Welcome once again to Sunday Puzzle!
Tonight is a special occasion. This may be the last time that Sunday Puzzle posts on Sunday...
Pucklady and I have been talking about moving Sunday Puzzle to Friday to see if that might be more convenient for people. So far several people have indicated Friday might be better for them and no one has opposed the idea. So unless there's strong reaction against the idea tonight, then starting next weekend and continuing through the month of May, Sunday Puzzle will post on Friday nights.
We'll also be posting half an hour earlier -- 8:00 pm Eastern / 5:00 pm Pacific.
The first Friday night edition of Sunday Puzzle will be April 26. Then we'll have our first Friday night potluck puzzle party on May 3, and continue with May 10, May 17, May 24 and May 31.
If you have any friends who you think would enjoy taking part in our puzzle parties, please let them know about the new posting day and time. (And if, on a Friday evening, you happen to be in an open thread or Cheers and Jeers, feel free to mention that Sunday Puzzle is up.)
Also: I think the more people we have contributing puzzles the better. So if you enjoy creating puzzles and would like to guest-host some week, just let us know what week you'd like to do it and we'll set it up.
All right, enough chatter from me. On to tonight's puzzles. There's a new 24-clue JulieCrostic from me, a new Crypto-Gremlin -- and a bonus 21-clue JulieCrostic as an Earth Day gift from the gremlins. It's all waiting below the orange swirl...
Nothing fancy this week, just a nice straightforward JulieCrostic with a little bit of politics and culture mixed in.
As usual, the gremlins (a) bunched the clues in neat little bundles of 3, regardless of how many answers there actually are in a row; (b) removed all the capitalization; and (c) may have fiddled with the punctuation and/or word spacing. But with only 24 clues, they can't have done too much mischief...
1. half-assed
2. kind of bait
3. 43-year-old eunuch
4. defeat
5. love sound
6. social groups
7. okay
8. popular (but later controversial) Alex
9. 1930 english quin
10. tories
11. quarter pound
12. ratio of neighboring to long
13. joshua or judas
14. cap
15. deprived
16. little guy
17. 180
18. go faster than
19. something you might play at a party
20. cheap bank
21. unintended connections
22. dear name
23. unit of weight
24. what you might see on the road
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SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
Crypto-Gremlin:
Here's a passage from a book review I read recently.
I especially liked a quote from the book itself which appeared in the review: "It peal sit ztash from srgar. It peal sit prcash from srgah." But on its own that brief snippet would be too hard to decode -- so I've generously provided the entire paragraph of the review in which that line is quoted. Have fun decoding!
For those of you who aren't familiar with Crypto-Gremlins, these are a special kind of cryptogram which can't be solved by online code-cracking programs -- but can be solved by human reasoning and creativity. You can find a detailed explanation of how Crypto-Gremlins work here -- and you can find a useful tool for helping you experiment with letter substitutions here.
We simckh bcektcl deaftkr gt orcm we zrrft zl jrce gezrhsr Niecytat Kmnftual. Bmxtue Kmnftual' atavhmntustuumeye sitct xect geul zrrfat sr nirrat ocrgm, zhsr prhct wtytgtusecl anirrye ymzcecl iekr urut! Pimyt Fm peal yrrfmubr qecrhukh zruymut, Zeccl Gratc’at nesr-ceukm-grhat wmyyhascesmruat nehbish gl ptlt, ceukm sit prckqyel xruh sit zenft nrxtce gekt gt yehbir: "It peal sit ztash from srgar. It peal sit prcash from srgah."
NOTE: Crypto-Gremlins are more suited to individual than group solving, so here's a suggestion in order to give more people a chance to play with this before the answer is revealed:
First person to solve this: To show you've cracked the code, locate and post a link to the site where this review appears.
Second person to solve this: To show you've cracked the code, identify the book which is being reviewed.
Third person to solve this: post the decoded passage.
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SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Puzzle Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE /
Up for a little more puzzling? All right: here's a bonus JulieCrostic, courtesy of the gremlins!
As usual they've grouped the clues in tidy bundles of 3, regardless of the actual number of answers in the rows.
But this time they did not remove all the capital letters. Beware -- that does not mean you can rely on their capitalization! I counted 7 instances where a letter in a clue is the wrong case.
And don't think you can rely on their punctuation either! I think I counted 13 instances where a symbol or punctuation mark should be there but isn't. Those gremlins are evil sometimes.
But apart from that it's an easy puzzle. Have fun, and I'll see you in comments!
1. so-so times
2. underground leaderless direct action group
3. often associated with Rush
4. fantasy
5. confound
6. 60
7. racket
8. found on students in Kearney, Lincoln and Omaha
9. producer Scott or Nazi psychiatrist Ernst
10. DCMU
11. comes before d in dictionary
12. Uncle Carroll
13. shake off
14. Batman, Zorro, and Dean Winchester
15. reddish-brown
16. before e it's a bill, after a it's unspecified
17. dark principle
18. small
19. the future is your power
20. ill will
21. nil fill