The theme for Sunday puzzle the past few months has been Candidates Worth Supporting, and that theme continues with today’s puzzle.
But before looking at today’s puzzle, let’s take a look at last week’s puzzle which spotlighted Delia Ramirez.
Delia Ramirez is the Democratic candidate for congress in Illinois’ third district. She’s been endorsed by dozens of good progressive groups, a good number of unions and locals, and by dozens of good national and Illinois political office-holders (including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Mondaire Jones, Pramila Jayapal, and way too many more for me to list them all).
Here’s a quick summary of who Delia Ramirez is, courtesy of Bernie Sanders:
Delia Ramirez is the daughter of working-class Guatemalan immigrants who saw the heartbreaking financial crises that her parents and many others in her community endured, hoping to provide a better life for their children. Now Delia is a state legislator, social service director, and community leader who has dedicated her life to advocating for working families.
That’s the short version, for the benefit of anyone who is impatient and doesn’t want to read a lot before getting to today’s puzzle. For those of you with longer attention spans, here’s a more detailed account of who Delia Ramirez is and how she came to be who she is:
The daughter of working-class Guatemalan immigrants, Delia Ramirez is an accomplished legislator, social service director, community leader, and coalition builder who has dedicated her life and career advocating for working families. Delia Ramirez was born in the Belmont Cragin community in Chicago. Her family moved to Humboldt Park at the age of one, when her parents found a subsidized apartment above a church that they could finally afford.
Her mother crossed the border while pregnant with Delia and worked multiple low-wage jobs to give her children a fighting chance to escape poverty. Delia’s father worked two jobs and alternated switched shifts with her Mom so that they could care for their children. Delia witnessed firsthand how important social services were, as she watched neighbors come to her church for housing assistance, food and services for the undocumented. She saw the heartbreaking financial crises that her parents and many others in her community shouldered, hoping to provide a better life for their children.
These experiences ignited a fire that propelled her to fight for the rights of all working families struggling to survive, whether it be housing justice, fully funding public schools, women’s reproductive rights, or Medicare for all. She spent the next 18 years as a non-profit leader at the Center for Changing Lives, Common Cause and Community Renewal Society, and board chair for both the Latin United Community Housing Association (LUCHA) and Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA), fighting for affordable housing, quality education and campaign finance reform.
So let’s take a look at the clues and answers to last week’s puzzle which featured Delia Ramirez as the answer.
First, here were the clues:
1. coagulate
2. spay or neuter
3. open space in a forest
4. young boy
5. valley
6. gold or silver
7. turf
8. gave in exchange for money
9. not hollow
10. marry
11. kind of receiver
12. set to secretly record what's said
13. sixty secs
14. Idi
15. where LePage needs to lose
16. enemy
17. golf exclamation
18. turned to ice
In these puzzles, the answers to the clues are entered in rows. In this puzzle, there were 3 answers per row (which is why I posted the clues in groups of 3). Each answer in a row has all the letters of the previous answer in that row, plus one new letter, and new letters get written into columns between the words they connect. Here’s how that looks when you’ve figured out all the answers:
gel D geld A glade
lad E deal M medal
sod L sold I solid
wed I wide R wired
min A main E Maine
foe R fore Z froze
As you can see in the first row, GELD has all the letters of GEL plus a D, and GLADE has all the letters of GELD plus an A. When all the add-on letters have been written into columns, they spell out the answer to the puzzle. In this case the columns read DELIAR and AMIREZ. Space that out properly, and de-capitalize most of the letters, and it spells out Delia Ramirez.
Think you’ve got the idea? Then here’s a new puzzle, spotlighting another Candidate Worth Supporting.
Just like last week’s puzzle, this one has 3 answers to a row. But in last week’s puzzle the word lengths were 3 letters / 4 letters / 5 letters; this week’s word lengths are…
Ah, but some of you may not want that information, so that you can figure it out for yourself. So tell you what I’ll do this week, so that those of you what want help can get it, those who want to post comments on the clues and the answers you’ve come up with can do so, and those of you who don’t want any help and don’t want to read any spoilers can easily avoid seeing those comments until you’re ready to read them.
What I’m going to do is post two comments immediately after the tip jar. All comments which are spoiler free should be posted as replies in a thread which starts with that first comment; all comments which contains hints or answers should be posted after that second comment.
Those of you who would like to see everything that other people have posted in comments can go ahead and read the comments as you come to them. But those of you who don’t want to read any spoilers can set comments to Collapse on load, and then click to uncollapse the first comment (which will also uncollapse all replies to it) while leaving the second comment and all the comments below it collapsed. Now you’ll be able to read all the non-spoiler comments easily while being able to easily avoid reading any of the potential spoiler comments until you’re ready to read them.
(Oh — and if you’re posting a potential spoiler comment, please make the first sentence of it a non-spoiler which tells what the comment will reveal — such as This comment contains the answer to clue 15. That will make it easier for people who want some help but not too much help to look at the top line of collapsed comments, so they can expand and read any they’re ready to see while leaving the others collapsed with any spoilers hidden)
All right! Here, at last, are the clues for today’s puzzle. (And if you want to know what the word lengths are for the answers in this puzzle’s rows, you’ll find that information in the second comment I post — the one with a top line reading Here’s how long the clue answers in today’s puzzle are.
1. from then till now
2. nauseate
3. coins
4. attempts at humor often found on Daily Kos
5. Carpenter, Pence, and Marvel Comics' Page
6. annoys
7. Specter
8. kind of equation
9. company which will fly you places
10. frighten
11. provides food
12. Lansbury or Lawless
13. attacks
14. red vegetable
15. buns and fishtails
16. look at intensely
17. a day to gather eggs
18. sincere
And now, Poll Cat has a question:
Poll Cat wants to know:
Did you understand the suggestion posted above for making it possible for people who’d like to post comments discussing various clues and answers to do so without spoiling the puzzle for those who’d like to figure it out for themselves?
If so, what did you think of the idea? Good? Bad? Has potential but needs a bit of adjusting?
(And if you have any other ways for doing this, Poll Cat and I would love to hear them.)