Welcome to Sunday Puzzle -- a weekly party for those who enjoy having their wits (and sometimes their sanity) challenged.
About tonight's diary title: I'm planning to do a theme for the next month or so, spotlighting books you probably haven't heard of. Tonight's book is a recent historical novel exploring a litttle-known area of a well-known person's life. I'll post more details in comments after the puzzle is solved.
From now until the end of the year I'm going to try to do fairly straightforward puzzles, so that new folks won't need to figure out any complicated instructions. And starting this Wednesday I'm hoping to do a weekly re-post of the week's puzzles. More about that in the tip jar.
The puzzles are waiting, so let's hop on down below the orange squiggle and get started. Have fun, and I'll see you in comments.
Tonight's first puzzle is a JulieCrostic. (If you're not familiar with what JulieCrostics are and how to solve them, you can find complete instructions and an example of a completed puzzle in last night's Warm-Up diary.)
As usual for these Sunday puzzles, you should beware of tricks with the punctuation and the capitalization in the clues.
Also as usual, be on the lookout for historical, political and cultural references in some of the clues. I'll try to provide DKU (Daily Kos University) notes on these after the puzzle is solved.
Answers tonight include five 2-word phrases.
Have fun, and good luck with the solving!
1. meat substitute
2. what many men who work in offices would like to do
3. Ginsberg and Watts
4. played ball
5. nudged
6. shouted
7. sailed
8. something that sounds wrong musically, such as when playing a sax
9. got
10. ravine [HINT: best-known one is grand]
11. coffee could be, or perhaps a hill
12. Stalin
13. smooth function
14. small dog
15. last word of stupidest song ever written
16. football and hockey team
17. hard workers, perhaps most commonly associated nowadays with service and cremation
18. involves in trouble
19. three-cornered sail
20. striped
21. what Republican leaders do to women, Blacks, Hispanics and gays
22. sidetrack
23. before this, I never thought
24. Cuban or Haitian
25. offer again
26. screens
27. darts
28. northern
29. worker
30. like a tree
31. whole
32. image receivers
33. advance payment
34. of one mind
35. pineapple
36. glanced
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Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party /
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
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Also on tap tonight: a pair of new Crypto-Gremlins.
Crypto-Gremlins are a special kind of cryptogram -- ones which can't be solved by the online programs which test out every possible letter substitution, but which can be solved by creative reasoning. If you're not familiar with this kind of puzzle you can find a detailed explanation of how they work here.
The text in bold is a quotation from a prominent person. The two unbolded words below the quote identify who said it. (If you'd like a small additional puzzle, leave out those words when you decode the message and see if you can guess the source yourself.)
Crypto-Gremlin # 1:
"Cope plo cukodtzotpa fubpu kujb fubdu menfsedgis. Pap'is daganbrubio. Cukodtzotpa dogb pexo lodo. Mbdoebndepano lodo. Pap'is tutiotio lekatce herru plaib cukodtzotpa."
Dumb Judge
Crypto-Gremlin # 2:
Zod adcurie for kdudcbduh yruzl alzm blue ph sriduryd grid prim ph chlim khm for krdui'zh pirf orf zr cdhkl.
Wdinhylid Tchipslid