May has been Mystery Month, with the puzzles spotlighting some noteworthy fictional mysteries.
Two weeks ago in Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up the spotlighted author was Michael Z. Lewin.
Lewin is the author of eight mystery novels about private eye Albert Samson -- and the very first of these is titled Ask The Right Question...
Hmmm. That's the title of tonight's diary. Surely I wouldn't spotlight the same author twice... But if that's not what the diary title refers to, then what does it mean?
Solve tonight's puzzle and find out! It's waiting for you right below the squiggle...
But before we get to tonight's puzzle, a couple of quick notes:
Item 1:
Next Friday will be the first Friday of June, meaning it's potluck puzzle party time. If you've got a puzzle you'd like to share, bring it along and post it in comments and potluck hostess pucklady will paste it into the diary.
Item 2:
Late July, when I'll be heading up to Maine to rake blueberries, is fast approaching. I have very little free time or computer access during blueberry season, so I'll be largely absent from these diaries for a couple of months.
Last year pucklady and banjolele provided some great summer puzzles. This year it could be your name in lights up at the top of a Sunday Puzzle diary.
Creating puzzles is a lot of fun, and I'd like to encourage as many people as possible to consider taking turns guest-hosting. Pucklady will be in charge of things over the summer, so if you're interested in taking a turn let her know when you'd like to do it by posting a comment in a diary or sending her a Kosmail message.
(If you're a member of the Sunday Puzzle group you can create a diary any time and add it to the queue; then just let pucklady know it's in the queue so she can schedule it to post at the right time.)
Okay, on to tonight's JulieCrostic!
We haven't had too much success luring in the Monday Murder Mystery folks for Mystery Month, but just in case any do show up there are a couple of mystery-related entries in tonights' clues -- plus the usual mix of politics, history, culture, and comic books.
If you're not familiar with this kind of puzzle, don't panic. You can find a complete explanation of how they work, introductory puzzles to practice on, and examples of solved puzzles, in our companion series Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up. Here's a link to last week's entry.
But beware! The warm-up puzzles are generally pretty straightforward. Most of the clues are definitions or synonyms, and I tell you up front how many rows there are and how many answers there are per row. The Friday night puzzles tend to have somewhat more devious clues, and figuring out how many rows and columns there are is something you have to figure out for yourself.
Plus there are puzzle gremlins around on Friday, who look and act suspiciously like my cats, and who delight in:
(a) grouping all the clues in tidy little bundles of three, regardless of how many answers there actually are in a row;
(b) removing all the capitalization from the clues; and
(c) fiddling with the punctuation -- taking out marks which should be there, inserting marks which shouldn't.
I don't think the gremlins inserted any incorrect punctuation marks tonight, but they did take out quite a few of the marks I put in.
Let's see if I can outsmart them tonight, though. The marks they removed were: three blank lines; a pair of quotation marks; an ellipsis; and a semi-colon. I think that's all. Here they are:
_ _ " " ... ;
Just put those back where they belong and solving should be easy.
Have fun and I'll see you in comments!
1. male reproductive organ
2. this often followed indiana in years past
3. arguments not made
4. more like a miss marple mystery
5. daring deeds
6. more particular
7. more x-rated
8. reduced
9. looked at in anger
10. controversial assault weapons
11. like a woman
12. the question is who did this
13. distort
14. kind of rider
15. changed for the better
16. tasmanian paper
17. missile or drink
18. freelancer
19. jewish superhero
20. breadfruit cousins
21. least stale
22. coercion
23. people who soak you
24. sleds?
25. point often follows
26. poison
27. rifles
28. what the word in question became
29. jerome corsi
30. ten cents to ride the subway
31. scott terry
32. extreme
33. put forward a shiny object