Welcome to Sunday Puzzle, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
Some unbelievable puzzles tonight. Also lots of spoilers!
On tap tonight:
- the answers to last night's warm-up puzzles (because there's an action you can take once you know the answers);
- the answers to the clues which went unsolved last week;
- a brand-new Crypto-Gremlin puzzle; and
- a brand-new JulieCrostic.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Unfortunately I'll be away tonight so won't be able to take part in tonight's puzzle party, but I should get home by noon Tuesday and will read the comments (and answer any questions) then.
Have fun!
Let's start with last night's puzzles.
1. The verticals in last night's JulieCrostic (nicely solved by pucklady and puzzled) spelled out Lloyd Doggett.
An unsolved puzzle from last night, though, is: Why did I spotlight Lloyd Doggett?
2. A major hint to the reason for spotlighting Lloyd Doggett can be found in last night's Crypto-Gremlin:
Crazy razzys haze wipens vegacauza. Crs zciwszo wits cee htsica, dimly crs zigcstmicanszi wits cee lats.
This is pretty easy to solve, if you understand how Crypto-Gremlins work. (If you don't, you can find an explanation
here, and you can find a handy tool for testing out letter substitutions
here.)
SPOILER WARNING: here's how to crack the code. Start by writing down the end-letters (Y, S, E, A, O, and I). These stand for the vowels a, e, i, o, u and y, although we don't yet know which stands for which.
Next look for 3-letter words. Aha! CRS appears twice and has the pattern consonant-consonant-vowel. Good chance, then, that it stands for the.
Plugging in C=t, R=h, and S=e, it's immediately apparent that CEE stands for too, giving us E=o.
It's also easy to deduce that the letter which stands for y must be O (since Y can't stand for itself, and A, O and I appear too often in word interiors to be likely candidates for y).
A has to stand for either i or u (since it can't stand for a). With a little thought it's not hard to figure out that CRAZY RAZZYS must stand for this issue. That means A=i, Y=u, and therefore (by process of elimination) I=a.
At this point it's easy to see that VEGACAUZA stands for politics. Plugging in those letter substitutions makes it easy to see that ZIGCSTMICANSZI stands for alternatives, and plugging in those letter substitutions makes it easy to see that the complete text is:
This issue is above politics. The stakes are too great, and the alternatives are too dire.
3. Another major hint I provided to the reason for spotlighting Lloyd Doggett was a bonus JulieCrostic, the verticals of which identify a site where you can see the full text of the quoted message. The clues for that JulieCrostic were:
1. nautical prefix
2. previously
3. all-female Avengers
4. French public television network
5. person who trains birds to hunt
SPOILER WARNING: I'll let you solve the clues for yourselves, but the verticals spell out FCNL. Googling "Lloyd Doggett FCNL" will take you to the FCNL site and their latest action alert:
Decision Time on Iran Diplomacy.
Here's the key part of the action alert:
Can you make a quick call TODAY to support diplomacy with Iran?
Three House members -- Jan Schakowsky (IL), Lloyd Doggett (TX), and David Price (NC) -- are asking other representatives to sign a letter supporting the historic diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. The letter closes early next week, so call today and urge your representative to sign on.
And here's the
full text of the letter:
Dear Mr. President:
As negotiations over Iran's nuclear program continue, we urge you to stay on course, building on the recently announced political framework and continuing to work toward a strong and verifiable agreement between the P5+1 countries and Iran that will prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. We commend you and your negotiating team, as well as our coalition partners, for the significant progress made thus far.
This issue is above politics. The stakes are too great, and the alternatives are too dire. We must exhaust every avenue toward a verifiable, enforceable, diplomatic solution in order to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. If the United States were to abandon negotiations or cause their collapse, not only would we fail to peacefully prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, we would make that outcome more likely. The multilateral sanctions regime that brought Iran to the table would likely collapse, and the Iranian regime would likely decide to accelerate its nuclear program, unrestricted and unmonitored. Such developments could lead us to war.
War itself will not make us safe. A U.S. or Israeli military strike may set back Iranian nuclear development by two or three years at best - a significantly shorter timespan than that covered by a P5+1 negotiated agreement. We must pursue diplomatic means to their fullest and allow the negotiations to run their course – especially now that the parties have announced a strong framework – and continue working to craft a robust and verifiable Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action by June 30.
We must allow our negotiating team the space and time necessary to build on the progress made in the political framework and turn it into a long-term, verifiable agreement. If we do not succeed, Congress will remain at-the-ready to act and present you with additional options to ensure that Iran is prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Thank you for your resolve in preventing a nuclear-armed Iran. We look forward to continuing our shared work on this important matter.
Sincerely,
Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL)
Representative Lloyd Doggett (TX)
Representative David Price (NC)
There are still more spoilers to come, such as the answers to last week's unsolved clues, but I'll save those for further down in the diary so that we can get on to tonight's puzzles.
5. Here's tonight's JulieCrostic. If you're familiar with what JulieCrostics are and how they work, jump right in. If you're not familiar with JulieCrostics here are some
NOTES FOR NEWCOMERS:
JulieCrostics are a special kind of acrostic puzzle, named in honor of Julie Waters who started the Sunday Puzzle series here a little over 7 years ago. If you're not familiar with how JulieCrostics work you can find a detailed explanation in last night's Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up.
If you're new you should be warned that we have some mischievous gremlins who like to tamper with the Sunday night puzzle clues. In particular you should keep in mind:
* you can't trust the clue capitalization;
* you can't trust the clue punctuation;
* sometimes you can't even trust the word spacing.
Because of this, some of the clues may be hard to crack, and you may not understand the answer at first after it has been cracked. But the answers actually do make sense, once you look at them the right way. If you have any trouble understanding how an answer fits the clue, please leave a comment asking for an explanation.
The gremlins also like bundling the clues into tidy little groups of 3, regardless of how many answers there actually are per row. If the number of clues doesn't divide evenly by 3, they add a space-filler clue or two at the end to fill out the final bundle. If you see a clue at the end such as nothing to see, that could well be such a clue.
A small request: please don't put any any spoilers in the comment subject lines. Use the subject line of comments to identify what your comment will be about but keep any guesses as to clue answers or the verticals confined to the comment itself. That way folks who are still trying to crack a clue for themselves won't inadvertently see the answer before they're ready to see it. Thanks!
Okay, I think that covers all the basics. Here are the clues for tonight's puzzle. Have fun!
1. long-distance traveler?
2. lace
3. projecting point
4. follower of Stan Ford
5. having received a cut
6. often associated with fox
7. place to find friends
8. crawlers
9. spells
10. slow on the uptake
11. fi-c
12. Chinese poetry
13. smash base
14. no, tthatt!
15. strong desires
SPOILER WARNING: the verticals to tonight's JulieCrostic probably won't make much sense to you at first, unless you realize that they provide an important clue to help you solve the next puzzle...
6. ... And here the next puzzle is: tonight's Crypto-Gremlin.
Ba tcp'ro mynayly Ba'dc granny kierygraphs ruage ticks!
SPOILER WARNING: Once you've solved the JulieCrostic you should have a fairly easy time solving the Crypto-Gremlin. But if you have trouble cracking the code, the text of the message can be found in the article
Sanders wows Austin: Watch out Hillary, here comes Bernie (which you might enjoy looking at even if you don't need help solving the puzzle).
7. There were two JulieCrostic clues which went unsolved
last week.
One of them was:
24. Roberts, Marshall, or Thomas, for example
SPOILER WARNING: Science came up with the answer for that one last night: ACTRESS. (The clue refers to Julia Roberts, Penny Marshall, and Marlo Thomas, all of whom are famous actresses.)
But the other unsolved clue remains unsolved as I type this, despite the very generous hint I provided last week. The unsolved clue was:
14. after these days are gone
SPOILER WARNING: you'll find the answer to this clue in tonight's tip jar.