For those who missed the weekend puzzle diaries, here is a handy recap of the puzzles which were posted.
Since we've already had the puzzle parties over the weekend, I'm not expecting comments in this diary. (Tips or recs, however, would be appreciated.) I'll try to check in on comments regularly during the week, in case anyone has any questions, critiques or suggestions, but this diary is intended mainly for folks who enjoy working puzzles on their own.
If you do get stuck on a puzzle, there's a simple way to get help quickly:
(a) click on the provided link to the diary in which the puzzle originally appeared;
(b) set your comment preference to SHRINK (so that you only see subject lines, not the contents of comments);
(c) browse through the subject lines until you find a comment dealing with the puzzle or clue you're stuck on;
(d) click the comment to read it.
Have fun! And if you enjoy these puzzles, drop by some Saturday or Sunday to join in on the regular puzzle parties.
First, here's a link to skymutt's very entertaining A BridgeGate Puzzle, which posted Saturday morning.
Second, here's the JulieCrostic from Saturday evening's warm-up puzzle diary A Real Head-Turner.
(If you're not familiar with how JulieCrostics work, don't worry; full instructions are provided at the bottom of this diary.)
puzzle has 4 rows, with 4 answers per row.
1. __-Man
2. ___ Nation
3. woman who knows a lot about sex
4. burglary
5. about
6. Volt
7. Person-centered Rogers
8. a Huxtable
9. US-supported dictator who came to power via assassination and whose sole hero was Hitler
10. crucial
11. friend of Eric and Stan
12. country cousin
13. Einsteinium
14. carnal knowledge
15. what you can do when you don't know a number
16. central point at which things are connected
HELPFUL HINTS:
(1) The clue answers include three fictional characters, three non-fictional characters, a magazine and a 2-word phrase.
(2) When you've solved the puzzle, type the phrase spelled out byn the verticals into Google (or other search engine) and it should lead you to an entertaining and educational 2-minute video.
Thirdly, here's the JulieCrostic from Sunday evening's regular puzzle diary "Music, math, baseball, bedroom activities...".
This JulieCrostic is titled "Many Times" (which is a hint to its solution...) Here are the clues:
1. Instruction concerning Judaism
2. Queens
3. After gen
4. Follower of Bobby in the '40s
5. Girl's leader for 50 years
6. A good man!
7. Thai salads
8. Red and green with tinsel and lights and music
9. Transylvanian mineral
10. Short outer
11. Only after, often
12. Survive
13. Undocumented alien who was mainly Welsh when speaking
14. Radio or tv
15. Arousing message
16. Formal suits
17. 9 + 21
18. Corroded
19. Tree, leaf and garden
20. Progressive sin
21. Good for a start
HELPFUL HINTS:
- 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.
Lastly, for the benefit of anyone who's new to these Sunday Puzzles and doesn't know how JulieCrostics work, here are full instructions.
In JulieCrostics you are given a set of clues, such as these:
To solve the puzzle, figure out the answers to the clues and enter them into a grid of rows and columns, like so:
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).
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. say what's not so
2. resting
3. concede
then the answers might be LIE, IDLE (= LIE + D), and YIELD (= IDLE + Y)
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:
1. LIE D 2. IDLE Y 3. YIELD
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.
In the example given, the verticals read
DAIL YKOS. With proper spacing and capitalization that spells out
Daily Kos!