Ever have a problem making choices? I did with the clues for today's acrostic. But I figured out an easy way to deal with it. You can see what I did by checking out the diary below. (Hint: there are 93 clues this week!)
You'll also find an anagram puzzle down there and a re-post of last week's One-Off puzzle.
It's another cold I'm freezing my toes off morning here, so let's get right down to the puzzles!
Puzzle # 1: One-Offs, "Second time around"
All set to start? For a nice warm-up, here's a repost of the One-Off puzzle from last week.
NOTE: If you're not familiar with what One-Offs are and how they work, you can find an explanation here.
1-a: In the future the woman needs to speak the way Limbaugh does (5)
1-b: Hypothetically, that place provides giant book to contain that kind of speech unit (10)
1-c: The future, the future -- which one doesn't matter, they'll all do (5)
1-d: Bruce, Beck, Coulter, Hannity and Limbaugh inhabit on a regular basis a particular structure of stones projecting out into the water (9)
1-e: Reaching final letters from final word in paraphrased weekly news magazine (7)
1-f: In the past there are always illuminated meals for us (7)
1-g, first half: Here are directions for reaching sooty wasteland covered with shrubs (5)
1-g, second half: Make the truth known about the short nickname -- make the truth known! (4)
1-h: Existence is simply Mr. Allard out strolling -- an impoverished Ms. Summers (8)
1-i: Riding atop Wells Fargo wagon provides an opportune time during which he plucks at guitar strings, plus places metal bar across fingerboard (9)
1-j, first half: After that, eternal softness ensues (6)
1-j, second part, with beginning of 1-k: Sarah Palin makes money peddling this story (8)
1-k, concluded: It's very noisy -- also soft, fluffy -- (9)
1-l: Making a non-entity honorable and glorious! (2)
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * +
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * +
Puzzle # 2: Acrostic, "Too much!"
All right, at first glance this acrostic may look a little too long for a mid-month diary. 93 clues? you might ask.
Well, no. Not really. See, I came up with various alternative ways of cluing the rows and couldn't decide which alternatives to go with. So I decided to use them all.
Yes! Every row of today's acrostic is clued at least twice -- possibly more.
Which should actually make the puzzle easier to solve rather than harder. The rows are all in order. (That is, all the versions of row 1 are given, then all the versions of row 2, then all the versions of row 3, etc.) So if you see two rows in a row which lead to the same added letters, one's a duplicate and can be ignored. And if you get stuck working one set of clues for a row, you can simply work one of the alternate versions.
Too much, you say? Yeah, I agree. Solve the puzzle and you'll see why.
(NOTE: for those not familiar with this type of acrostic, an explanation and example are provided directly below the following clues.)
- Vietnamese river
- Spade
- Sexist staffs
- Curses
- Wasilla's borders
- Feeble
- Symbol of grace
- One of the 4 suits in a deck of cards
- Can be found in Knoxville and Chattanooga -- but not in Nashville, to prevent re-segregation
- Enthusiast
- Often comes before others. (Even more often, comes before you.)
- Get up
- Place with table and knives
- Source of online misinformation
- What links one deal with another
- Something it's rude to call Sarah Palin, even if you can't help thinking it about her
- Mundy
- Kind of network
- Advance
- Man who had the wrong dreams.
- When values vary, this can be useful to know
- Something covered with grass
- Charles and Herbert Henry
- Pine oak
- Never mind!
- Short day
- Cut
- Woman without a man
- System for talking to lots of people at once
- Handle clumsily
- Barter
- What listening to Palin does to your brain
- Companion to 29?
- Mouth
- Glided
- Multitude
- Non-killer
- Intimidate
- Barge
- Peter Pan does this
- Theater most people prefer not to go to
- No seats
- Paul Howard
- It can be annoying when someone else does this, but when we do it ourselves we generally think nothing of it.
- About
- Cavity
- Controversial procedure, recently
- Hollow stems
- A great big freeway?
- Signet owner
- City in Italy, city in Central Africa Republic, or nickname of city in US
- Parlor
- Udall
- What 6 stands for
- What Bristol allegedly had
- Half blue
- In the beginning, remove
- Words of praise
- Overdue
- Had
- Up and to the right
- Anybody
- Sufficient
- What Republicans put ahead of taxes
- What comes after A or N
- Nightingale, informally
- One who gobbles
- Raised and displayed
- Special vitamin
- Newsweek columnist
- Frying pans
- People who know too much
- Kind of crowd
- Ford abbreviation
- Farmer's cart
- Early voter
77 and 78. I hate to get up after this
- Stop
- Big Chief on the comics page
- Queen, when green
- Something to step on
- Hitch
- Chews
- First part of a rifle
- Jamaican music
- Went down
- Deluxe
- Alas
- Shameless location
- Eat
- Displayed
- Not displayed
The rules for this type of acrostic are simple: for each row, the answer is of increasing length, such as a five-letter word, a six-letter word and a seven-letter word. Each next size word is formed by adding a letter to the previous answer and scrambling.
In the box in-between each answer, put the extra letter. For example, if your answers were HEARD, ARCHED, and CRASHED you'd place a "C" in the box between HEARD and ARCHED and an "S" between ARCHED and CRASHED.
When you've filled in the grid with all the answers and all the added letter, the columns made up of the added letters should spell out a set of related words.
I'm not going to tell you the dimensions of the grid for today's puzzle. But I have considerately bunched the clues together for you in tidy little bundles of 3. This does not mean there are 3 answers to a row. It just means I like the way the clues look bunched together like that.
There are 93 clues, so it could be 31 rows of 3 answers, 23 rows of 4 answers (with one blank), 7 rows of 13 (with 2 blanks)... Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out.
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * +
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * +
Puzzle # 3: Ana-Gremlins, "Times Two"
This puzzle has twice as much of what the acrostic has...
- LAMB
- HOWLER
- OMEN
- FALSE
- BLOKE
- OBLIGE
- BOWL
- HOLE
- SPORT
- TWICE
If you haven't encountered Ana-Gremlins before, here's an explanation:
Ana-Gremlins are one-off anagrams. I start with a list of related items. Each item in the list has one of it's letters taken away; and each item in the list has received one letter which was taken from some other item in the list. I anagram these one-off items, and present these to you to de-anagram.
As an example, suppose the list I presented you with read
- NEW
- OTHER
- TOE
Take the W away from NEW and give it to TOE.
Take the O away from OTHER and give it to NEW.
Take the E away from TOE and give it to NEW.
NEW - W + O anagrams out to ONE
TOE - E + W anagrams out to TWO
OTHER - O + E anagrams out to THREE
You'll notice the list items are numbered. The numbers represent a logical order for the items: in this case ONE (or NEW) is numbered 1, TWO (TOE) is numbered 2, and THREE (OTHER( is numbered 3. As an aid to solvers, however, I rearrange the items into alphabetical order. (Alphabetical order of the items as they were spelled before they were anagrammed, that is: hence NEW (ONE) comes first, OTHER (THREE) comes second, and TOE (TWO) comes third)