read
GRAPE FRUIT -- which properly spaced spells out
grapefruit.