Variety: Acrostic

Boxing Match offered a welcome reprieve from the prior two weeks (which both took Sat. and Sun. to complete). This time the target number emerged fairly quickly and once that happens, the rest is a calm stroll through limited possibilities. Spelling Bee SPOILER ALERT: Finished with 20 points; had EVICT but not EVICTEE (that extension always eludes me in similar uses). To the answer key I would confidently add TINCT, and less confidently, CECCI.

Studying medieval and Renaissance music & literature finally paid off IRL. RHEIMS was one of my only gimmes, along with TOENAILS and LOCKSTEP. Everything else was figured out (or remembered) with careful guessing in the grid above.

My gimmes were MARSHAL, AT LENGTH and ED WYNN (though that was a guess, it proved to be right). I did a lot of guessing in the grid, which I'm never sure is a good idea but sometimes it gets the brain going. I just watched Curb Your Enthusiasm last night with RUSHDIE or I'm not sure his name would have popped into my head so readily when I got the U and thought we were headed to author BARRIE due to other clues.

MARSHAL, BANSHEE, and TOENAILS (after a little work) were my gimmes. ED WYNN and EIGHTEENTH kept me going. Definitely had to work for this one.

I'm surprised by the Constructors' Comments. That conversation would never happen because at the slightest noise, Henry would grab the baseball bat he keeps next to his bed and investigate and not come back until all was settled. I know this because over the years, in all of the stories we've been told by the constructors, Henry has always taken the chance. Nothing ventured, noting gained. Go, Henry!

We were surprised and pleased to read that at least one sort of weapon is banned in the US, but then stunned to learn that it's only LAWN DARTS.

Five gimmes: BANSHEE, IRWIN SHAW, EIGHTEENTH, TOPNOTCH and ED WYNN. Had to look up RHEIMS, and had SET FIRE but figured out HOT WIRE. Enjoyed it. The Wrap-Around seemed easy to me when worked from the bottom up.

For more crostic fun, I have been going back into the EC and HR archives. I like the novelty puzzles too.

I had a bunch of gimmes today--BANSHEE, RHEIMS, TOENAILS, LOCKSTEP, TRAINEE, LAWN DARTS, BLOWN OUT. Unfortunately, I was also thinking NINETEENTH instead of EIGHTEENTH and IRON HAND instead of IRON FIST. I also looked up ED WYNN and IRWIN SHAW because I wasn't getting anywhere with those first seven. For the parade big wheel I spent some time trying to come up with another word for "velocipede" or "unicycle". ESTHESIS is new for me, and I knew what the fish icon was but not that that was its actual name. The quote itself started to come together from the bottom up, but it felt like a slow process. Things eventually fell into place. Nice spooky Halloween quotation!

The problem with that suggestion is that doing that would eliminate the Novelty puzzles that so many of us like to do.

I got off to a slow start on this one, but once I got a good toehold with BANSHEE, TOENAILS (great clue!), ENTHUSED, EIGHTEENTH, TOP-NOTCH, IRON FIST, and NEWSHAWK, it went pretty quickly. I had FINCHES instead of SINGERS at first. I also didn't get HOT-WIRE until close to the end (duh). There were several others that I ended up kicking myself for not getting sooner. I love a good holiday-themed puzzle -- I constructed an entire volume of them recently, so I've learned a LOT of fascinating stuff about holidays. But I love solving as much as I love constructing, and look forward to EC & HR's puzzle every fortnight. (Sure wish it was every week -- hint, hint.) ;) Thanks!

Perfectly eerie Acrostic just right for thoughts of things that go bump in the night. Winding Down always pleases in its construction even when it solves readily.

Winding Down is always a challenging "middle" puzzle, but this one was more challenging than usual. [SPOILER ALERT] It so happened that for a long time I could not get the second word in each pathway. (And how ironic that one of those words refers to a kind of pathway!) I tried COLONNADE and it was wrong, and then the same with ESPLANADE. Finally, MORPH popped into my mind on the other pathway, and that gave me PROMENADE.

I should have known that it would have a Halloween theme! [SPOILER ALERT] My only absolute gimmes were EIGHTEENTH and ED WYNN. (What you experience when you’re young, you remember for life. I saw that movie in 1964 or 1965.) I had to search to get RHEIMS, IRWIN SHAW and ICHTHYS. The rest of it came slowly, with constant jumping back and forth between the answers and the grid. I originally had ALL POWER instead of IRON FIST, and TOP-RATED instead of TOP-NOTCH. REVENANT came only through the “crossings”.