Welcome to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
The theme for last month's puzzles was good quotes, and I'm continuing that theme this month.
Last week's quote was from Robin Kelly:
"I ask the NRA, why imbue the debate on gun reform with such venom and vitriol if you truly believe you're on the side of right? An argument is only diminished when delivered with disrespect."
The puzzle featured references to
the AFA's campaign against a Carl's Jr. commercial which had been set to air during the Superbowl, to
Ed Gillespie's devolution from a Democrat to a Republican, and to the fact that while Batman's partner Robin was originally a Boy Wonder the role has in recent years been filled by
girl wonders as well.
Most of last month's quotes were from liberal and progressive sources. But 3 weeks ago I featured a quote from a leading conservative (David Cameron, leader of the Tories in Great Britain), who had a spot-on observation about a Fox News commentator.
Tonight's quote is also from a conservative. Not a relatively sane and reasonable one like Cameron -- but when I ran across this quote I knew I had to use it. The person who said it is wrong about almost everything (and, from a quick online search I did while preparing tonight's diary, appears to be a racist to boot) but this observation was spot-on when it was made and it's going to be spot-on again soon. That kind of prescience deserves to be spotlighted.
Here's the quote:
"Anyup oyui and Edict stop and Stcwe, wimsy ande’cd biggt cpmmymli otcy rcduysdmap."
Of course, you'll need to decode it first if you want to read it. (And you will want to read it. It's good.)
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. 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 on tap tonight, you'll find a new JulieCrostic (which reveals where tonight's quotation originally appeared). That's waiting for you right below the orange squiggle...
Here's tonight's JulieCrostic puzzle (so named in honor of Julie Waters, who founded the Sunday Puzzle series a little over 7 years ago). Tonight's puzzle has 5 rows, with 4 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!)
Okay, I think that covers the basics. Here are the clues for tonight's puzzle. Have fun, and I hope to see you in comments!
1. where to find PE (or BO)
2. useful pruning tool
3. kind of song
4. desires
5. presidential brother-in-law
6. old gray mare
7. close associates
8. growing up
9. Fattah's home
10. Beck believer
11. gone by
12. collectible item
13. woman
14. British vessel
15. kind of pit
16. dwellings
17. see
18. kind of well
19. kind of cat
20. what you might gird
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!