Variety: Acrostic

I don't blame Cox and Rathvon because there's no reason the authors they quote should always be admirable. But Berlinski is a notorious evolution denier. It's a scientifically untenable position -- despite the best efforts of the Discovery Institute, for which Berlinski writes, a promoter of the thoroughly unsupported and discredited "creation science." We have too much science-denial at the highest levels of the federal government, so I hate to see one of its most vocal and visible public promoters getting air time, even in a medium as benign as the acrostic. Even so, it was a fun acrostic to solve, as they always are.

Why can't the square root of two be found in this world. Root of minus one maybe. Berlinski needs to repeat math

I simply can't understand anyone who uses Google to "solve" these puzzles and then brags about it here. If using search engines to look for answers, how can it possibly take you more than, oh, TEN minutes at the most to solve a puzzle? And THAT assumes that you are a very slow typist, using one finger at a time. What's the point of doing a puzzle if you don't do it by yourself? With NO outside help at all. You should have tried doing the acrostics back in the 1960s with their copious definitions involving Shakespearean quotes, ancient Greek quotes, Romantic poets quotes, etc. etc. -- you would have gone crazy. The ones today, compared to those, are of a third-grade level. Call me an elitist, and that is, of course, what I am -- it has taken me from between 13 minutes and 14 seconds and 6 hours and 21 minutes to complete these acrostics (dating back to 1999 in the archive) -- but I have always done them 100% on my own....

I found this one of the hardest acrostics in months, maybe years. Started with only two gimmes, NOISE and COYOTE. I filled in EREWHON as a guess, but since I knew of it as the backwards spelling of NOWHERE, I spelled it EREHWON, which created some problems down the road. Also had NOT SURE for IN DOUBT and FIRST instead of CHIEF (not for long, though - it was obviously wrong. Almost gave up or googled an answer (like that Nobelist Otto Stern I never heard of). But put it aside and came back to it this evening and managed to finish it without googling anything. Still, when it was all done, I did think it was by (Isaiah) Berlin and the title was "Ski Tour of the Calculus." Thanks, Caitlin, for clearing that up!

Only a couple of words to start off, ODETS, AMETHYST, SHREK2, and REUNIte (almost there). Looked up EREWHON, THEOSOPHY (both unknown to me) and UFOs. The 2 got me going with ...The square root of... , and so the quote ended up helping me get most of the words in the list for this puzzle. Lots of fun.

My gimmes were BIGFOOT, EREWHON, IQ TEST, UFOS, REUNITE, FROSTY, ETHER, AMETHYST, and LOITER. Unfortunately, I also guessed NIELS BOHR and SHORTLY to start with, so when those became untenable I had to rethink. AMETHYST is the only natural purple stone I know--to me a sapphire is dark blue. Regardless, they are my two favorite stones, along with garnets. I wanted HOUNDS for HAUNTS for a long time, but hesitated to put it in. I do find the classification of IQ as one word to be strange, but I've learned to live with things like that. Figuring out the words "Yeti" and "Loch" in the quotation early on helped a lot, since they are odd groups of letters.

This was the first Acrostic in many years in which I did not Google anything. Lots of gimmes got me going, and then some words in the quotation started forming themselves. I am suspicious about REUNIFY being a real word but will take your word for it. And is IQ TEST really two words? IQ is an abbreviation (or acronym).

I completely forgot it was NYT acrostic puzzle day until just now! Great puzzle -- I loved the use of SOONISH, and the fact that there was a number in the puzzle this week. I sometimes include numbers in my acrostics, too, particularly in my American Acrostics series. Most solvers love that, but sometimes I get mail... Like Jerrold, I had REUNITE instead of REUNIFY at first. Like Madeline, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of DUSKY and DUSTY in the quotation. Gotta run. I'm nursing a sick husband and a sick dog this weekend. My poor boys! :( Thanks for another great puzzle, EC & HR.

Lots of gimmes, and only one bad one (LINGER for Hang around). More than a dozen two-letter words! which offered flow among the uncommon words of the quote. SPOILER Lovely use of DUSKY and DUSTY in the quote.

After reading Caitlin's piece, I can only say that if a person like David Berlinski rejects the theory of evolution, it surprises me. It would be like somebody trying to convince HIM that the square root of 2 is a terminating decimal, rather than a non-terminating decimal, and is therefore supposedly a rational number.

I found this Acrostic to be of about medium difficulty. [SPOILER ALERT] My only real gimmes were IQ TEST, NOISE and ETHER. I searched to get AMETHYST, ODETS, EREWHON, OTTO STERN, BIGFOOT, COYOTE and UFOS. (In the case of the last one, I wound up feeling surprised at myself for not knowing it.) “Rank” as a adjective was very tricky; I first had LEVEL instead of UTTER. I also first had REUNITE instead of REUNIFY. It seems like a long time since we last saw a digit in one of the squares.

Nice Acrostic.

This time, Winding Down was extremely difficult for me. [SPOILER ALERT] After getting the top half of the diagram (YIPPEE, HOT SPOTS and SHEEP, PIT STOPS), I hit a total wall and eventually gave up. Maybe I’m not familiar with many of the terms used by younger people now. Can anybody please tell me the last two answers in each path?