There's a challenging puzzle coming up in tomorrow night's Sunday Puzzle, so now is your chance to sharpen your wits (and to have a little fun) with Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up.
Weather permitting (and there's a chance it won't) I'll be attending an all-day meeting in Lebanon* today and probably won't get back in time to take part in tonight's puzzle party. But I don't think you'll have any problem solving the main puzzle without me. (The question in the poll may be a little harder, but I'll reveal the answer next week.)
Have fun! Puzzle is waiting for you right below the orange thingie...
*(the one in Tennessee, not the one in the Middle East)
First up, here are the clues for tonight's JulieCrostic. If you're familiar with how JulieCrostics work, have at it! If you're new and don't yet know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions in the second half of the diary.
Tonight's puzzle has 5 rows, with 3 answers per row. Answers include one proper name and one contraction.
1. this place
2. that place
3. describing other people
4. shirts
5. kind of potatoes or peas
6. least
7. practice boxing
8. extra
9. compliment
10. fail to keep
11. Superman's pal
12. works of fiction
13. glance at quickly
14. meager
15. climb
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Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party
SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE / Warm-Up Party / SUNDAY PUZZLE
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Section II: Instructions
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).
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!