Welcome to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly opportunity to have a little fun and to get your brain in gear for the regular Sunday Puzzle [which, alas, is on recess until September.] [But on the bright side, your brain cells should be nicely warmed up by the time Sunday Puzzle returns]..
From now through September is Summer Songfest. Each week the acrostic verticals spell out the title of a noteworthy song; and each week I'll provide a YouTube clip of the song from the previous week at the top of the diary.
These warm-up puzzles are intended to be new-puzzler-friendly. So if you've never tried Sunday Puzzle before, and are scared to dive in the deep end, come on and dip your toes in here. Tonight's puzzle is waiting for you right below...
This is a JulieCrostic. If you're not familiar with this kind of puzzle, don't panic -- full instructions can be found directly below tonight's puzzle.
Tonight's puzzle has 8 rows, with 3 answers per row. Here are your clues:
1. favorite follower
2. Stewart and Arbuckle
3. Stewart, Edward and Edwards
4. big bird (second tallest bird in the world)
5. pouting look
6. cat toy
7. a liberal atheist Reagan
8. French or Cape
9. award
10. in this puzzle, this is the fourth
11. frayed
12. ornamental headgear
13. headgear
14. something most cats hate
15. custom
16. mournful
17. platform
18. thoughts
19. kind of factor related to Bill O'Reilly's sexual harassment incident
20. Santorum
21. ruse
22. DPRK's counterpart
23. often found above wine
24. rugged
For those of you new to Sunday Puzzle, here's an explanation of
How JulieCrostics Work
To solve the puzzle, figure out the answers to the clues and enter them into a grid of rows and columns. For the warm-up puzzles on Saturday I generally tell you how many rows and columns there are in the grid; for the regular puzzles on Sunday that's usually left to the solvers to figure out.
All the rows in the grid will be the same length (i.e. have the same number of answers). All the answers in a column will be the same length (i.e. have the same number of letters). And the words in each column are one letter longer than the words in the column to its left. That's because...
Each word in a row has all the letters of the word before it plus one new letter. For instance, if the clues for a row were (1) Alaska governor, (2) mountainous, and (3) clarify, the answers would be PALIN, ALPINE ( = PALIN + E), and EXPLAIN ( = ALPINE + X).
Write the added letter in the space between the word which doesn't have it and the word which does. For the row in the example you'd write:
PALIN E ALPINE X EXPLAIN
When you have solved all the clues and written down all the added letters, the added letters will form columns that spell out a message of some sort. It might be a person's name, it might be the title of a book, it might be a familiar phrase, or it might be a series of related words. Your challenge is to solve all the clues, fill in the vertical columns, and figure out what the vertical columns mean.
To show you what a completed puzzle looks like, here is the solution to last week's puzzle.
nicer T cretin A certain
rides A raised B sidebar
robed K Borked O Redbook
stern E enters W western
The verticals spell out TAKE ABOW. When properly spaced that spells out
"Take A Bow".