Variety: Acrostic

Has anyone else had problems with their acrostics? My older ones that I completed are now empty! Same applies to recent ones that were partially filled out. In all cases, the clock starts at zero, as if I'm starting the puzzle from scratch! Never mind that the icons all indicate either completed (all blue with stars), or partially completed (partially blue). Hovering the cursor over a "completed" puzzle yields the word "Review" and, over a partially completed puzzle, the word "Resume," as expected. ???

With some words seemingly (and later actually) ending in "I," I compounded my problems with BIKINI before SPORTS. (Rum punch, anyone?) A few other missteps by using the fill, like DEFENDING instead of DEPENDING, MY BETTER URGE TO instead of MY MOTHER USED TO, stuff like that. I was too stubborn...LI HAI. Thermometers was the toughest I've seen. I can usually get a toe-hold quickly and knock it out in 5ish minutes. This one took two cups of coffee before I had a starting handle, and even then it still resisted a quick solve. Love this puzzle.

I, too, fell into the CAPRINE rabbit hole. Never heard of HIRCINE and was surprised that it is derived from the Latin "hircinus" which specifically means he-goat. TIL. This puzzle left me wondering which is worse: to be under ARREST or under DURESS? I was briefly the latter due to this error! Overall a smooth-solving acrostic with some new vocabulary and a great quote from one of my favorite writers, Amy Tan, which highlights the deep ambiguity of many of our relationships with our moms. Happy Mother's Day, as unambiguously as possible!

Wonderfully challenging. I had it in my head that today is Mother's Day, and I know that a lot of the time the word list shares a theme with the quote, so I was looking for maternal references at first go through the list. Nada. Very few gimmes at first: MADISON, NEIL SIMON, and EXCELSIOR were the only things I was totally sure of. Went through THE ARTS and FINE ART, and needed several letters before I came up with ART FORM. HIDEOUT before RETREAT. I knew TYPHOON but couldn't think of the word and kept stumbling over TSUNAMI, which I knew was wrong. Thought of WINDOWS right away, but I didn't realize it was that old. I was mentally "under" many things before ARREST, and none of my bras fit. But I chipped away. I think I usually get more of the quote from the words in the list than the other way around, but today it seemed that quote gave me more of the words. The breakthrough was finding my MOTHER and seeing AMY TAN. Like others, loved the ENTOURAGE clue best. From a Wordplay column earlier this week, I learned that G.O.A.T. stands for "greatest of all time." I nominate HEX as the HIRCINE epitome.

Slowish start: had to change Tsunami to TYPHOON. Gimmees or near gimmees were SPORTS WINDOWS GRETCHEN EXCELSIOR NEIL SIMON. Saw AMY TAN quickly. PERSONALITY helped as did RIGHT and WRONG. Finished in about 23 minutes which is pretty fast considering!

Out of practice! Was away from NYT for a few weeks (I do not do these online). Gimmes: TYPHOON (had CYCLONE at first but realized wrong right away); WINDOWS; TWILIGHT;INFINITY;EXCELSIOR. Wracked brain for MADISON but it would not come! Yet, this one didn't take me so long because of the repeats and easy two letter words (not including LI but I'd realized by then there was going to be a Chinese phrase there.)

This puzzle, like others have said, was definitely a bit more difficult than usual. Still, I had quite a few gimmes, including MADISON, EXCELSIOR, ENTOURAGE, NEIL SIMON, TYPHOON, ARREST, WINDOWS, HANDSOME, RETREAT, TWILIGHT, GRETCHEN, and SPORTS. (Ha! Jerrold, I love that you had WONDER for this one at first instead of SPORTS.) The rest of the words would've come much faster if the grid had been just a bit more cooperative. But of course I didn't read the blog before solving, so I had no idea that two short words ending in "i" would turn out to be correct. Duh. I should've known. Like Madeline, the clue for ENTOURAGE was my favorite. Thanks for another great puzzle, EC & HR! P.S. -- I just finished editing my latest volume of American Acrostics today. Page proofs are next, but if all goes well it should be ready for publication in two or three weeks!

A tough puzzle until the quote started filling in with repeated words. My gimmes were MADISON, NEIL SIMON, EXCELSIOR and ENTOURAGE (which I thought had the best clue). Now I know the difference between cyclone and typhoon -- with the same number of letters and a "y" in the second place!

A fun Acrostic, as is virtually guaranteed by the C&R byline. . My gimmes: TYPHOON, WINDOWS, EXCELSIOR, BAMBINO, GRETCHEN. The citation opened up when WRONG, MOTHER and CONTEXT could be discerned. Solvers who tend to guess at the two- and three-letter words -- as I often do -- might have been confused by LI HAI.

Acrostic: Tough, but it chipped away nicely until it eventually flowed. Another solid creation from team Hex. Little Variety - For Starters: Short and sweet. I was able to do this one in my head, as I had about 50% gimmes, and I could follow the crosses without writing them down. Fun.

“For Starters” is one of my favorite “middle” puzzles. I got the “Cheers” answer only from the crossings, but otherwise this one went very quickly. I immediately picked up “General announcements?” as ORDERS.

This one was a toughie! [MAJOR SPOILER ALERT] My only gimmes were MADISON, TYPHOON, EXCELSIOR and INFINITY. The trouble for me was that there were very few answers which could be searched for if I did not know them. I did get NEIL SIMON, WINDOWS, TWILIGHT and GRETCHEN by searching. Searching gave me CAPRINE, which turned out to be wrong because it was HIRCINE. At first I had FINE ART instead of ART FORM, and WONDER instead of SPORTS. It had its share of tricks: The “protective cap” is for one’s finger, not one’s head, and the “big wheel” is a person, not a wheel.