Microcrostics?

Thinking smaller for once.

So after the New York Times puzzle department’s bafflingly Luddite decision (see below), I’ve been thinking about acrostics. (And variety puzzles too, but I’ll talk about those some other time.)

New York Times Games @NYTGames

🔔 Starting at noon March 1st, we will no longer publish digital Variety and Acrostic puzzles. To learn more visit our Help Center: trib.al/0zp8O83. You can continue to play these puzzles in print: trib.al/JZi38Tn

Acrostics are mega-anagrams. With an anagram, you take one word or phrase and mix its letters into another word or phrase. With an acrostic, you fill in like 20-25 words or phrases (usually unrelated to each other) and they turn into a quotation, with their initial letters sometimes making the quotation’s source. It sounds harder than it is!

Some puzzle lovers have naturally rallied around the format. In terms of effort to save it, Alex Boisvert’s acrostic generator is an excellent start.

I’ve thought about what an Ubercross-like acrostic would look like. Fifty or a hundred or 500 words getting mixed into a whole short story. But really, I think the best hope for indie acrostics may be to go smaller. Short quotes, made out of three to twelve answers, the better to fit into phone-based interfaces. (Some digital acrostics do struggle with those.)

Usually an acrostic’s answers spell out the author of the quote with their initials, and that makes finding short quotes that include some version of their author’s name a little challenging. Not impossible, though! Some smaller acrostics might discard that restriction, but let’s see if we can work with it. (Thanks to Boisvert’s tool for help with these examples.)

SWIGS, TETE, ARBORIO, NYMPH, LITER, EPCOT, EARWIGS = With great power comes great responsibility (STAN LEE).

If you’d rather ascribe that one to his co-creation PETER, you can use PRISON SHIP, EROTICA, TWITTER EGG, ELBOW, and RAMSEY. (PETER PARKER, UNCLE BEN, SPIDER-MAN, and SPIDEY don’t work, though.)

JOE TORRE, EATS DIRT, SWEENEY TODD, UNDER THE WIRE, SUBWAY FARE, CYBERCAFE, HIPPOCAMPUS, RENEWABLE, I HEAR YOU, SEE HERE, THEO VAN GOGH = Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in Heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you (JESUS CHRIST). That’s about as big as I’d say a micro-crostic or mini-crostic or Untercrostic should be. I mostly wanted to see if I could do a Jesus quote.

DELI MEATS, UNIFORMS, NIFTIER, ELKHART = I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer (DUNE).

Could be fun!