Variety: Acrostic

For the first time ever, I guessed the author and title because the book is on my nightstand. Having the first letters and being a child of the 60s and a working life in neuroscience, things fell into place. I may move the book to the top of the pile. Thanks again Emily and Henry. I love these puzzles.

Very interesting quote and worth looking into as has been recommended here. I had Universe soon from my starting words and others filled in soon, and the ‘the’s also helped. Got started with NEON LIGHT (I also know all the words.), HOUSEWIVES, WITCHES, UNMASK and NAUGHTY. Had to wait for some letters for LENNON and several others, looked up ERGOT and added two new words to my vocabulary; Entheogen and PSILOCYBIN.

I got off on the wrong track on this one, with OBSOLETE instead of OUTDATED - and even when I realized that OBSOLETE was wrong, I though it might be OUTMODED. Fortunately, many of the letters are the same. Correct gimmes were: NEON LIGHT (I know all the lyrics!); HOUSEWIVES; WITCHES; RANGE and IMPROVISE. Was pretty sure of CHIMERA and YEAST. Just took a long time for me to figure out the long words in the quote were CONSCIOUSNESS and ELECTROMAGNETISM. As someone else mentioned, once I realized the subject matter, I started trying to find PSYCHEDELIC in the quotation, and was thinking Timothy Leary would be in there somewhere. Haven't read the Michael Pollan book but now it's on my list.

Enjoyed the debut of Going Halfway. It at first seemed far too easy until I fully digested the instructions regarding the 2nd spot. Then the challenge emerged. This was still fairly easy and I'm sure Thinh is just warming us up. Also a note of thanks to the print people for enlarging the Magazine's KenKen.

Lovely acrostic. Especially liked clue M. for "Professional offers?". I was a little surprised that the word psychedelic wasn't a word used the list or the quote. I had a hard enough time spelling PSILOCYBIN. There was an underground comix character (R. Crumb or similar) named Silly Cybin -- I looked for a web reference to link, but couldn't find one. My gimmes were: ATSEA, HOUSEWIVES, WITCHES, CHIMERA, ERGOT, UNMASK, RANGE and DIGEST. The only completely alien word was OSSICLES, guess I had better learn it!

Nicely done EC & HR. Quite enjoyable.

My experience was just the opposite of Jerrold's -- at first glance, I thought the puzzle was going to be difficult. I didn't know the answer to the first clue right off the bat (I'm still not familiar with PSILOCYBIN, and will have to look it up to learn more), and I couldn't remember which songwriter in particular was known for being LSD-inspired. I also kept trying to make the WITCHES clue more difficult than it was -- of course I know they're witches, but I thought EC & HR were going for sisters or cousins or some such. But once I stopped OBSESSing over the answers I didn't know, I realized that I knew the answers to about two-thirds of the clues, and it was smooth sailing from there. I've read this book too, Caitlin, and really enjoyed it -- and the quotation. It certainly seems like a reasonable hypothesis to me. I like the thought of a conscious universe... Hey, my latest acrostic puzzle book is finally available! It's been a looong week fraught with production issues, but everything is finally sorted (I hope). AND the new covers are up for my CynAcrostics series. I celebrated by doing a little happy dance, and then getting to work on my next volume. Yes, I'm THAT addicted. :) Thanks for another great puzzle, EC & HR. Loved the clue for HIT MEN, btw. Ha!

I never thought that I would be complaining about a puzzle being too EASY, but with “Three of a Kind” it finally happened.

This Acrostic was a bit unusual in that at the beginning it looked easy, but at one point later on I was not even sure that I was going to be able to finish it. [SPOILER ALERT] Those initial gimmes were DIGEST, HOUSEWIVES, NEON LIGHT, WITCHES (a guess, but still kind of obvious) and NAUGHTY. I searched to get NED BEATTY. At first I had GULLIVER, and got ODYSSEUS much later from the “crossings”. I also first had DITHER instead of LATHER, OBSOLETE instead of OUTDATED, and EAR BONES instead of OSSICLES. (For the latter, I had been erroneously thinking all along that they should have indicated that it was two words).