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Cat and I side-throw ring to pups! (With poll) [1]

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Date: 2022-07-31

Two weeks ago the Sunday Puzzle puzzles featured First Cat Willow Biden and the English equivalent of our FIrst Cat, Chief Mouser Larry, and last week’s Sunday Puzzle continued the focus on First Cats. What tonight’s puzzles focus on is something you’ll know once you solve them (if the diary title hasn’t already made it clear for you).

The Sunday Puzzle series was started by the late Julie Waters (then known as juliewolf) back in 2007, and for 10 years it featured new puzzles each week. We’ve been on hiatus the past 5 years, but we’re back (for a month or so, at least) to see if people here would enjoy having puzzles on a regular basis again.

This week’s puzzles are a trio of JulieCrostics. Basically, these puzzles contain several columns of answer words. (All three of tonight’s puzzles have 3 columns.) The words in the columns form rows of answers, so 3 columns means there are 3 answers in each row. Each answer in a row contains all the letters of the previous answer plus one new letter. (And each answer in a column has the same number of letters as all the other answers in that column.)

When you’ve solved a row, write the answer words into their columns and write the add-on letters in the space between the answer-word columns. When you’ve solved all the rows correctly, the new columns made up of the add-on letters will spell out a word or a phrase which is the answer to the puzzle.

For example, here are the clues to the first of last week’s puzzles:

1. wake up 2. ways to get somewhere 3. longer ways to get somewhere 4. worries 5. one who isn't eating 6. most beautiful 7. look at intensely 8. most naked 9. psychic Raven and brother Cory 10. snake 11. worse, informally 12. a type of hairstyle 13. a pleasant shady place 14. area associated with cheap bars and flophouses 15. facial hair

And here are the answers all neatly arranged in their rows and columns:

rouse T routes D detours frets A faster I fairest stare B barest X Baxters adder B badder I braided bower Y Bowery E eyebrow

As you can see, the two add-on letter columns, read top to bottom, spell out TABBY and DIXIE, who are the answers to the question asked in last week’s diary title: “Who came in first?” More about that in a moment, but first let’s look at the clues and answers to last week’s second puzzle.

The clues:

1. stomach muscles 2. kind of drum 3. really big empty space 4. sun god 5. dirt 6. ruin 7. where you could see Couric or Cronkite 8. jitneys 9. fundamental 10. kind of music 11. inclined plane 12. period pain 13. where a friendly cat might sit 14. light 15. vise 16. Nixon or Cipollone 17. flatbread or Manchin 18. deck or courtyard 19. scientist workplace 20. thick slice 21. things to throw 22. villainous Doc in the comics 23. hit 24. bakes 25. anger 26. ready to eat 27. kind of minister 28. familiar base 29. [Clue 29 is a video of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik] 30. come together 31. this needs to be restored 32. got up 33. saw logs 34. cat, dirt or power 35. bridge 36. growing, hunger and labor

And the answers:

abs S bass Y abyss Sol I soil P spoil CBS A cabs I basic rap M ramp C cramp lap M lamp C clamp Pat I pita O patio lab S slab L balls Ock S sock O cooks ire P ripe M prime ten U tune I unite Roe S rose N snore nap S span I pains

The add-on letter columns are a little harder to read if you’re not familiar with the names which are spelled out, but the columns spell out Siam, Miss Pussy, and Piccolomini.

And who are they? Well, last week I linked to an article, White House Felines: The Complete List Of United States Presidents’ Cats, which provided “a complete chronological roll call of the full and formal names of all the US Presidents’ kitties that have been official residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” Here’s the list:

Martin Van Buren (D): 8th US President (1837-1841) A pair of unnamed tiger cubs, originally received as a gift from the Sultan of Oman. Rutherford B. Hayes (R): 19th US President (1877-1881) Piccolomini Siam (a Siamese) Miss Pussy (another Siamese) William McKinley (R): 25th US President (1897-1901) Enrique DeLome (an Angora feline) Valeriano Weyler (also an Angora) Theodore Roosevelt (R): 26th US President (1901-1909) Tom Quartz The excellently-named Slippers Woodrow Wilson (D): 28th US President (1913-1921) Puffins Calvin Coolidge (R): 30th US President (1923-1929) Budget Bureau (a lion cub) Smoky (a bobcat, no less) Tax Reduction (a second lion cub) Tiger John F. Kennedy (D): 35th US President (1961-1963) Tom Kitten (who also sometimes went by the moniker Tom Terrific) Gerald Ford (R): 38th US President (1974-1977) Shan (who was a regal-looking Siamese) Jimmy Carter (D): 39th US President (1977-1981) Misty Malarky Ying Yang (a spectacularly-named Siamese) Bill Clinton (D): 42nd US President (1993-2001) Socks (who was a Tuxedo stray, originally adopted back in Little Rock, Arkansas). George W. Bush (R): 43rd US President (2001-2009) India “Willie” Bush, to give this feline her proper name Joseph R. Biden (D): 46th US President (2021-Present) Willow (named after First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s hometown of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania)

So according to this list Siam, Miss Pussy and Piccolomini were the first First Cats in the White House (if one excludes lions and tigers and counts only cats, that is). Which would make them the answer to the title question, “Who came in first?” — if the list is correct, that is.

But — as I mentioned in last week’s diary — I don’t think it is. Because elsewhere there are records of two kittens who were given to Abraham Lincoln by his secretary of state William Seward and became the actual first First Cats:

The president doted on the cats, which he named Tabby and Dixie, so much that he once fed Tabby from the table during a formal dinner at the White House. When Lincoln’s embarrassed wife later observed that the action was “shameful in front of their guests,” the president replied, “If the gold fork was good enough for former President James Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby.” Lincoln’s friend Caleb Carman recalled how the president would pick up one of the cats and “talk to it for half an hour at a time.” The cats apparently won the president over with their quiet adoration. At one point during his first term, Lincoln was said to have observed in frustration, “Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore she doesn’t talk back!”

Almost time for today’s puzzles! But wouldn’t you also like a White House cat picture or two?

Blackie and Tiger — First Cats during Calvin Coolidge’s presidency















Puzzle # 1:

1. Richards 2. Doctrine 3. Become more distant 4. Amaze 5. Searches for 6. Spends a lot of time at 7. back talk 8. Jack, dumb, and candy 9. Evaluate 10. Fire 11. Bike, spice, and magazine 12. Gable and Kent 13. Rabbit, cauliflower, and tin 14. Lift up 15. Less difficult 16. Row, show, or tug 17. Monastery head 18. Assistant to a baseball team

Socks — First Cat during Bill Clinton’s presidency









puzzle # 2:

1. Location of Hollywood South, informally 2. Calrissian 3. Famous duck or famous ass 4. Separate 5. More suitable 6. Say it again 7. Go in front 8. Perfect 9. Put behind bars 10. Standing in a system 11. Consumed liquid 12. Cloud over 13. Lose fur 14. Tear into small pieces 15. Held in common 16. Conceited 17. Unsophisticated 18. Canyon

And puzzle # 3:

1. Bow and neck 2. Locations 3. Least complicated 4. Evaluate 5. Pay for someone else's meal 6. What you make pancakes with 7. Hoover, Grand Coulee, and Buffalo Bill 8. West and Kinzinger 9. stories involving conflicts 10. Cheeky 11. Moved slowly on hands and knees 12. Floor covering 13. Play the lead role 14. Rips apart 15. Live, jet or gulf 16. God of war 17. School, light, and new 18. Wimsey creator

Coming up momentarily: the answer to last week’s poll, and a new poll question. But first:

x YouTube Video

Last week’s puzzles addressed the question of which cats were the first to come to the White House as First Cats, and last week’s poll question addressed the question of who people thought was the first president to have cats at the White House. (“Which president do you think led the way for us?”) Poll options included Martin Van Buren (who brought a pair of lion cubs to the White House), Rutherford B. Hayes (who brought Siam, Miss Pussy, and Piccolomini to the White House), and various others. I believe one correct answer is Abraham Lincoln, who welcomed Tabby and Dixie into the White House, and 33% of you agreed with me. But another correct answer, and the winning answer with 44% of the vote, was: What on earth are you talking about?

And now for today’s poll question:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/31/2113637/-Cat-and-I-side-throw-ring-to-pups-With-poll

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