"Men aslo be bspo dislro wezy bhe inajlojy tsaje uowogoam flygsboko wezy bio Clybykim Slum... Blosbn bious hybim inusaybm, tsaje wobn biouy isgo ae loskeas be deufwsyao wezy uenls defmyaro bio clnbswo covsufwo wezy bio Clybykim slum vyas bioylo blosbuoabm wezy uenls knazelbnasbo clobiloan."
Welcome to the second Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up of 2015. These diaries are a weekly Saturday night opportunity to have a little fun and to warm up your wits for the regular Sunday Puzzle (which posts 24 hours from now).
The theme for this month's puzzles is good quotes. Last week's quote (correctly deciphered by JoeXM) was:
"The fact is, torture is for sadists and for thugs. It's like getting groceries with a flame thrower. It doesn't work, and it makes a mess."
Tonight's quote is posted at the top of tonight's diary -- but if you want to see what it says you'll need to decode it first.
For anyone new to Sunday Puzzle, please note that this is not a regular cryptogram; it's a Crypto-Gremlin. Crypto-Gremlins are a special kind of cryptogram -- ones which can't be solved by online programs which run through and test out every possible letter substitution, but which can be solved by reasoning and creative thinking.
If you're not familiar with Crypto-Gremlins you can find a detailed explanation of how they work here. (And you can find a handy tool to help you with letter substitutions here.)
Also in tonight's diary: a new JulieCrostic. It's waiting for you right below...
Here's tonight's JulieCrostic puzzle (so named in honor of Julie Waters, who founded the Sunday Puzzle series 7 years ago).
Tonight's puzzle has 5 rows, with 3 answers per row. If you're familiar with how JulieCrostics work, you can jump right in; if you're new and don't yet know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions in the bottom part of the diary.
(Also if you're new, a request: please don't post any answers or other spoilers in comment subject lines. Instead, please put any guesses at possible answers into the comment itself. Thanks!)
1. kind of breath
2. something to protect cargo area of a pick-up
3. someone to sleep with
4. troll
5. formula
6. exact
7. spread malicious stories
8. manufacturers
9. puts up for sale
10. praises faintly?
11. fixes
12. puts down
13. hang over
14. twisted
15. before the sun comes up
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!