Welcome to the December puzzle potluck! This is the best type of potluck - calorie free!
The first Sunday of every month is our puzzle potluck. Anybody can be the puzzlemaster. Try it! It's fun!
If you have a puzzle you'd like to bring to our table, just post it in the comments or Kosmail it to me, and I'll put it in the puzzle for everyone to enjoy.
Today, we have a Juliecrostic from me. I used a lot of picture clues. One day, maybe I'll make a whole puzzle with nothing but picture clues!
Nova gives us one of his patented one-offs. Science contributes a Mastermind puzzle.
Over the orange puzzle piece and dig in!
1 Bruise
2 Snares
3 Friesian
4 Growled
5 Keeper
6 Distressed
7 Cave drawings
8 Gym wear
9 Fit
10 Marcos, for example.
11 Hmong
12 Velvet park
13 Ruler
14 Exposes with flourish
15 Things I never have to buy for my electric car
16 Decorated
17 What Stephen Douglas did
18 Ex-Congressman and father Joe Walsh
19 Field of what may come
20 Maligned
21 Ambles
22 Purposes
23 Flying dishes
24 Wars
25 Lombard
26 Soothsayers
27 Coaxers
28 Climb
29 Repremand
30 Wanton
31 Empties
32 Mandates
33
34 Young men, traveling in pairs, who visit your home to share the gospel.
35
36 Grappled
37 Net handler
38a Franks
38 "We loaded 16 tuns ...." Where do we work?
39 Government service
40 Raffie
41 Hill reef dome
42
43 Supernatural evangelical event
44 Gap
Courtesy of the Sunday Puzzle gremlins, here's a brand-new One-Off puzzle.
For this puzzle, the gremlins took the first 8 lines of a very well-known song. They then changed one letter in each line. The change might be the addition of a letter (cat becomes cart), the removal of a letter (cat becomes at), or the substitution of a letter (cat becomes bat) -- but only a single letter was changed in each line.
After changing one letter and thus creating a slightly different line, they then wrote a paraphrase of the altered line (being careful not to use any word which appeared in the original or altered line in the paraphrase).
Your challenge is to figure out what the altered lines are and what the original lines were. But before you start solving, a few words of warning. While the gremlins are only allowed to change one letter in each line, they maintain they are free to make as many changes as they like to punctuation, capitalization, and even word spacing. Knowing the gremlins, I suspect they took full advantage of that freedom.
All right, here the 8 altered song lyric lines are. Have fun!
(1) On the occasion that Orly Taitz attends sessions of Congress between 1801 and 1803,
(2) Plus God's views match those of a leading Communist:
(3) At that time a pilgrim who died in 1981 is destined to pilot flying machines.
(4) Furthermore, a black female Republican is destined to be an advisor to Iron Man's parents.
(5) Now begins fish tanks era --
(6) Fish tanks era.
(7) Blue-green outer edges,
(8) Blue-green hybrid!
Here is a Mastermind puzzle from science!
Many of you are acquainted with the Vic-Toy game, Mastermind. If you are not, here is a quick summary: The puzzler chooses a combination of four pegs (the pegs are of six different colors: White, Red, Brown, Yellow, Green or Blue). In some versions of the game, the choice is four pegs of four different colors, such as Red-White-Blue-Green; in some versions, some could the same, such as Red-White-Red-Green. The player has to deduce this combination by means of successive trials. For example, if the puzzler chooses Red-Blue-White-Green, and the first trial is Red-Green-Blue-Yellow, then the puzzler would score it XOO - the X meaning that the player has a correct color in the correct place(Red), and each O's meaning that the player has a correct color in the wrong place (Blue,Green). A correct solution is XXXX.
Mastermind #1. In this game, all pegs in the solution must be a different color. The player made the three trials shown below. For these, she scored no X's but did score ten O's in total. What is the solution?
Red-Yellow-Blue-Green
Yellow-White-Brown-Green
Green-Brown-Red-Yellow
Mastermind #2. As in #1, all pegs are a different color. For the trials below, he scored no X's but did score six O's in total. What can you deduce about the green peg?
Red-Yellow-White-Blue
Yellow-Green-White-Brown
White-Brown-Yellow-Red
Mastermind #3. As in #1, all pegs are a different color. For the trials below, the results are shown. What is the solution?
Green-Blue-White-Red -- XOO
Blue-Yellow-White-Brown -- XOO
Yellow-Blue-Brown-Red -- XXO