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.
I had planned to feature another good quote in tonight's puzzle, but decided on something else instead. Another good quote coming next week, but tonight you get to figure out what Jesus and Zorro have in common.
The connection will probably be obvious -- especially since it's literally at the heart of the music video posted above. But if you don't see it, tonight's puzzle spells it out. Just jump over the orange squiggle...
Tonight's puzzle is a JulieCrostic (so named in honor of Julie Waters, who founded the Sunday Puzzle series a little over 7 years ago). It 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!)
Okay, I think that covers the basics. Here are the clues for tonight's puzzle. Have fun!
1. homes
2. fragrances
3. positions
4. difficult
5. however
6. finished
7. what Dan Fisher's proposed legislation will make it harder for students in Oklahoma to do
8. imaginary
9. vague
10. walks in [not on!] water
11. moved back and forth
12. land next to a road
13. intended
14. attractor
15. purplish red
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!