Variety: Acrostic

gimmees include ELLIPSE AL CAPONE IN CROWD GHENT REELS HALF-INCH. still took me 30 min or so. did NOT see the hidden birds until I came here! very clever as usual with our brilliant constructors!

Good job, ornithologists! For the record, we forgot that REE was a bird, so its camouflage was quite accidental. Here are the ones we intended: A. OWL (with an extra EGG just in case) B. CAPON G. TIT H. FINCH I. EMU J. PIE (short for magpie) L. PEN (female swan, with a COB being the male) M. EGRET N. CROW P. HEN Q. RHEA S. SWAN (if it's not too redundant, given PEN) U. DAW (short for jackdaw) V. ROBIN W. TEAL

I completely missed it. Did the acrostic, pretty handily, but completely missed the hidden birds. I'm so embarrassed. Not only that, I still don't quite understand the Constructor Notes. Started off with the gimme of AL CAPONE, and some others, and it was fine. But I didn't see the larger picture and count this as a Total Fail on my part. Gosh, how I love HEX!

Unless I missed it, no one's yet made a list of all 16 bird-related words found in CLUES. Here it is: Clue A. owl and egg; B. capon C. ree. D. down. G. tit H. finch. I. emu. M. egrets. N. crow. P. hen. Q. rhea. S. swan. U. daw. V. robin. W. teal.

Started with REELS, HALF-INCH, GHENT, DISROBING and AL CAPONE (I guess the most infamous tax evader of that era and inmate of our former prison here, Alcatraz.) A lovely quote and description of colors. One spring, the starlings nesting in the trees along one of our streets were dive-bombing pedestrians passing by. Coming upon one of the elderly residents who was stopped and gazing down the sidewalk, I lent her my newspaper to protect her head as she had forgotten the umbrella she usually carried when going out and was building up courage to get back to her home. After hearing there were birds in the clues, I found eleven. Great fun!

Q. includes a RHEA.

An unusually large number of gimmes: AL CAPONE, ELLIPSE, SLUGGING, HALF INCH, EMULSIFY, APPENDIX, FLAGSHIP, DISROBING, a flowing text and the immediately obvious indication that its subject was birds and color, made for a pleasant, effortless solve. It went so fast that I didn’t see the birds hidden in the answers, but it was fun hunting them out afterwards.

I was excited as this puzzle came together. I did it on the day when the dominant goldfinch at my feeder had decided to begin the morning by sitting at the very top of the norway spruce, shining in the earliest morning light in his brand-new all bright feathers after weeks of losing his winter drabs. Even happier to see the quote come together - that shocking array of colors that appears in the right light on what seemed to be such ordinary blackish or brownish birds is such a joy to see. The German words for girl are neuter because they have a diminutive suffix (Mädchen has -chen which smallens and cutens the "maid" Magd; Fräulein has -lein which accomplishes the same for the "woman" Frau); all words become neuter when those suffixes are added. Sort of a "sweet young thing" idea.

I just realized something. Is REEL actually the name of a bird? I can't find that definition of it in a dictionary website.

My correct gimmes were AL CAPONE, REELS, ELLIPSE, IN-CROWD, NEUTER, GHENT and FLAGSHIP. My wrong gimmes were FOOTNOTE (APPENDIX) and MONGOLIA (BOTSWANA), which slowed me down. It didn’t dawn on me to spot the names of birds in the answers. Did someone mention OWL in bowlegged?

Finished in under ten minutes. I'd like to think it was because I was a brilliant solver but unfortunately it's because this one was ridiculously easy.

loved it! remember: flapping your arms can be flying!

I didn't see any mention of redDAWn.

As I was entering it, I readily noticed the FINCH in HALF INCH, said to myself, look, it's a bird name, and proceeded to go about my business without noticing or looking for any others.

I haven't been doing very well on recent Beehives. But today I did include the word MULCT, especially appropriate this weekend as everyone is preparing their income tax returns!

I didn't see the hidden birds until I read Caitlin's article. I managed to find 12. Here are a couple of reels: The BIRD in the Bush, and The Longford Tinker https://youtu.be/rewLU-X_PUg Whirlpool was fun. I got most of the rows in my head, but jotted them down to finish.

This was another easy one for me, but a brilliant puzzle, nevertheless. I especially loved the number of birds and bird-related words that were slyly contained in the answers. Such as halFINCH, TITillate, norEGRETS, inCROWd, gHENt, EMUlsify, and nailDOWN. Zipped through it in about 10 minutes, grinning at its cleverness all the way. :) Thanks, EC & HR!

Can Caitlin or anybody else help? I don't understand the Constructor Notes at all. How many WHAT do we see? Names of birds? I do not seem to see any, except for the subject of the quote.

[MAJOR SPOILER ALERT] For me this Whirlpool required more searching than a Whirlpool usually would require. I got ODESSA, PACINO, EMINEM and TALIA only by searching. LARIAT was the only Row answer that I knew right off the bat, even though I was later surprised at myself for not immediately remembering the names of the Yalta conferees. I got the song title only from the crossings.

[SPOILER ALERT] My gimmes this time were TITILLATE, RED DAWN, NEUTER (because I remembered that bit of linguistic trivia), FLAGSHIP, HALF-INCH, ELLIPSE and REELS. I guessed BOWLEGGED because I knew that “genu” meant “knee”. Likewise I guessed AL CAPONE as he was the most famous tax evasion indictee. The only answer that I actually searched for was BOTSWANA. ECLAIR certainly was intentional misdirection. For a long time I had PARIS instead of GHENT, and SWINGING instead of SLUGGING. MUD PIES also took a long time to get, because I thought he meant something that kids do when they have to play indoors.