Welcome to Sunday Puzzle, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
On tap tonight: a brand-new 30 clue JulieCrostic spotlighting some interesting free entertainment you might enjoy checking out. Plus: a second chance to crack the 3 clues which went unsolved in last week's Sunday Puzzle diary.
I'm away this weekend, so won't be able to join in the comments. (But I'll check the comments when I get home Monday afternoon, and will try to answer any questions or fix any problems then.) Have fun!
PS: don't forget that
next week is the monthly Potluck Puzzle Party. Pucklady will be hosting, so if you've got a puzzle you'd like to share KosMail it to her before the 5th (or bring it along and post it in the diary comments next week).
Before we get to tonight's puzzle, here are some NOTES FOR NEWCOMERS:
JulieCrostics are a special kind of acrostic puzzle, named in honor of Julie Waters who started the Sunday Puzzle series here a little over 7 years ago. If you're not familiar with how JulieCrostics work you can find a detailed explanation in last night's Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up.
If you're new you should be warned that we have some mischievous gremlins who like to tamper with the Sunday night puzzle clues. In particular you should keep in mind:
* you can't trust the clue capitalization;
* you can't trust the clue punctuation;
* sometimes you can't even trust the word spacing.
Because of this, some of the clues may be hard to crack, and you may not understand the answer at first after it has been cracked. But the answers actually do make sense, once you look at them the right way. If you have any trouble understanding how an answer fits the clue, please leave a comment asking for an explanation.
The gremlins also like bundling the clues into tidy little groups of 3, regardless of how many answers there actually are per row. If the number of clues doesn't divide evenly by 3, they add a space-filler clue or two at the end to fill out the final bundle. If you see a clue at the end such as nothing to see, that could well be such a clue.
A small request: please don't put any any spoilers in the comment subject lines. Use the subject line of comments to identify what your comment will be about but keep any guesses as to clue answers or the verticals confined to the comment itself. That way folks who are still trying to crack a clue for themselves won't inadvertently see the answer before they're ready to see it. Thanks!
Okay, I think that covers all the basics. Here are the clues for tonight's puzzle. Have fun!
1. bird sound
2. down or off
3. blush
4. dance party
5. kind of skirt
6. kind of finish
7. stand up, Margaret!
8. that hurts
9. affirm
10. well-known Max
11. during
12. confess
13. look for proof here
14. kind of caterpillar
15. belief
16. skate
17. well-known Lady
18. condor author
19. Italian cheese
20. pig
21. Joe's foe
22. formerly well-known sack
23. rush?
24. fragment
25. place for 14
26. puzzle game
27. stale-smelling
28. kind of coat
29. banker who made a conjecture
30. fire
Three clues went unsolved last week. Here they are again:
- 10. well-known dick ...
- 11. ... like Cheney (or Rove)
- 12. O'Reillyish?
Since the rest of JulieCrostic was solved, you know that the add-on letters for that row are F and O, so that should make cracking these clues a little easier this time around.
Plus, on Monday morning I posted a comment with generous hints for all three of the answers.
Good luck!
(I'll post the answers next week if no one solves the row this week, but I don't think that will be necessary.)