Welcome to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
The theme of the warm-up puzzles in recent weeks has been good quotes. Last week's quote comes from Tony Seybert (in a comment two weeks ago).
The quote can be found in tonight's diary. Meanwhile, here's another good quote:
Crazy razzys haze wipens vegacauza. Crs zciwszo wits cee htsica, dimly crs zigcstmicanszi wits cee lats.
Of course, you'll need to decode it first if you want to read it.
Be warned though: it's not a regular cryptogram. It's a Crypto-Gremlin (a kind of cryptogram which can't be solved by computer code-cracking programs which run through all the possible letter substitutions, but can be solved through the use of your wits).
If you're not familiar with how Crypto-Gremlins work you can find an explanation here. (And you can find a handy tool to help you with letter substitutions here.)
Tonight's diary also includes:
- a step-by-step demonstration of how to solve last week's Crypto-Gremlin,
- a new JulieCrostic (which provides a strong hint to the source of tonight's quote and my reason for spotlighting it),
- a second chance to solve an unsolved clue from last week's Sunday Puzzle, and
- 2 bonus puzzles (including a bonus JulieCrostic)!
I: Sunday Puzzle Workshop: how to solve last week's Crypto-Gremlin
Crypto-Gremlins may look complicated at first, but they're actually pretty easy to solve once you get the hang of them. Here's a step-by-step walk-through of how to solve last week's puzzle.
The coded text for last week quote was:
Aspictant aitcui votes fgunicktesking eosuly pr asneiusumy eg fgunicktesking. Fgunicktesking bg eoi nthi eosums. Eoir aitcui votes aspictant eosuly pr asneiusumy eg fgunicktesking.
- 1. Make a list of the word-ending letters.
There are 6 word-ending letters in the message text: T, I, S, G, Y, and R. These are the substitutions for the standard vowels a, e, i, o, u and y. We don't know yet which of these letters stands for which vowel, but we do now know which letters in the message text are vowels and which are consonants.
- 2. Look for 3-letter words.
Yes! We have one: EOI, which has the pattern consonant-consonant-vowel.
When a 3-letter word ihas that pattern, there's a good chance it's the. Let's see if that's the case. Plug in E=t, O=h, I=e.
- 3. (a) EOIR is now the-. Since the R stands for a vowel, the word must be they. Plug in R=y.
(b) EG is now t-. That must be to. Plug in G=o
(c) PR is now -y, so it's either by or my. We can see that neither I nor me appears anywhere in the text, so the word is probably by. Plug in P=b
- 4. We know the letter substitutions for e, o and y, so T, S and Y must stand (in some order) for the 3 remaining vowels a, i, and u.
Looking at VOTES we have -h-t-. The last letter is almost certainly an add-on (there aren't many common words ending in a, i, or u), so we have a 4-letter word which starts with a consonant and then has a, i, or u in between h and t. The starting letter looks to be either a c, an s, a w. (It can't be a t because t is already taken.) The most likely word here is what. Plug in V=w, T=a.
- 5. BG is -o, so the word could be do, go, lo, no, or so. (T is already taken so it can't be to.) Hmmm. Looking at the text, it's probably a verb, but both do and go are verbs so let's set that one aside for a moment.
- 6. All right, we have two vowels left to figure out: i and u. The choices for their substitions are S and Y. S appears frequently, but Y appears only as a word-ender (likely an add-on). Since i is a much more common vowel than u, it's probably the one represented by S. Plug in S=i, Y=u.
- 7. ASPICTANT translates to -ibe-a--a. If you can't see what word this probably is on your own, go to OneLook.com, a handy place to go for help in solving puzzles.
The vowel at the end is probably an add-on (there aren't many words which end in a, and none which start like this one come to mind -- at least not to my mind). But the consonant at the beginning is probably genuine (as there aren't many non-capitalized words starting ibe... So enter #ibe#a## into the search box. This will give us a list of all dictionary words with that letter pattern.
Looking at the list, the answer leaps out: liberals! So plug in A=l, C=r, N=s.
- 8. What we have now is: "Liberalsa lear-e whati -o-ser-ati-eso thi--u by liste-i--u to -o-ser-ati-eso. -o-ser-ati-eso -o the sa-e thi--i. They lear-e whati liberalsa thi--u by liste-i--u to -o-ser-ati-eso."
- 9. From there it's easy to figure out the remaining words:
Liberals learn what conservatives think by listening to conservatives. Conservatives do the same thing. They learn what liberals think by listening to conservatives.
II: tonight's JulieCrostic
Tonight's puzzle has 6 rows, with 3 answers per row. When you've solved the puzzle the verticals will identify the source of tonight's quotation.
If you're familiar with how JulieCrostics work, you can jump right in; if you're new and don't yet know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions in the bottom part of the diary.
(Also if you're new, a request: please don't post any answers or other spoilers in comment subject lines. Instead, please put any guesses at possible answers into the comment itself. Thanks!)
Okay, I think that covers the basics. Here are the clues. Have fun, and I'll see you in comments!
1. impolite
2. enticed
3. making more noise
4. reasonable
5. country roads
6. Hope and Jessica
7. Gibson and Blanc
8. underground animals
9. creatures of Jewish folklore
10. controversial cartoonist
11. demonstration
12. genuinely
13. business transaction
14. is ahead
15. endured
16. father
17. amusement park attractions
18. least damp
III: second chance at an unsolved clue from last week
While people solved most of last Sunday's JulieCrostic, one clue managed to stump the solving team. So here's a second chance at solving it before I reveal the answer tomorrow night.
Here's the row, with the onsolved clue in bold:
13. perfect
14. after these days are gone
15. guess who sang this
16. start of a Tom Paxton title
If you look back to the diary, you'll see that the other answers in the row are
mint,
No Time, and
One Time.
You can also find, in comments, a very generous hint I provided to the solution of clue 14.
IV: Two Bonus Puzzles!
Bonus Puzzle # 1: After you solve tonight's warm-up JulieCrostic you may be curious why I chose to spotlight the name in the verticals. So figuring that out is your first bonus puzzle.
Bonus Puzzle # 2: The Crypto-Gremlin will give you a hint to the solution of the first puzzle. Here's another. Look for the name in the verticals on the site of the group identified in this bonus JulieCrostic.
1. nautical prefix
2. previously
3. all-female Avengers
4. French public television network
5. person who trains birds to hunt
V: instructions for solving JulieCrostics.
In JulieCrostics you are given a set of clues, such as these:
To solve the puzzle, figure out the answers to the clues and enter them into a grid of rows and columns, like so:
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. say what's not so
2. resting
3. concede
then the answers might be LIE, IDLE (= LIE + D), and YIELD (= IDLE + Y)
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:
1. LIE D 2. IDLE Y 3. YIELD
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.
In the example given, the verticals read DAIL YKOS. With proper spacing and capitalization that spells out Daily Kos!