Welcome to Sunday Puzzle, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
Two weeks ago Sunday Puzzle featured a special free entertainment edition. Louie Gohmert had just announced thathe wouldn't be supporting Ted Cruz's presidential bid because he was considering running for the presidency himself.
This week is also a special free entertainment edition, but instead of relying on Republicans to provide the entertainment this week we've turned to more serious performers. There's some music, above, to start things off, and you'll find plenty more entertainment below the sensual neo-expressionist orange nude.
Before we get to tonight's puzzle, 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 a little over 7 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.
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. big Hollywood base
2. red Lincoln
3. intersecting line
4. film, making fan
5. one way to search
6. well-known farmer's dog
7. conceding
8. ball game
9. loved number
10. pagan coward
11. recluses
12. well-known sergeant
13. perfect
14. after these days are gone
15. guess who sang this
16. start of a Tom Paxton title
17. on, off, and other
18. thatcher
19. miller
20. Thanksgiving Sunday
21. cable sports
21. fine performance
22. bear facility
23. not enough
22. cut unemployment
23. boxes
24. Roberts, Marshall, or Thomas, for example
25. difference of opinion
26. tease
27. winnow
28. higher in tone
29. off, out, and down
30. takes time to do nothing
31. bran dishes
32. scam
33.