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 posts Sunday evenings at 8 pm Eastern time).
Since I frequently use these puzzle diaries to spotlight noteworthy Democrats, the gremlins suggested that in fairness they should be allowed occasionally to spotlight noteworthy Republicans.
I hesitated. It seemed to me that might not be such a good idea on a site dedicated to electing more and better Democrats.
On the other hand, since I'm running way late on everything and the gremlins have been providing the puzzles for me the last few months it seemed like getting on the wrong side of the gremlins might not be such a good idea either. And the chances of Kos or Meteor Blades seeing this diary and dropping the ban-hammer seemed small enough to be worth a gamble...
"Um", I asked hesitantly, "who are you considering featuring in the puzzle?"
Whom! they replied enthusiastically in unison.
I tried to think of what state had a governor, senator or representative by that name and came up blank. And that seemed good. If they were picking a Republican I'd never even heard of, chances are it was someone who hadn't said or done anything offensive enough to make headlines yet and I could get away with pleading ignorance if I got caught.
My relief was short-lived, though, because a little later I caught a glimpse one of the gremlins passing around pictures of John McCain, Allen West, James Inhofe, and Sarah Palin to the other gremlins. Uh-oh!
In response, one of the other gremlins pulled out a picture of Kelly Ayotte Hmmm, I thought, Kelly Ayotte isn't so bad. If they spotlight her, I might get off with just a week's time-out. I breathed a sigh of relief.
And then a gremlin triumphantly displayed a picture of Michelle Malkin...
I guess I'm doomed. Oh, well. Have fun with tonight's puzzle, and look for Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up from pucklady or science next week...
Here are the clues for tonight's JulieCrostic. If you're familiar with how JulieCrostics work, have at it! If you're new and don't yet know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions in the bottom part of the diary.
Tonight's puzzle has 5 rows, with 3 answers per row.
1. presidential candidate
2. with up, hiding out
3. in January 2009 he became the first Black to hold this high government office [NOTE: see hint, below]
4. catch
5. have a good time
6. equivalence
7. dirt
8. reveal the ending
9. firearm
10. commotion
11. major commotions
12. conservatives
13. warm up
14. kind of sheet (for naughty people)
15. kind of person who does not have sex
HINT for # 3: many people here were excited in 2008 when it seemed a real possibility he'd get this office, but since then he's come in for a lot of strong criticism...
For the benefit of anyone new to Sunday Puzzle, here are instructions for solving JulieCrostics.
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). 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. 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!