Variety: Acrostic

How can I print the acrostics???

I loved this one. I know it's random why something is a quick solve for one person versus another - I do rely a lot on intuitive guesses and the cryptogram skills as opposed to knowledge itself. Didn't need to know the crunchy clues once I got the quote context. SYNCOPATED, HALF-TRUTH, OBSTACLE, FRIGHTEN, THINKPAD, and OCTAVE gave a lot of great structure to start out with. I think my advantage here is being a musician. Thanks Emily and Henry, I hope you read these comments since you're not on Twitter (that I know of). Always a fan of your work!

This was a lovely, crunchier-than-usual, acrostic. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I had to work either (a) to remember something I really knew, and/or (b) figure out/learn something new. Started well with HALF- (or maybe semi-) TRUTH, SELENE, NITWIT, DEN MOTHER, TIRESIAS, and NIGHTHAWK. Couldn't get past the barricade and blockade to get to OBSTACLE for the longest time. EMPYREAN scratched at the edges of my consciousness, but took a long time to emerge. Took a minute to remember ELON MUSK, but I've always loved the name of the company. Was disappointed when HICKEY didn't fit and wasn't two words, but was delighted when I saw LOVE BITE and knew I was on the right track. Didn't know the B word, SYNCOPATED from the clue. Then at the T-word, the reference made me think the entry would be related. Took forever to figure out what was meant by the clue. Also never would have figured out OCTAVE from the clue. Tried to think of Jimi Hendrix's instruments, so LEFT HAND took a while. Eventually figured out IPSWICH from the -WICH and THINKPAD from the -PAD. Great clue for SHOOTS, which sent me off in strange ways. But then there was the hard stuff, the real no-know: ENCEDALUS, MANDELBROT, and HINDEMITH. Only the quote enabled me to finish those entries. This was a truly wonderful treat. Thanks HEX et al.

Anyone else having trouble with this? I solved this online but after leaving the puzzle, it still shows on my page as not done. November's puzzle shows as having just a small portion done. This one was really hard for me! Lots of answers I should have known but didn't recognize from the clues. I agree "wasn't his best work" sounds unnecessarily snarky, but overall I like the quote because it taught me something new and interesting. So did the comments.

There seems to be a problem here, where posts entered after mid-afternoon (Saturday) are not going up.

The Variety Spelling Bee was notable today for its inclusion of a word describing those who can't live without their Hershey's and Nestle's fixes. I included a couple of D words -- DILDO (hey, it's a dictionary word) and DOLCI (which is iffy). I conceded that C****DOG is two separate words.

This is on the pedantic side, but in the revealed (and fully-punctuated) quotation, I think the phrase "he derived the planet’s tunes" should read "he derived the planets' tunes." I'm not sure if the error is in the passage being quoted, or was introduced in putting the passage into the solution, but the grammar nerd in me felt compelled to point it out ;)

A tough one for me; not my wheelhouse. Started with only SYNCOPATED and then thought of DEN MOTHER. I should have had A SHARP and some others, but my mind wasn’t “there” today. Nevertheless, I researched and enjoyed.

Quickest Acrostic ever, I know the subject matter well. I haven’t read the book quoted, but, based on this one quote, I don’t want to read it, given such an ignorant assessment of Kepler’s work. It angers me, if you couldn’t tell! “Not his best work” is a brutal way of dismissing Kepler’s accomplishment. Harmony is based on ratios and relations. It was traditionally believed that the planets related to each other in static ways; Kepler observed their movements and understood that they were not static, nor were their ratios. They didn’t play a chord but they played a constantly changing harmony, which he accurately notated (limited only by the notation of his time). This is all about math, and frequencies, ratios, ellipses, accelerations - all equally math and music. Dismissing it as mystical nonsense is not half-truth: it's liar liar pants on fire. And rude! Willie Ruff & John Rodgers realized Kepler’s Harmonies, to make the orbits of the planets audible by a simple mathematical/acoustical transposition on early synthesizers. This link’s “show more” tab gives the program notes from that seminal recording. And you will get to hear earth’s slow mi-fa-mi in real time (g’-g#’-g’). Speed up 264 years to last 22 minutes, and this is what you’d hear if you listened to the planets move in their orbits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8yZDn4EVMI (While waiting to post this comment, I read several reviews of the book in question. Seems like I’m not the only one who isn’t a fan.)

Last week I took my dog to a new groomer named Luna. This led to a discussion with my husband about various names related to the moon -- Diana, Artemis, Cynthia (moi), SELENE, Luna, Phoebe, Hecate. So it was fun to see that clue in the puzzle, and of course I knew the answer right away. SPOILERS BELOW... My other gimmes were HALF TRUTH, OBSTACLE, SYNCOPATED, ELON MUSK, NITWIT, FRIGHTEN, DEN MOTHER, OCTAVE, SHOOTS, NIGHTHAWK, and THINKPAD. I had to wait for a few letters before I could get EMPYREAN, ENCELADUS, MANDELBROT, AND HINDEMITH. Great puzzle, great quotation solution, and of course I loved the fact that there were lots of themed clues/answers this week. :) Thanks, EC & HR!

It looks like the emus have quarantined my original comment, so here it is, bowdlerized: The Variety Spelling Bee was notable today for its inclusion of a word describing those who can't live without their Hershey's and Nestle's fixes. I included a couple of D words -- D*LD* (hey, it's a dictionary word) and DOLCI (which is iffy). I conceded that C****DOG is two separate words.

The Times should make it a New Year’s resolution to make it possible to do puzzles besides the Acrostic online. For anyone with a visual handicap, the Hex Nuts has a dizzying diagram that would be extremely difficult to re-create on a piece of paper. They should remember that even with people who unlike me have good eyesight, their sight diminishes as they age.

This Acrostic looked more difficult at the beginning than it turned out to be. The grid did a lot of “filling itself up”, even though not correctly every time. Space cannot conduct sound, so Kepler must have been assuming that the planets were vibrating at frequencies equivalent to those notes. [MAJOR SPOILER ALERT] My only absolute gimmes were SHOOTS, SYNCOPATED, DEN MOTHER and OBSTACLE. The last one had me wondering if it might be too easy to be correct. OCTAVE should have been a gimme, but I realized it only after getting the V from the grid. I searched to get MANDELBROT, SILESIAS, ELON MUSK, SELENE, ENCELADUS and NIGHTHAWK. I searched unsuccessfully for the opera composer, and then got it only from the “crossings”. I first had ANTWERP instead of IPSWICH, because my first letter in that word was the middle W. I should have realized that the reference to “Anglo-Saxon times” indicated that it must be a city in Britain. I was wondering what noun could mean both “cow” and “alarm”. Who would have known that they were both verbs?