Saturday, February 26, 2011

A Wrecky Double-Cross

Saturday, February 26, 2011

I've got a special treat for you today, guys: My friend John Gjertsen likes making double crostic puzzles, and recently he made a special Cake Wrecks one. If you're a fan of word puzzles then I highly recommend it - and if you need an extra carrot [smirk], I can tell you that the solution will give you a sneak peek at The Next Big Thing for Cake Wrecks. (Ooooh - mysteeeerious!)


Click the image below to download the full-size puzzle:




Oh, and no sharing answers in the comments! Lest I be forced to call you a "cheater cheater pumpkin eater!" And believe me, no one wants that.
John Dash said...

Very clever. Delightful.

Rachael said...

Well, I'm never gonna solve this, so good luck to those who have some kind of clue as to what any of those clues mean.

Sarah said...

Cool! I love mysterious cake wrecks-thingys!

Sariah said...

I LOVE word puzzles!! I'm terrible at them... but I'll try it anyway. Yay! What a great Saturday bonus. :)

Melinda said...

I love word puzzles! It's printing as I type, and I am going to sit with my coffee and a pen now. :-) Thanks, Jen (and John Gjertsen!)

wv: derki--As a word dork, I'm very derki.

Anonymous said...

"Be sure... to eat... your... OVALTINE?!?!"

SarahM said...

Awesome! Thanks for the puzzle, this should be fun.

Anonymous said...

I can't print out the whole puzzle! Help please!-Lulu

john (the hubby of Jen) said...

Lulu,

You should be able to scale to fit in whatever print program you're using. Also, it might help if you print it in landscape format.

Good luck,

john

Emily said...

this is crazy hard, yet I will not rest until I can finish

Thanks for the puzzle

Cheron said...

You're going to print or link to the solution at some point in the future, yes? One would hope so!

Andrea said...

Got it done! I love Quote Acrostics!

Ronja said...

I can't figure any but A out, and even then I think I was wrong. And the directions made me all confused. And I didn't have a printer and this wasn't really doable online. I guess others will have to do it for me.

SarahM said...

Done! I'm not going to give anything away, but I feel exactly the same way and this should make for an interesting CW post.

Anonymous said...

AAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

-Barbara Anne

Anonymous said...

Yay! Word geekery with my afternoon Cake Wrecks fix.

You rock, Jen!

Anonymous said...

Wow, this is HARD!!

Ellen said...

Ooooooh, a double-crostic puzzle!


Getting to work on it instead of cleaning my house . . . .

wv - ousilly

Y-ousilly girl, of course I want to do the puzzle!

TisforTonya said...

printing... sharpening pencil... (I'm a word game geek... I admit it!)

Karen Valinda said...

Landscape and shrink to fit page ;-}
Although I will use the first print, 105%, the puzzle and clues A-G, for my answers, I LOVE puzzles. Now you will know for sure how many of us are true geeks! (although I was called a "brain" in high school, nerd and geek were still in the future)

Anonymous said...

That's a puzzle? Anyone who can solve a puzzle like that should be working for GCHQ (err, US equivalent would be the Pentagon I suppose)

Give me cake any day :-)

Jo

lindaroo said...

Good puzzle! Those clues are all over the place! I admit to using wikipedia for two of the clues...

Kate Hanson said...

I did it! That was fun, thanks!

RU said...

Done! (phew!)
I take it to mean someone's been hard at work on something, hmm? Can't wait!

JunieGirl said...

Very fun! The printed version was hard to read, so I kept my browser open and cross-referenced as I went.

So is it early or late for this puzzle? :)

Kirsten said...

What's a 10-letter word for laughing your ass off?

- Kirsten (http://rntgirl.com)

ViolaNut said...

Yaaaay! I thought there wouldn't be a post for my birthday 'cause it's Saturday, but there IS and it's a PUZZLE and that makes me happy. :-)

JJ and EJ said...

Ugh, I was hoping for some cheater, cheater pumpkin eaters!! I need help!

Anonymous said...

Got it! Very fun! cll

Unknown said...

Fantastic ... looking forward to it! For those of you having trouble with the clues, don't forget to work backwards from the puzzle to the clues once you've gotten the first few clues out of the way. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Um, I've never done this kind of puzzle before, and I'm a bit confused. Are the words formed by the letters in the upper part of the puzzle supposed to actually make sense? If so, Houston we have a problem here.

I shouldn't do puzzles on 3 hours of sleep...

Aly said...

Boyfriend got to feel useful and solved B for me (it's a favorite of his.)

So... anyone want to guess what this means in terms of future Cake Wrecks events?

PinkAsphaltMama said...

ARGH! If we can't give hints in the comments, can we set up a new blogsite to help each other? These are crazy tough and I love puzzles.

WV: affibr: Ah'd be affibr if Ah said this was easy.

~Anne said...

When will it be revealed for us mere mortals who have no idea what's going on?

Linda said...

Landscape! Why didn't I think of that?? Great puzzle. Can't wait to see what pops up on cakewrecks from this.

JJ and EJ said...

Phew! FINISHED! There goes my afternoon! ; )

Squirrel said...

Awesome fun...thanks Jen and John Gjertsen. It took me longer than I would have liked to solve, it wasn't the "answer for F" double crostic I've ever done so I had to really "clue for G" myself and as soon as I finished I "answer for Q" it on over here to tell you I I "answer for C" you took a liittle "answer for L" liiberty iin part of the answer for B. It left me on rocky ground for a bit, imagine my horror when I realized my first instincts were completely wrong and thus the time it took me to solve was extended rather than abbreviated.


VW dingn - I'm not dingn you for the answer, I swear "answer to D" in me...it's just a side effect of a "answer for T" of being a word nerd.

Squirrel said...

Lulu - are you using Firefox? I often have problems printing out things when I'm using Firefox even after trying to scale to fit page, etc. but opening the page up in Explorer always works to get the whole thing to print.

Hope that helps!

Janessa said...

what is this "wv" and odd word definition that some commenters seem to do every post? what does "wv" mean?

Micalah said...

Piece of cake!

Thanks Jen!

stashmuffin said...

Do I get double points if I solved it before you posted it? :)

Anonymous said...

This is FRIGGEN HARD! I haven't got all the clues, but I'm not giving up. My head hurts and my eyes are cross-eyed. I think I'll take a break.

Arawa said...

Awesome puzzle - it took me a while but was worth it :)

Morgan said...

Vague but necessary hint: Clue I isn't what you think it is. There are no spaces.

Muria said...

But I LIKE to eat pumpkin....

Is it normal for double crostics not to have spaces (IE first answer is two words, as far as I know, but they're run together)? Or is it an attempt at making it more fiendishly difficult?

I printed it out in landscape, and yes, I need to keep the one up on the screen so I can read the numbers. But thanks for the puzzle (only have 5 letters answered so far)!

Janessa, I'm sure it's been said in moderation already, but WV is the word verification you have to type at the bottom of the post to verify that you're not just a robot programmed to post on blogs everywhere. Lots of people like to make up definitions for the funny words it comes up with. Mine's "archiple" but I'm not coming up with anything witty for it.

Susan said...

John Gjertsen - I know you are happy as a clam having all these people do your puzzle. I am just glad I checked "Complete Double Acrostic" off my bucket list. How about a nice word search for your puzzle challenged friend. :)

Anonymous said...

@Squirrel: Thanks for the sly hints there -- they helped just enough!

Jessy said...

Hubby (mostly) and I (a little) figured it out, but....what does it mean?!?!

Muria said...

Thank you Squirrel! Your post helped me with Q, but I'm still stymied by about 8 of them.

I'm kind of tempted to see if any of the smarter people put the answer on their blog...

Lee said...

Whew! Finally solved. Working back & forth and finding likely words in the boxes are what did it. So, if I read the hint right, oh wait, that would be a spoiler too. Will details be in the Sunday Sweets or will you make us wait longer?

SarahtheKnitter said...

It's 1:42 am, I have to go to work in the morning, and I've been trying to solve this since probably... 11 pm. I finally figured it out... I don't understand it, but I figured it out. And now I'm going to bed.

Melinda said...

Yeah, the answers should be posted for those who can't get them.

Sandy said...

"wv - ousilly

Y-ousilly girl, of course I want to do the puzzle!"

What does wv stand for? And the Y? I'm so confused!

Buttercup Bento said...

@Janessa

WV is the word verification for ensuring we're not evil spam monkeys when subbing a post.

WV: gymplat = a small platter to carry while working out to ensure that you're never without cake eg These lunges are sure hard. Without my gymplat I would never find the motivation... *nom nom nom*

BTW I'm not even gonna attempt this after just finishing my night shift but I sure hope that the answers will be printed at some point.

Craig said...

Ink. No mistakes. I didn't know all the clues, so I solved the message using cryptographic techniques (and a crossword solver when I got stuck in a few places).

If you get it, you'll know.

Craig said...

Well, I think I know what the NBT is.

wv: logic (that's really what it says -- thus I had to post).

Mechanical Dormaus said...

Janessa - wv = word verification. Mine, for example, is chroarin. Sometimes the words are silly.

I am waiting for some kind soul to post the answers to this... I don't have enough hours in a day! o.o

PinkAsphaltMama said...

I got it! I ended up figuring out the "first letter of each answer" thing and that was the key to finishing.

@Janessa - every comment has the "Word Verification" that has to be entered in order to post. So the fun is to take the non-word that appears and turn it into a sentence that is relevant to the posting.

My wv for this comment is "jacksa" - but I'm at a loss as to how to use it in a sentence, unless it's a really bad southern accent for the name "Jackson"

John said...

nothing pleases a puzzlemaker like the comments that are like "this is FRIGGEN HARD!"...except the Squirrel's comment, which was extraordinary.

As far as the mere mortals who need hints, I'll post them in the comments section of my blog.

Christina M. said...

Me: "Squee!"
Hubby: "What happened?!?"
Me: "Jen posted a CakeWrecks puzzle!"
Hubby looks over : "She sent a CrossWreck!"

Bathroom Mirrors said...

Thanks for the puzzle. I hope i have time to answer this stuff.

RoseAnn said...

My mind nearly exploded when I saw that there's a puzzle on Cake Wrecks! It's like my two favorite things...brought together at last!

Dharmamama said...

Hmmm... "Hung" doesn't fit for Q!

wv: monqui: Maybe if I get a million monquis typing on this puzzle, I'll solve it.

Naomi said...

I stayed up late and solved the puzzle, but when I got to the acrostic part I didn't r-- oh! I get it! Cool!

Anonymous said...

Well I finished it and had lots of fun, so thanks guys!
You'll forgive me for googling the three Americanized clues/answers, right? I thought so hehe!

wv- puckhers
Do I really need to say anything more? lol

Jay said...

That was fun! I haven't done one of those in a while. And congrats on the news. :)

wv: lidaskal: Now that I'm done Jen's puzzle I have to go get my lidaskal out of her crib.

FM said...

Not too hard at all, and a lot of fun. But then I've been a subscriber to Games magazine for decades. The only thing that threw me off is that we weren't told how many words some of the answers were, but that just made it more fun.
Thanks! What a great way to give us a preview of upcoming events!

Stephie said...

I did it! But I had to rely heavily on the internet to help me, but then again, I'm not a native English speaker.

This is great, although it's two months late ;)

Carolyn said...

Fa la la la la!!!

wv: crodea

Does this mean I've got a good crodea for my Christmas list?

elecblueis said...

Well, I give up. I feel like the last person picked for the team in grade school again. (OK, maybe not quite that dramatic.)

WV-twoutcom: I couldn't figure out the puzzle so now I don't know twoutcom.

John said...

@Jay: thanks, and nice work on the afterpuzzle.

Fit for Me said...

That was so much fun! I need a book of these- not the simple boring ones. Where can I purchase?

RoseAnn said...

So, first I printed the puzzle out and attempted it Sunday morning. Made some awful mistake and nothing was making sense so I gave up.

Then, after reading the great comments later in the day, I printed it again and ended up staying up past my bedtime but finished it!

Famous Hat said...

I finally got a chance to look at this last night and it was just the right amount of challenging! Mad props to your friend - he has got mad word games skillz fo shizzle!

Famous Hat

WV - ensup - to be in the process of eating an evening meal?

Mike and Shayla said...

Wow, John Gjertsen, you are tricky... I was on the wrong track for a couple of clues, but I finally finished the darn thing! And I'm proud to say I did it without Googling a single thing!
Glad I remembered to solve for the source of the quotation... I'm excited about what I think the "next big thing" is!

Norkio said...

Ooh I really tricked me. I *knew* that when I heard the song but just couldn't place it!

John said...

wv: swarta

I swarta God I'm gonna post the answers soon.

Ellen said...

I made myself stay away from CW until I had time to do the puzzle, and I've been swamped with work -- that took more self-control than resisting cake!

Lots of fun! Thanks!

amydove said...

Just came back to this today and had lots of fun doing it. I suppose we have a long time to wait, but at least I already have a few names crossed off my list!

Anonymous said...

Gave this a second go, and I've finished it with the author/source clues in mind and a few tips from Google.
:D Fun!