What a strange diary title! Of course yesterday wasn't the Sunday Puzzle Potluck Party. That's tonight, right now, right here!
So what does the diary title mean...? Hmmm. Something of a puzzle!
Speaking of puzzles, here are the other puzzles we have on the potluck table so far:
1. a piping-hot JulieCrostic
2. an early-Christmas mystery puzzle
3. low-calorie mini-JulieCrostic
4. a leftover Crypto-Gremlin
If you enjoy puzzles, come on down and join the solving party. And if you've got a puzzle you'd like to share, post it in a comment and we'll paste it into the diary.
Potluck Puzzle # 1
Here's a new JulieCrostic -- freshly-baked and hot out of the over, courtesy of pucklady:
1 French bread
2 What Republicans feel when they think Immigration Reform
3 something nice for Dickens
4 soften
5 inn
6 miscellaneous
7 Paul
8 lascerates
9 doubts
10 block
11 baby farm animals
12 records
13 Slav
14 puzzle
15 damage
16 secures
17 prongs
18 hushed
19 action
20 Murphy
21 fasted
NOTE: if you are new to Sunday Puzzle and don't know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions (and additional help) in
Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up.
..................................................................................................................
Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE
..................................................................................................................
Potluck Puzzle # 2
Here's a little mystery puzzle I cooked up for the potluck. The answers are all familiar phrases, but I've made a slight alteration to each phrase. I'm not going to tell you what the type of alteration is, because I think that would make the puzzle too easy. But in the past I've done One-Off puzzles (where I change one letter in the answer phrase), so this might be one of those. I've also done Spoonerism puzzles (where I swap the opening sounds of some of the words) so this might be one of those. Or it might be something new. I'll let you figure it out.
1-a. poem about a bread roll
1-b. avoid Leo
2-a: Tea Party strength
2-b: manure scattered around
2-c: inscriber of an ancient alphabet letter
BONUS! Here's an alternative clue for 1-c: Barry Windsor-Smith, Robert Rankin, or ISIS Productions
3-a: put away automobile
3-b: find proof that the actor playing Klinger is deliberately delaying things
3-c: illegally walked away with The Tonight Show host
The clues which are grouped together are all closely related.
(Duh! That's why they're grouped together!)
But the three sets are also related. There's an obvious relationship you'll spot right away once you've solved all the clues -- but, as a bonus puzzle, there's an additional relationship to find. I've already given you one hint to the relationship in the diary introduction; but just to be generous, here's another.
HINT to the bonus puzzle solution:
ɐu ɐnʇɥoɹ ɐןɯosʇ ɐןן oɟ ʎon ʍıןן ıɯɯǝpıɐʇǝןʎ ɹǝɔoƃuızǝ ɐup qǝ ɟɐɯıןıɐɹ ʍıʇɥ' qnʇ ɐ qooʞ ı qǝʇ ɯosʇ oɟ ʎon ɥɐʌǝ uǝʌǝɹ ɹǝɐp oɹ ɥǝɐɹp oɟ˙
..................................................................................................................
Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE
..................................................................................................................
Potluck Puzzle # 3
Here's a cute little mini-JulieCrostic. It's pretty easy, but be warned: even if you solve all the clues correctly you'll probably get the answer wrong...
1. those with VD often have this first
2. notice
3. small quantity
4. fried man
5. she's big in comics
6. total incompetent
7. talking points which are usually wrong
8. kind of house
9. Jesus' self-description
10. money given over before the beginning of sexual relations
11. unused
12. sank with bliss
As usual on a Sunday night, keep in mind:
- Sunday clues tend to be more devious than Saturday clues.
- Don't trust the clue capitalization; the gremlins often capitalize words which don't need it and de-capitalize words which do.
- Also don't trust the clue punctuation; the gremlins often remove punctuation marks which should be there and insert ones which shouldn't.
- And you might be a little wary of word spacing as well; gremlins sometimes remove a space between two words which makes them run together or insert a space inside a word to make it appear to be two words.
- And especially don't trust the way the clues are grouped; the gremlins like to put the clues into tidy little bunches of three regardless of how many answers there actually are in a row.
..................................................................................................................
Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE
..................................................................................................................
Potluck Puzzle # 4
Most of you have probably just about finished off the Thanksgiving leftovers by now and are feeling sad to see them go. Well, cheer up -- here's a brand-new leftover for you to enjoy, a Crypto-Gremlin left over from last night's Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up.
Crypto-Gremlins are a special kind of cryptogram which cannot be solved by the online programs that run through every possible letter substitution, but which can be solved by creative reasoning. You can find a complete explanation of what makes Crypto-Gremlins different from regular cryptograms here.
Dust gnoe karafinomb inca qumct sttmu ston mia mnurt htsn gn kteca onowt bte cnb minma bte npa oaempnru, mia kteca yurrt otme dnffpaxunma btepb oaempnrumb.
* Wacktown Meme (ZnoouaQt'ca cujonmepa)
Helpful Hints:
1. Go to the American Cryptogram Association site and copy the text of the Crypto-Gremlin into the box of the handy letter-substitution tool they provide.
2. A good starting point in solving Crypto-Gremlins is to make a list of all the final letters of the encrypted words. This gives you a list of the vowels.
3. Another good starting point is to look over the encrypted text to see if there are any 3-letter words. If there's a word with the pattern consonant-consonant-vowel there's a good chance it's THE; if there's a word with the pattern vowel-vowel-vowel it's almost certainly YOU.
4. The bolded text is a quote; the unbolded text provides the source of the quote.
..................................................................................................................
Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Potluck Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE
..................................................................................................................
Your puzzle could be appearing in this space. Just post it in a comment and we'll paste it into the diary!
Potluck Puzzle #