Welcome to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly series for people who enjoy mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, odd bits of trivia, and the occasional feline voter.
The theme for the past few months, and the next couple of months, is Candidates Worth Supporting.
Some of the candidates featured in past weeks have included Daily Kos members Angela Marx, Tim Canova, Zephyr Teachout, Kim Weaver, Russ Feingold, Jim Keady, Wade Norris, Adam Sackrin, and Alina Valdes (who posts under the username alijim89).
Non-DK members have included Peter DeFazio, Maggie Hassan, Diana Hird, Pramila Jayapal, Susannah Randolph, Tammy Duckworth, Eileen Bedell, Angie Craig, Beth Tuura, Bob Poe, Tom Wakely, Ann Kirkpatrick, Emily Cain, Jim Mowrer. Ted Lieu, David Kent, Sarah Lloyd, Adrian Fontes, Chase Iron Eyes, and Barbara Lee.
The answer to last week's puzzle was Marvin Nelson, who is running for governor of North Dakota. You can find out more information about him, and you can find a new puzzle identifying another candidate worth supporting, directly below.
First, here’s tonight's puzzle. This is a JulieCrostic (named after Sunday Puzzle founder Julie Waters). If you’re familiar with how JulieCrostics work you can jump right in; if you don’t know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions (with diagrams and everything!) at the bottom of this diary.
I’m away this weekend so won’t be able to take part in tonight’s puzzle party, but I’ve queued up this puzzle to post at the regular time. I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble solving it even without me around.
- 1. mc2
- 2. famous horse
- 3. Sandra who played role of Gidget
- 4. "The Father of English History"
- 5. variety
- 6. stratum of metal-bearing rock [2 words]
- 7. shook off the effects of too much alcohol
- 8. pressure ulcers
Two weeks ago Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up spotlighted Chase Iron Eyes, who is running for North Dakota's congressional seat. Electing Marvin Nelson to the governorship would be a good complement to that. Both have been strongly supportive of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and both are running strong Democratic campaigns.
From Marvin Nelson's campaign website, here are the issues he is emphasizing:
Our campaign will support working families, build strong and safe communities, and ensure every North Dakotan’s voice is heard by fighting against discrimination of any form.
- Increase availability of quality daycare.
- Concerted coordinated cooperation needed for crime prevention.
- Budget priority is to prevent property tax increases.
- Reclamation of land destroyed by oil development.
- Citizens have a right to live a life free of discrimination.
- Reasonable coverage for injured workers and volunteers under WSI.
- Stop personal use of campaign money.
You can read more about Marvin Nelson (and see pictures of him and his family) here. (You can also find information and links there in case you’d like to volunteer to help or to donate money.)
Lastly for tonight, here’s
an explanation of how JulieCrostics work:
In JulieCrostics you are given a set of clues, such as these:
1. say what’s not so
2. resting
3. concede
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4. more than game, less than match
5. famous star location
6. vampire slayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
7. activist Eastman
8. skirt or pad
9. accepted principle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10. consume
11. blue-green color
12. candidates who share a platform
The answers to the clues need to be entered into a grid of rows and columns. For the Saturday night warm-up puzzles I usually tell solvers how many rows and columns there are; for the more challenging Sunday night puzzles the solvers generally need to figure that out for themselves. (In this example, the puzzle contains 4 rows with 3 answers per row).
Solving the clues is easier than it looks, since every word in a row has all the letters of the previous word plus one new letter. For example, in the set of clues above the answers in the first row are:
1. say what’s not so = LIE
2. resting = IDLE [LIE + D, anagrammed]
3. concede = YIELD [IDLE + Y, anagrammed]
As you solve the clues, write the answers and the add-on letters into a grid like so:
lie D idle Y yield
set A east K stake
Max I maxi O maxim
eat L teal S slate
As you can see in the chart, all the words in a column have the same number of letters. In this example puzzle the first answers in a row all have 3 letters, the middle answers all have 4 letters, and the final answers all have 5 letters.
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.
In the example given, the verticals read DAIL YKOS. With proper spacing and capitalization that spells out Daily Kos!