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. Last week's quote was from Lewis Carroll, and featured some advice the Cheshire Cat gave to Alice but which is also good advice for activists.
The quotation itself (and a step-by-step demonstration of how to come up with it) can be found in tonight's diary. Meanwhile, here's another good quote:
Aspictant aitcui votes fgunicktesking eosuly pr asneiusumy eg fgunicktesking. Fgunicktesking bg eoi nthi eosums. Eoir aitcui votes aspictant eosuly pr asneiusumy eg fgunicktesking.
Of course, you'll need to decode it first if you want to read it. It's a Crypto-Gremlin (a kind of cryptogram which can't be solved by computer code-cracking programs but can be solved with human wits). If you're not familiar with how Crypto-Gremlins work you can find an explanation
here. (And you can find a handy tool to help you with letter substitutions
here.)
Tonight's diary also includes:
- a step-by-step demonstration of how to solve last week's Crypto-Gremlin, and
- a new JulieCrostic (revealing the source of tonight's quote)
I: Sunday Puzzle Workshop: how to solve a Crypto-Gremlin
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 coded text for last week quote was:
"Shaven nha orvvg fr, cvritr, suglua sin Sg shaduoh oh sivbr pyhfi uryr?"
"Ouiog ercrketn si dhhea erivg shkg suryr nha sikoh oh droh oh," tiger our Lion.
- 1. Make a list of the word-ending letters. There are 6 word-ending letters in the message text: N, A, G, R, H, and I. These are the substitutions for the standard vowels a, e, i, o, u and y. 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 are three 3-letter words which appear in the text: NHA, SIN, and OUR.
NHA has the pattern vowel-vowel-vowel, so it is almost certainly you. Plug in N=y, H=o, A=u.
OUR has the pattern consonant-consonant-vowel. Whenever there's a 3-letter word with that pattern, there's a good chance it's the. So plug in O=t, U=h, R=e.
SIN has the pattern consonant-vowel-vowel. Since the second vowel is a y, and since o and e are already accounted for, that makes it probable that I=a. Plug in I=a.
- 3. With a, e, o, u and y accounted for, that leaves G=I.
- 4. From here it's easy.
(a) We can see that ORVVG = te--i. The i at the end must be an add-on, and the word must be tell -- so V=l
(b) We can see that SUGLUA = -hi-hu. The u at the end must be an add-on, and the word must be which -- so S=w and L=c
(c) It's now obvious that URYR and SURYR are here and where. Plug in Y=r.
(d) The text now reads: "Woul-y you telli -e, -lea-e, whichu way wI wou-hto to wal-e -ro-a here?" "Thati -e-e---y wa -oo-u -eali wo-i where you wa-to to -eto to," -ai-e the Caty.
Looking at that, it's easy to see that the first word is would, the fourth word is me, the fifth word is please please, the ninth word is ought, and the eleventh word is walk. Plugging in those substitutions, it's easy to decode all the rest.
- 5. Which quickly translates to this excellent bit of advice which the Cheshire Cat gave Alice:
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
II: tonight's JulieCrostic
Tonight's puzzle has 5 rows, with 4 answers per row. When you've solved the puzzle the verticals will identify 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. Have fun, and I'll see you in comments!
1. type of blood
2. in the direction of
3. digit
4. kind of bag
5. average
6. goldfish invasion location
7. very modest
8. Buffalo Bill
9. union symbol
10. organization formed to promote peace and security
11. baked roll
12. what David Barton produces regularly
13. kind of movie
14. next to
15. good follower
16. follow
17. me
18. exists
19. what Ted Cruz would like to abolish
20. gentlemen
III: 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!