After an 8-week experiment with Friday postings for Sunday Puzzle, this weekend Sunday Puzzle returns to Sunday. So no new puzzles tonight!
But while I'm posting this quick note to remind puzzlers we're back to Sundays, here's a quick outline of what's coming up in Sunday Puzzle over the next few months. If you're interested, look below the orange squiggle.
1. Starting this weekend, Sunday Puzzle returns to its usual day (Sunday) -- but to a slightly different time. From now through September, the weekly Sunday Puzzle diary will go up at 7:30 pm Eastern 4:30 pm Pacific (which is half an hour earlier than it had been going up).
But the Sunday Puzzle party will still be starting at the usual time of 8 Eastern / 5 Pacific.
For the first half hour the diary is up, people are asked not to post any answers. That will give more people a chance to discover the puzzles before they're solved, and that will give people a chance to see how much of the puzzle they can solve on their own before the communal solving starts.
Which gives folks a choice. If you'd like a leisurely half hour to attempt the puzzles on your own, look for the diary when it publishes at 7:30 Eastern, copy down the puzzles, and see how much progress you're able to make. If you're more interested in the group puzzle-solving party you can enjoy an extra half-hour of browsing through the front page and other good stuff and then show up for the party at 8 pm.
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
2. Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, featuring introductory puzzles especially designed to be new-puzzler-friendly, will continue to post Saturday nights at 8 pm Eastern / 5 pm Pacific.
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
3. As usual I'll be heading up to Maine in late July to harvest blueberries and will be away (with limited computer access) until late September. But I'm planning once again to queue up a couple of months of warm-up puzzles before I leave which will post on a weekly basis during my absence. Each week will feature a new Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up puzzle plus the answer to the past week's puzzle.
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
4. Ah, but what about the regular Sunday Puzzle? Well, that will continue while I'm away, too -- but in a slightly different form than usual.
From July 21 to September 22 Sunday Puzzle will be featuring JulieClassics: re-posts of some of the early JulieCrostics (and miscellaneous other puzzles) created by the late (and much-missed) Julie Waters. Each week will feature an assortment of Julie's puzzles along with the answers to the puzzles from the previous week. (So if enough Sunday Puzzlers show up, you can solve the puzzles together in the usual way; and if any of the puzzles go unsolved, you'll be able to get the missing answers by coming back the next week.) I'll have these diaries queued up before I take off and all set to post in my absence.
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
5. In late September I'll be back and all set to start up again. (By then I may actually be caught up on sleep and less error-prone than I've been in recent weeks.)
I'm hoping this fall to attract new people to our circle -- both to increase the number of people on our solving team and to increase the number of people creating puzzles and hosting diaries.
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
6. In the more immediate future: two clues in the JulieCrostic in last week's Sunday Puzzle turned out to be extremely hard to crack. Science was able to solve one shortly after the puzzle-solving party wrapped up, but the other remains unsolved (even though I provided a generous hint in comments, and even though with the rest of the puzzle solved all the letters of the answer are known).
Here's the one science solved:
14. In the middle of a little curl! (The middle???)
Here's the one which no one has solved yet:
20. The door's here in the middle; there's no out, to left and to the right; all which remains is alive.
So if you're looking for a puzzle to solve until Sunday rolls around, there's still that. (And if no one cracks it before then, I'll include the answer in this Sunday's diary.)