VELVEETA
PEPSI
BALLERINA
MENU
MISSISSIPPI
TAXI
EMU
MARIACHI
Seven of these words each have something which the other word lacks. What is it they have in common, and which word is the odd one out?
And now that you've been lured in by that easy little warm-up puzzle (taken from the 2014
Page-A-Day puzzle calendar): welcome to
Sunday Puzzle, a weekly series for people who enjoy mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
On Saturday nights, in our companion series Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, we feature puzzles suitable for individual solving; On Sunday nights, in this regular Sunday Puzzle series, we feature puzzles intended to be challenging enough to call for a team effort to solve.
On tap tonight: a brand-new 27-clue JulieCrostic, and a second chance to solve the code puzzle which went unsolved in last night's warm-up diary. Come on down and join the party!
Last night in Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up the gremlins posted the following code message:
Great drips gremli rcan rsposhe us ass uibs zpscbpt. Pews grst act, remhaelrgc jean gdsmgt/gdsmgt.
Well, not exactly that code message; they screwed up slightly by not using all the vowels as end letters, thus making the code considerably more difficult to crack. I fixed it for them, so now it's not difficult to solve.
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. You can find a handy tool to help you with letter substitutions here. (And you can find step-by-step demonstrations of how to solve Crypto-Gremlins in all of these diaries.)
And now, here's tonight's JulieCrostic. The answers tonight include one hyphenated word, two common abbreviations, and several multi-word phrases.
If you're familiar with what JulieCrostics are and how they work, jump right in. If you're not familiar with JulieCrostics 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 seven and a half 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.
The clues in the Saturday night warm-up puzzles are pretty straightforward. But 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. after 22, it's wrong
2. irrelevant
3. kind of lion
4. stake
5. demonstration involving consumption of food?
6. if taken between 17 and 16 this could give you a rush
7. kind of radio
8. Carter
9. with 3, member of an aggressive predatory foraging group
10. Emanuel, for instance
11. with 1 and 13, could make you laugh or could make you cry
12. with 1 and 11, song sung by Ringo Starr
13. Rayner, or Eva's end
14. European boy
15. room at the center
16. if taken after 17 and 6 this could give you a rush
17. if you take this with 16 and 6 you could get a rush
18. sea eagle
19. holly
20. of corn, perhaps
21. 1
22. yes, before 17 and 1 it could be alarming!
23. you said: "Make do with cool post!"
24. Tom Willow
25. pole to stand on
26. 2
27. 1 and 11, without 12