Variety: Acrostic

Lovely, challenging acrostic today, after some recent ones that were quite easy. Or maybe it was just me, since I'm very uneducated scientifically. I've heard of an ANGSTROM but had no idea what it was. I used to use QUARK desktop publishing and knew it was named forr something scientific, but not what that was or that it had an ANTI. Loved SLIDE SHOW, after trying in vain to squeeze in POWER POINT. Another triumph from EC & HR. Thanks!

This one took me a long time - slow and plodding - kept getting stuck and coming back to it with a fresh view, rather than speeding things up by googling any of the clues. Started out with just SPECTRUM, ADJUNCT, and SLIDESHOW. I couldn't believe there's a 60s cartoon that I didn't know, but I never heard of ATOM ANT - 80s rocker Adam Ant, yes, but now glad to know he took his name from an old cartoon! Also learned EXCITON and ANTIQUARK from this puzzle. So I really got a lot out of this acrostic!

Well, I finally got my acrostic in hardcopy and completed the puzzle without lookups -- J C Maxwell is sort of a hero for us physicists having paved the way during th elate 19th Century for much new stuff that got started with physics and technology from the beginning of the 20th Century onward, in particular thermodynamics and electromagnetic waves, leading to radio communications, relativity and quantum effects. And thanks again to all of you who helped during the two-day kerfluffle I experienced trying to get a copy of the puzzle. This is a great community.

Any way I can get a blank acrostic online? I normally get it in the magazine section when it is delivered Saturdays, but that section was missing from today's delivery.

Excellent - a tougher puzzle than usual this week! I'll admit, it took a while for me to remember PANTOGRAPH (I knew it was somethingGRAPH, does that count?) and ANTIQUARK. But I had about 10 gimmes to get me going, so I was able to solve the puzzle despite a quotation solution that seemed, at first, to be all over the place. OPTICS? COLOR? SATURN? CATS? Ha! Thanks for a great start to the weekend, EC & HR.

Whirlpool is one of my favorite “middle” puzzles. This time it was more difficult for me than usual. [SPOILER ALERT] My only real gimme was TEA SET, which gave me AT EASE. I searched to get SHROVE because FAT (as in “Mardi Gras”) was too short. I expected the car answer to be LEMON, but had no idea where to put it. In the end of course it was RATTLETRAP. I wonder if the “audience reaction” clue was intentional misdirection; it turned out to be HISSING instead of BOOS.

Splendid Acrostic from EC & HR who manage to astound every time.

[SPOILER ALERT] Something sort of bizarre is going on. Square 116X cannot be filled and Square 119C cannot be corrected. Even after successfully completing the Acrostic (the music sounded), the word “cats” in the grid appears as _ATL. (The first square cannot be filled.) Therefore, the “C” is missing from EXCITON. REPULSIVE appears as REPULLIVE because I originally had REPELLENT in there, and Square 119C cannot be corrected. Did anybody else meet up with that problem? Anyway, my only real gimmes were GO WITH, SPECTRUM, and ANGSTROM. (For the latter, it helps to have gone to school in the 1960’s. I am not sure that that subatomic unit is even used anymore. Don’t they now use nanometers?) I searched to get ANTIQUARK and ATOM ANT. At first I had LINEAR instead of LENGTH.