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1. Con Manners yupbutrt ougn fanujiurcd cdmnconat.
2. Con Manners yupbutrt enmdcwucn rwercnult idid euamswemw.
3. Con Manners yupbutrt fnhdyn pubtnars.
Welcome to
Sunday Puzzle, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, odd bits of trivia, and big cats.
One of the themes I sometimes use for Sunday Puzzle is Books Worth Supporting. That's the theme of tonight's puzzle.
If you'd like a sample of the book being spotlighted, a short passage from it is quoted at the top of this introduction. But it's encoded, so in order to read it you'll need to decipher it first.
A word of warning: the code message above is not a standard cryptogram. It's a Crypto-Gremlin.
Crypto-Gremlins are a special kind of cryptogram -- ones which can't be solved by online programs which run through and test out every possible letter substitution, but which can be solved by reasoning and creative thinking. If you're not familiar with Crypto-Gremlins you can find a detailed explanation of how they work here. (And you can find a handy tool to help you with letter substitutions here.)
Or, if you're more interested in finding out what the book is before reading a passage from it, jump on down to below the mysterious orange cloud for tonight's JulieCrostic.
NOTES FOR NEWCOMERS:
JulieCrostics are a special kind of acrostic puzzle, named in honor of Julie Waters who started the Sunday Puzzle series here 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.
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.
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
s. Have fun and I'll see you in comments!
1. kind of dealer
2. another name for Spengler
3. throw away one
4. literature explaining what Bible says
5. Ellison's was glass
6. finish in the US; environmental disaster in the UK
7. folks who deal with computer stuff
8. mirror
9. one who goes to court
10. desires
11. bill owed
12. candy-coated
13. often follows V
14. beat or pounded
15. scratched
16.
17. standard
18. one in need of a brain?
19. gypsies
20. nowadays
21. what some do with lips
22. horrible sounds (like a judge)
23. cursed with restraint
24. more delightful
25. Inca's "E"
26. Linux Miller
27. champion ships
28. rich chicken
29. good for a start
30. doing next
NOTE: Even grammarians do not agree on how the answer to # 14 should be spelled! There are 3 common spellings, two of which are commonly listed by dictionaries as alternate spellings for this meaning. (The third is a sound-alike word which dictionaries generally do not consider to have this meaning, although many people think it does.) The intended answer is the spelling I consider correct, but this appears to be the least common of the three.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: The clue for # 20 isn't what I usually think of as the meaning for the answer. But even though the answer is very common and frequently used, I was having trouble putting the meaning into words, so I looked the answer up in the dictionary and this is what they gave.