It's Sunday evening puzzle party time again.
On tap tonight: two unsolved puzzles from last week's potluck, and a brand-new JulieCrostic.
First up, the unsolved Mystery Puzzle from last week.
This is a Spoonerism puzzle. What I've done is taken familiar phrases, Spoonerized them, and then written out paraphrases of what the new Spoonerized phrases say. Your challenge is to figure out from the paraphrases what the original and Spoonerized phrases are.
Seven of the Spoonerized answers are 2-word phrases; the remaining answer is a 5-word phrase. Since the puzzle went unsolved last week, I've included the number of words in the answer in parentheses at the end of each clue. The first number given is the number of words in the original phrase; second number is the number of words in the Spoonerized phrase. (And as a small bit of additional help, the original for 3-a is hyphenated.)
As you can see, the clues are grouped into three sets. The answers in each set are related. Furthermore, all three sets are related.
When you correctly solve all the sets, you should come up with a phrase. It's the title of a book by an author I'm pretty sure you'll all be familiar with. Most of you will have read at least one of this author's books, possibly also seen one of the movies made out of this author's books. But I bet most of you will not be familiar with this book -- even though it's seasonally appropriate!
1-a. poem about a bread roll (2; 2)
1-b. avoid Leo (1; 2)
2-a: Tea Party strength (1; 2)
2-b: manure scattered around (1; 2)
2-c: inscriber of an ancient alphabet letter (1; 2)
BONUS! Here's an alternative clue for 2-c: Barry Windsor-Smith, Robert Rankin, or ISIS Productions
3-a: put away automobile (1; 2)
3-b: find proof that the actor playing Klinger is deliberately delaying things (5; 5)
3-c: illegally walked away with The Tonight Show host (2; 2)
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
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If this next puzzle looks familiar, that's because it was originally posted in last week's Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, went unsolved there, was re-posted in last week's potluck and also went unsolved there. So here it is again. (But since it's gone unsolved for more than a week, I've added a fifth item to the Helpful Hint list.)
This is a Crypto-Gremlin -- 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 onpa 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.
NEW HINT! 5. I found this quote on Daily Kos; you can, too.
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
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And lastly, here's a brand-new JulieCrostic.
If you're new to Sunday Puzzle and aren't familiar with how JulieCrostics work, you can find a complete explanation (and an introductory puzzle) in yesterday night's Warm-Up diary.
Sunday night JulieCrostics are a little more devious than the Saturday night JulieCrostics, though, so here are a few things to keep in mind for tonight's 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.
1. god
2. natural state
3. garden tool
4. danger man
5. 12 in
6. match
7. breach
8. kind of salad
9. hold on, let me think...
10. donovan's department
11. fall sound
12. kind of treat
13. baseball team
14. on loan from the louvre
15. lindsey jordan
16. pauses
17. priest
18. well-known side
19. follower of war (or a fan)
20. burning
21. famous uncle
22. famous doctor
23. stop
24. famous (but offensive) chief
25. account leader
26. over there
27. skeletal
28. pretty to look at
29. nothing to look at
30. kind of screen