A new cat showed up a few weeks ago and has indicated a willingness to let me provide him with food, attention, and a home. I have a strick no unneutered cats in the room policy, so I've been feeding him outside while waiting to be able to take him to see a vet.
Since I don't drive, and since the clinic is 35 miles away, it's not as easy as I'd like. (Nor as easy as it used to be, up until a few years ago, when a circuit rider veterinarian would come once a week to Gainesboro, only 12 miles away.) But I've got an appointment for the new kitty in Cookeville on Friday -- and have arranged a series of rides which gets him and me down there and back.
I'll be leaving a little later today (Thursday) and should be back Saturday well before this diary posts. But thought I'd mention this just in case any last minute complications arise and I'm not back in time to take part in tonight's puzzle party...
Tonight's JulieCrostic contains a foreshadowing of things to come:
1. Schultz or Rendell
2. provided a meal
3. become dim
4. disconcerted
5. Muhammad Ali, for example
6. imaginary bird
7. Booker
8. creator of hero Batman is modeled after
9. commercial
10. help
11. gave money
12. checkered
13. accordingly
14. old-fashioned operating system
15. twosomes
16. soak
If you're new to Sunday Puzzle and aren't familiar with this kind of puzzle, don't panic! Here's an explanation of how these puzzles work (plus an example of a solved puzzle).
An Explanation of JulieCrostics
What you do is solve the clues and write the answers in rows. (Tonight's puzzle, as indicated by the clue grouping, has 4 rows with 4 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. The object of the puzzle is to solve all the clues and read the vertical message.
All the rows have the same word-length pattern. If the first answer in one row has 5 letters, then the first answer in all the rows will have 5 letters. For example, here's the answer diagram for
last week's puzzle:
clues A clause P capsule
freed S defers U refused
tires H theirs Z zithers
a man's O Samoan Z Amazons
steal R alerts L stellar
Arlen T rental E eternal
The verticals read
ASHORT PUZZLE -- which, when properly spaced out, say that this was
a short puzzle.