Welcome to Sunday Puzzle!
Tonight is the last Sunday Puzzle of 2012. To celebrate, tonight's puzzle has 42 clues, and there's even a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe reference in clue 42! Hope you enjoy it, and hope you enjoy these final days of 2012.
Assuming the world didn't end December 21, and doesn't get destroyed between now and next week, next week's Sunday Puzzle will be a potluck puzzle party (since it's the first Sunday of the month). If you've got a puzzle you'd like to share, bring it along to post in comments next week and we'll paste it into the diary (or message it to pucklady or me during the week, and we can paste it into the diary before it goes up).
In addition to the JulieCrostic, there's also a new Crypto-Gremlin, a quickie math puzzle and a quickie word puzzle.
And as a special bonus, tonight's JulieCrostic is a collaboration between me and science. I provided clues 1 - 28 and 30 to 42, and science provided a brilliant new clue # 29 after evil gremlins sabotaged the puzzle by inserting a clue # 29 which didn't work. Three cheers and a happy new years toast for science!
Time's a wasting, so come on down to the diary and join the party!
Puzzle # 1: word puzzle
_ L _ _ W _
The word ALLOWS has an L for its second letter and a W for its fifth letter. What other common 6-letter word has the same pattern?
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Puzzle # 2: math puzzle
9 8 7
6 5 4
3 2 1
In the table shown above, there are 3 lines of 3-digit number using all digits from 1 to 9.
Each line has the following property: the first number minus the second number is the same as the second number minus the third number.
For instance:
9 - 8 = 8 - 7
6 - 5 = 5 - 4
3 - 2 = 2 - 1
Can you think of another way to arrange the nine digits into three 3-digit numbers which have this property?
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Puzzle # 3: Crypto-Gremlin
Here's a new Crypto-Gremlin. (If you don't know how Crypto-Gremlins differ from regular cryptograms, click here for full instructions.)
Pests zits lick ashams feh zits oswastpo jrchy ehf ph tiros jermutscr, nicui fs jimmy pesos oswastpo "ashams feh eizs cszstr eius jermutscr".
Dtyjs Jilsthci
The bolded words are a sentence from a syndicated column, and the unbolded words identify the source.
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Puzzle # 4: JulieCrostic
Lastly, the puzzle you've been waiting for, tonight's JulieCrostic!
(JulieCrostics are named for Julie Waters, the founder of Sunday Puzzle. If you're not familiar with what JulieCrostics are and how they work, you can find a complete explanation, introductory puzzles, and examples of solved puzzles over in our companion series Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up)
NOTE: The same gremlins which get into my cryptograms got into the JulieCrostic:
(1) The clues are all grouped in tidy bundles of 3, but that's not necessarily how many answers there are in a row. The gremlins are just fond of arranging things in threes.
(2) The gremlins stole all the capitalization, so you'll need to provide your own...
(3) ... and they may have fiddled with the punctuation in places as well, so you may have to repunctuate some clues to understand them correctly.
(4) Not content to pull their usual tricks with clue-grouping, capital-stealing, and punctuation-fiddling, the gremlins did something especially evil this week: they added an additional letter into the verticals! It's an L. So at some point in solving the puzzle, if you come across an L in the vertical columns, be warned it may not belong there and take it out. You'll be happier with the way the verticals read when you do -- which I think may be intended as a Christmas message from the gremlins.
(5) UPDATE: ... Late discovery! The gremlins also messed up the clue and answer for 29. Fortunately science has provided us with a suitable replacement. When you encounter clue # 29, full credit goes to him.
NOTE: To make up for the mischief the gremlins did, here are several helpful notes:
(1) Clue # 6 is not a typo
(2) Clue # 24 is very dated. I get 31,000 hits on a Google search of what the clue refers to, so I'm not the only one who will understand the clue -- but many younger folks may not. The funny thing is, I could give a more straightforward definition of the answer but that would probably be harder to crack; almost everyone (including the employees who sell them) call these by an incorrect name.
(3) Two of the answers in one of the rows are generous hints at the verticals. Not that you'll need any such hints in an easy puzzle like this, but they're there for you anyway.
All right, enough chatter from me. Here's the puzzle:
1. sort of barren
2. 18th century activist
3. in the clouds
4. big bird
5. nut product
6. tena turner
7. angle
8. man of steel
9. what robots have, according to moore and moore's spouse
10. silver, for example
11. see
12. place
13. fastened
14. partially removed clothing
15. hanging ornament
16. tie
17. rush limbaugh, euphemistically
18. how to make grace's roommate sick
19. make a caricature of 19th century writer
20. drink or arena
21. young woman
22. strikes
23. joseph and stewart (brothers, as a matter of fact)
24. penny followers
25. followers
26. examine surreptitiously
27. paper follower
28. synonym for 27
29. B
30. tough guy
31. liberal lion
32. paid by check as part of scam
33. angry
34. deceived
35. came down slowly
36. baseball night
37. overcharge
38. the popes faults
39. kelly robinson hindquarters, really
40. time and space
41. 0 => 11
42. the answer to everything the answer to nothing