Variety: Acrostic

Another delight from EC&HR! And themed to my favorite holiday too! I've never seen "THE OFFICE" or "The Mindy Project," although I'd heard of both. I didn't know Mindy's last name. Not much that held me up. I knew YTTERBIUM -- that is I knew that it existed and was something chemical or somesuch, but not what it is or what it does or what it is used for. And, more to the point, how to spell it. YU DARVISH was a complete no-know, and not until I read the column did I see how to parse it. I've never been entirely sure who Ann HATHAWAY was -- the actress that is -- and didn't know she had won an Oscar. Got EDWARD after the first go-through of the quote, but CULLEN took a long time. Had completely forgotten KATE SMITH's nickname, if I ever knew it. And then, of course, I had to run through all the names of the OCTOTHORPE -- number sign, pound sign, grid, hashtag, blahblahblah -- but then I got I remembered that I'd always said I would always remember its neatest name. Have a great Hallowe'en everyone!

Also fast for me. Gimmes were: MONSTERMASH (instantly alerting me to a Halloween theme), NAUTILUS, _____POTATO, HATHAWAY, NOTARY, THEOFFICE, and EDWARDCULLEN. Only sticky part was seeing ___PIRES in the quotation after already filling in VAMPIRE once, and assuming it, too, was "VAMPIRES" when it turned out to be INSPIRES. That caused some mischief. But this was a fun one to puzzle out.

This was a fast one for me. Hideo Nomo before YU DARVISH slowed me down initially.

Super fast solve of a lovely quote by a wonderful comic. As a baseball fan, I know YU, and as a Spelling Bee'er, I've come to learn my Yttriums and YTTERBIUMS (well, to spell them that is). Tying together a Mindy Kaling quote with THE OFFICE might have been borderline obvious for some of us.

Bwaa ha ha! Loved this week's quote. I've never seen "The Office," but Mindy Kaling always cracks me up. I love her new flick, "Late Night" with Emma Thompson. I watched it on a plane to Heathrow last month and it helped make two of the 10 hours go more quickly... Easy peasy puzzle for me this week -- I wasn't timing myself, but I finished it in just a few minutes. I had no idea what the answer to the baseball clue was, of course. I almost never know the answers to sports questions. Also, I forgot that YTTERBIUM has two Ts at first and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't fit the spaces because I knew it was the right answer. Duh. Other than that it pretty much filled itself in because I had 15 gimmes at the start. Loved the Halloween theme, and the clue for Word R. :) Thanks, EC & HR!

Double or Nothing is my absolute favorite among the “middle” puzzles. Usually the challenge is only in where to put the letters; this time some of the answers also were difficult. [SPOILER ALERT] I immediately got SO for the first square in the top row, from SOWETO and WEST WING. But I thought the plaster would be FRESCO because I did yet know where to put the ST of WEST WING. I eventually got STUCCO. I got SOLARA and HAMM only from searching. I never before heard of WIG OUT. It must be the slang of today’s young people.

This was not a pain in the neck to unravel, but it left me thirsting for more.

I am in communication with Caitlin about how that same glitch happened again. A message came up that the grid was full, but at least one letter was wrong. As I tried to fix it, my computer was jumped back to a page that I had previously been on. When I finally got the Acrostic back, all my work had been wiped out and all the answers had to be filled in again. [SPOILER ALERT] I should have anticipated the Halloween theme. My only absolute gimmes were MONSTER MASH (a guess, but obvious), INTERVIEW and NOTARY. I searched to get KATE SMITH, EDWARD CULLEN, HATHAWAY, WHITE SAUCE and YTTERBIUM. The grid did a lot of “filling itself in”, especially after I realized the theme. But filling itself in can sometimes have pitfalls, as when I had “idol” in there instead of “icon”.