For the benefit of those who aren't able to take part in the weekend Daily Kos puzzle parties, here is a re-posting of this past weekend's puzzles.
Since we've already had the puzzle parties over the weekend, I'm not expecting many comments in this diary. This diary is mostly for folks who enjoy copying puzzles down to work on their own.
I'll check in fairly regularly on the comments just in case anyone has questions, suggestions, or needs help. But if you get stuck and want help quickly, the simple thing to do is: (a) click on the provided links to the diaries in which these puzzles originally appeared; (b) set your comment preference to SHRINK (so that you only see subject lines, not the contents of comments); (c) browse through the subject lines until you find a comment dealing with the clue you're stuck on; (d) click the comment to read it.
Puzzle # 1: This is the JulieCrostic from Saturday's warm-up diary, "Beer Times Basin".
If you already know how JulieCrostics work you can skip down to the clues and start solving. If you don't, I've included a full explanation of how JulieCrostics work in tonight's tip jar.
1. barely passing
2. commercial
3. depressed
4. English
5. ancient name for God
6. be in a horizontal position
7. pawn
8. gym class
9. prison
10. independent
11. <-
12. GM cereal
HELPFUL HINTS:
- Tonight's puzzle has 4 rows, with 3 answers per row.
- Two of the answers are capitalized
- Tonight's verticals spell out the name of a person worth knowing about and supporting.
- The diary title, Beer Times Basin, is a clue to the solution. (Or you can consider it a separate puzzle: how does the phrase Beer Times Basin relate to the answer to the puzzle?)
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 2:Here's the JulieCrostic from Sunday's puzzle diary, Another book you haven't read.
1. spreads and smooths concrete
2. woodwinds
3. unable to hold anything more
4. fritz, for example
5. where controversial carey concert took place
6. "This clue is like Hitler!"
7. buffy's mister
8. lions and tigers...
9. cartilage
10. kind of rider
11. water holder
12. may follow follow
13. kind of instrument
14. American supporters?
15. chris brown, ike turner, sean connery and mel gibson
16. one who believes jesus was not the same as god (but was raised up by god)
17. fantasy realm
18. hoffman, 25 years ago
19. worries
20. cesar chavez or alice paul
21. most blond
22. speaks like beck
23. turns away
24. moves
25. main top was square head
26. famous male bitch
27. descriptive of a rush
HELPFUL HINTS:
1. Sunday night JulieCrostics are somewhat more devious than the Saturday night puzzles. In particular:
- Don't trust the clue capitalization; the Sunday Puzzle gremlins often capitalize words which don't need it and de-capitalize words which do.
- Also don't trust the clue punctuation; the gremlins often remove punctuation marks which should be there and insert ones which shouldn't.
- And you might be a little wary of word spacing as well; gremlins sometimes remove a space between two words which makes them run together or insert a space inside a word to make it appear to be two words.
- And especially don't trust the way the clues are grouped; the gremlins like to put the clues into tidy little bunches of three regardless of how many answers there actually are in a row.
2. The theme for this month's puzzles has been books you haven't read. The verticals spell out the name of a book I'll bet you haven't read yet, even though it's by an author many of you will be familiar with (either from his books or from the movie adaptations of these).
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 3: Here is the Crypto-Gremlin from Saturday's diary, "Beer Times Basin"
Crypto-Gremlins are a special type of cryptogram. If you're not familiar with how these work, a detailed explanation of the rules of Crypto-Gremlins is provided in the second comment in tonight's diary, Crypto-Gremlin Instructions.
So'go togo my toxin aonktz hymtoge comu mtgyect mtubn mtupce, stnmology dumn dubn.
* Angry Lyppocemo
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, to get a good start on figuring out 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 a word with the pattern consonant-consonant-vowel there's a good chance it's THE; if there's a word with the pattern vowel-vowel-vowel it's almost certainly YOU.
- 4. The bolded text is a quote; the unbolded text at the end tells who said it.
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 4: Here is the Crypto-Gremlin from Sunday's Another book you haven't read.
"Is ash kewl oubia-oueba-nlma-noeml-gbhfgolbcu?" ol nucwlie.
"Gsgsfhmch?" We phlcclil.
"We fudlis molds jebcms," cueiu Rbsjlccsbl Cmlph.
The decoded text is a passage from the book spotlighted in puzzle # 2, above.
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Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP /
MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle / MONDAY PUZZLE RECAP / Sunday puzzle /
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Puzzle # 5: Lastly, here is the Spoonerism puzzle which went unsolved last week and the week before (but which was solved in last night's Another book you haven't read, so you can find help in the comments there if you get stuck).
What I've done is taken familiar phrases, Spoonerized them, and then written out paraphrases of what the new Spoonerized phrases say.
Seven of the Spoonerized answers are 2-word phrases; the remaining answer is a 5-word phrase. I've included the number of words in the answer in parentheses at the end of each clue. The first number given is the number of words in the original phrase; second number is the number of words in the Spoonerized phrase. (And as a small bit of additional help, the original for 3-a is hyphenated word.)
As you can see, the clues are grouped into three sets. The answers in each set are related. Furthermore, all three sets are related.
When you correctly solve all the sets, you should come up with a phrase. It's the title of a book by an author I'm pretty sure you'll all be familiar with, but I suspect most of you have never read (or, likely, heard of) this book before.
Since this puzzle has gone unsolved for two weeks, Here's an additional bit of help: the author of the book underlying this puzzle is Kurt Vonnegut.
1-a. poem about a bread roll (2; 2)
1-b. avoid Leo (1; 2)
2-a: Tea Party strength (1; 2)
2-b: manure scattered around (1; 2)
2-c: inscriber of an ancient alphabet letter (1; 2)
BONUS! Here's an alternative clue for 2-c: Barry Windsor-Smith, Robert Rankin, or ISIS Productions
3-a: put away automobile (1; 2)
3-b: find proof that the actor playing Klinger is deliberately delaying things (5; 5)
3-c: illegally walked away with The Tonight Show host (2; 2)
Helpful hint: JoeXM has
a couple of comments in last week's diary which you might want to look at.