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 of the warm-up puzzles in recent weeks has been good quotes. Here's tonight's quote:
Maxi one wdatze one zihy wnn prissy wn rizy bi faxxyhytuy, who psyycatly data bi usnpyfa hnnri jawdo bi rnpmeawn.
Of course, you'll need to decode it first if you want to read it.
Instructions for decoding, a
step-by-step demonstration of how to solve last week's coded message,
a new JulieCrostic which identifies the source of tonight's quote -- plus DKU notes on last week's JulieCrostic -- can all be found below the orange squiggle...
For anyone new to Sunday Puzzle, please note that the encoded quote 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.)
Crypto-Gremlins may look complicated at first, but they're actually pretty easy to solve once you get the hang of them. Here's a step-by-step walk-through of how to solve last week's puzzle.
The quote for last week was:
"Anyup oyui and Edict stop and Stcwe, wimsy ande’cd biggt cpmmymli otcy rcduysdmap."
That's
NOT the quote which was supposed to appear last week. By mistake I accidentally re-posted the Wes Pruden quote which I previously posted in the February 7th warm-up diary (
"Even Racist Right-Wingers Can Get It Right") instead of the Mark Evanier quote which last week's JulieCrostic referred to.
I had already typed up tonight's JulieCrostic before discovering last week's mistake, so I'll wait until next week to post the Crypto-Gremlin I intended to post last week. Meanwhile, here's a step-by-step walk-through for the Crypto-Gremlin which did post last week.
- 1: make a list of the word-ending letters. There are 6 word-ending letters in the message text: P, I, D, T, E, and Y. These are the substitutions for the standard vowels A, E, I, O, and U. We don't know yet which of these letters stands for which vowel, but we do now know which letters in the message text are vowels and which are consonants.
- 2: look for 3-letter words. There is one 3-letter word, and it occurs twice: AND.
- 3. From step 1, we know AND has the pattern consonant-consonant-vowel. That means there is a good chance it stands for THE. Plug in A=T, N=H, D=E.
- 4. If AND is indeed THE, then ANDE’CD translates to THE_'_E. That's probably THEY'RE. Plug in E=Y and C=R.
- 5. If AND is indeed THE, then EDICT translates to YE_R_. We know that I stands for a vowel -- either A, I, O or U (since E and Y are already taken). A is the only one which looks reasonable. Plug in I=A.
- 6. If AND is indeed THE, then ANYUP translates to TH___. The only remaining vowels to choose from are I, O, and U. There's no common 5-letter word starting with TH and ending in I, O, or U, so the last letter is probably an add-on. We're looking for a 4-letter of the pattern THI_, THO_, or THU_. One possibility is THUS, but that would make the message begin: "Thus _us the year...", which doesn't sound very likely. Much more likely is that the message begins: "This is the year..." So plug in Y=I, U=S.
- 7. We now have RCDUYSDMAP = _RESI_E_T_. The final letter is almost certainly an add-on (since a word ending in O or U is unlikely) so we're looking for _RESI_E_T. That's almost certainly PRESIDENT. Plug in R=P, S=D, and M=N.
- 8. We now have CPMMYMLI = R-NNIN_A. The A at the end is almost certainly an add-on, and the word is almost certainly RUNNING. plug in P=U and L=G.
- 9. T is the only remaining vowel-substitute letter, and O is the only remaining vowel. Plug in T=O.
- 10. So what we've got now (with the remaining untranslated words in all-caps and bold) is: "This is the year DO_U the DOR_Y, and they’re _A__O running _ORI president."
(a) The I at the end of _ORI is almost certainly an add-on. Take that off, and the word which makes sense is FOR. Plug in O=F. (Or, one could look at DO_U, realize the U at the end is almost certainly an add-on, and deduce the word must be OF to reach the same conclusion that O=F).)
(b) _A__O is derived from BIGGT. The O at the end is probably an add-on, so we're looking at a 3-letter or 4-letter word with A followed by a double-consonant. Of the available letters, only a double-L looks possible. So _ALL. In context, the word which makes sense is ALL.
(c) That leaves only DOR_Y. Possible letters for the missing letter are B, C, F, J, K, L, M, V, W, X, and Z. That gives two possibilities: DORM or DORK. Dorm makes no sense, but dork fits perfectly.
Final translation: "This is the Year of the Dork, and they’re all running for president."
Before we get to tonight's JulieCrostic, here are the
DKU notes on last week's puzzle.
Cultural references included the Argo (ship Jason used in his quest for the Golden Fleece, Argo City (a Kryptonian city which survived the planet's explosion and became Supergirl's birthplace), Margo Lane (friend and companion to The Shadow), and the tv show Doogie Howser.
There were also two political references:
Clue # 5 (Philadelphia's mayor Wilson) refers to Wilson Goode, Philadelphia's first black mayor.
And clue # 9 (birther King) refers to Iowa congressman Steven King.
Back in 2012, several places (including Mother Jones and International Business Times) commented on King's birtherism. One example of King's birther tendencies: at a tele-townhall King told people that, even though he had been to the Library of Congress and found Hawaiian newspaper announcements of Barack Obama's birth, that didn't mean Obama was actually born there -- and he mentioned an announcement sent by telegram from Kenya as one way the newspaper announcements could have been arranged.
King was at it again in 2014, with a creative variation which allowed him to say Obama was foreign without having to offer proof of foreign birth:
Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa said President Obama’s “was not raised in the American experience.” King was speaking at an immigration reform rally Saturday [July 19] ... in Council Bluffs, Iowa...
King... said “Obama’s vision of America” was different from that of his constituents....
“His vision of America isn’t like our version of America. That we know,” King said of Obama. “Now I don’t assert where he was born, I will just tell you that we are all certain that he was not raised with an American experience.
And now, 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 7 rows, with 3 answers per row. When you've solved the puzzle the verticals will spell out the source of tonight's quotation.
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. prominent LGBT rights group
2. scorch
3. dry out
4. high card
5. confront
6. "Duck Soup", "The Producers", or the contest for the Republican presidential nomination
7. unpleasant yellow-white sticky liquid
8. encourage
9. rains heavily
10. boy
11. tune to desired position
12. legitimate
13. owed
14. prompted
15. low card
16. stitch
17. impresses
18. speak of Rush Limbaugh non-euphemistically
19. groove
20. rotate
21. main impact
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!