Welcome to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly opportunity to have a little fun and to get your brain in gear for the regular Sunday Puzzle.
These warm-up puzzles are intended to be a new-puzzler-friendly. So if you've never tried Sunday Puzzle before, and are scared to dive in the deep end, come on and dip your toes in here.
On tap tonight: a new JulieCrostic and a new Crypto-Gremlin. (If you're not familiar with these kinds of puzzles, don't panic; full instructions are provided.)
First up is the JulieCrostic. If you already know how JulieCrostics work you can skip down to the clues and start solving. If you don't, here's an explanation of how they work.
Let's start with an example of a solved JulieCrostic, so you can see what a completed grid looks like. Last week's JulieCrostic had 6 rows, with 3 answers per row.
the clues for last week's JulieCrostic
1. generally found in jails; 2. poets; 3. confronts
4. places; 5. looks sullen; 6. faucets
7. windy weather plaything; 8. child's vehicle; 9. action taken by postal workers in 1970
10. polite fellow; 11. hint; 12. start a fire
13. fury; 14. Fury or Rock; 15. writer of "What Every Girl Should Know"
16. first woman to serve as attorney general; 17. introvert; 18. more drawn out
And here's the answer grid:
bars D bards E beards
puts O pouts S spouts
kite R trike S strike
gent I tinge I ignite
rage S Sarge N Sanger
Reno L loner G longer
The verticals read
DORISL ESSING. With proper spacing and capitalization that spells out the name of a
Doris Lessing, a gifted writer who died 2 weeks ago.
.
How JulieCrostics Work:
To solve the puzzle, figure out the answers to the clues and enter them into a grid of rows and columns. For the warm-up puzzles on Saturday I generally tell you how many rows and columns there are in the grid; for the regular puzzles on Sunday that's usually left to the solvers to figure out.
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) Alaska governor, (2) mountainous, and (3) clarify, the answers would be PALIN, ALPINE ( = PALIN + E), and EXPLAIN ( = ALPINE + X).
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:
PALIN E ALPINE X EXPLAIN
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.
Think you've got the idea? Then here's a brand-new puzzle all set for you to solve! Tonight's puzzle has 4 rows, with 3 answers per row, for a total of 18 clues. Here they are. Have fun!
NOTE: The quote in clue # 1 is from Ann Coulter, which gives you a big hint at the answer to that clue.
The clues for tonight's JulieCrostic:
1. "No doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare."
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
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Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE
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Tonight's second puzzle is a Crypto-Gremlin.
Crypto-Gremlins are a special kind of cryptogram which cannot be solved by the online programs that run through every possible letter substitution, but which can be solved by human reasoning. You can find a complete explanation of what makes Crypto-Gremlins different from regular cryptograms here.
tonight's Crypto-Gremlin:
What arbtcr stroz dwyagfrw ae strly cr whxwoz frddorhitle jeeby chuz ahitct, deqtsoeebz awt iecah jrchdt mrdacz dotrsoz nshaatpr bhpr what, crply awtph jorit awt dryawese mesh depdtrohpxz awt asyawz awrae wt grdayrooz nseat.
* Kewpr Nhocept
Helpful Hints:
1. Go to the American Cryptogram Association site and copy the text of the Crypto-Gremlin into the box of the handy letter-substitution tool they provide.
2. A good starting point in solving Crypto-Gremlins is to make a list of all the final letters of the encrypted words. This gives you a list of the vowels.
3. Another good starting point is to look over the encrypted text to see if there are any 3-letter words. If there's one with pattern consonant-consonant vowel there's a good chance it's THE; if there's one with pattern vowel-vowel-vowel it's almost certainly YOU.
4. The bolded text is a quote; the unbolded text provides the source of the quote.
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Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE
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BONUS PUZZLE: The decoded text of tonight's Crypto-Gremlin refers to something I had intended to use as the basis for one of tonight's JulieCrostic clues. I changed my mind and decided to base the clue on something else. But I thought this passage would still be fun to use, even though it no longer relates to the JulieCrostic. Who and what do the decoded text refer to?