For the benefit of those who aren't able to take part in the weekend Daily Kos puzzle parties, or who prefer to solve puzzles individually rather than as part of a team effort, here is a re-posting of the weekend's puzzles.
From the Saturday evening Warm-Up Diary "... and recreation" there's an introductory JulieCrostic and a Crypto-Gremlin.
From the regular Sunday Puzzle diary "Oh... was yesterday the Sunday Puzzle Potluck Party?" there's a JulieCrostic, a miniJulieCrostic, and a Spoonerism puzzle.
For the benefit of folks who aren't familiar with Sunday Puzzle, instructions for how to solve these types of puzzles are included in the diary.
Since we've already had the puzzle parties over the weekend, I'm not expecting many comments in this diary. This diary is mostly for folks who enjoy copying puzzles down to work on their own. I'll be checking in fairly regularly on the comments just in case anyone has questions, suggestions, or needs help.
But if you get stuck and want help quickly, one easy way to get it is to click on the provided links to the diaries in which these puzzles originally appeared. Once there, set your comment preference to SHRINK (so that you only see subject lines, not the contents of comments). Browse through the subject lines until you find a comment dealing with the clue you're stuck on, and click the comment to read it.
[Well, usually that's a simple way to get help with the puzzles. But this week two of the puzzles -- the potluck Spoonerisms and the warm-up Crypto-Gremlin -- are still unsolved as this recap diary goes up, so you won't find much help for them this way! But most weeks, all the puzzles are solved by the end of the Sunday night party.]
Have fun, and happy holidays! /
Puzzle # 1: This is the JulieCrostic from Saturday's warm-up diary, "... and recreation"
If you already know how JulieCrostics work you can skip down to the clues and start solving. If you don't, I've included a full explanation of how JulieCrostics work in tonight's tip jar.
This introductory JulieCrostic has 3 rows, with 4 answers per row, for a total of 12 clues. Here they are; have fun!
1. marries
2. Pearson and Barrymore
3. high waterproof boots
4. benefits
5. trigonometric function
6. din
7. little horses
8. slang term for communist sympathizers
9. fruit that's ready to eat
10. steeple top
11. hope
12. says good things about
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 2:Here's a JulieCrostic created by pucklady for Sunday's potluck puzzle party.
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
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 3: Here's a somewhat tricky miniJulieCrostic, again from the potluck party. The title of that diary was "Oh... was yesterday the Sunday Puzzle Potluck Party?". Often the diary titles contain clues for solving one of the diary puzzles, and that's the case here. In fact, the solution to this miniJulieCrostic will make little sense unless you figure out what the title means and how it relates to the puzzle. You have been warned!
And speaking of warnings: Sunday night JulieCrostics are a little different from the Saturday night JulieCrostics, so here are a few things to keep in mind for this puzzle:
- Don't trust the clue capitalization; the Sunday Puzzle 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.
Okay, here's the puzzle. (And remember you can get help if you get stuck by clicking the link to the original diary to find the answers you need.)
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
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 4: This is a Spoonerism puzzle, again from Sunday's potluck puzzle party. I've taken familiar phrases, Spoonerized them, and written out a paraphrase of what the new Spoonerized phrase says. Your challenge is to figure out from the paraphrases what the original and Spoonerized phrases are.
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˙
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 5: Here is the Crypto-Gremlin from Saturday's warm-up diary
Crypto-Gremlins are a special type of cryptogram which can't be solved by online programs which run through all the possible letter substitutions but which can be solved by careful reasoning.
The reason simply running through all the possible letter substitutions doesn't work is that before encoding a passage I alter the text so that every word begins with a consonant (or consonant sound) and that every word ends with a vowel (or vowel sound). If the words don't naturally begin or end that way, I add letters of my choosing to make sure they do.
You can find a detailed explanation of the rules of Crypto-Gremlins here, and you can find a step-by-step demonstration of how to solve a Crypto-Gremlin 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 one with pattern consonant-consonant vowel there's a good chance it's THE; if there's one with 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.