What makes an acrostic puzzle fun?

[sionnach57]

First things first. I LOVE this site. There are aspects which are still a little baffling -- the scoring system in particular -- though I personally find the new scoring scheme (implemented since the huge batch of new puzzles were uploaded in September) to be a distinct improvement on the old one. Even if it has lowered my overall scores quite a bit. I also greatly appreciate the new puzzles which, I think, represent a conscious effort to improve the sourcing of the puzzle quotes. But since I've been stuck at home for roughly ten months now, this site has been a life-saver. Or possibly a slightly unhealthy addiction; 7500 puzzles over ten months is a hefty chunk of time.

That said, some puzzles are more fun to solve than others. Unfortunately, my personality type is such that I stick with each puzzle until it is solved, and I try not to use the hints. This perhaps makes me unduly resentful of puzzles which I found, in some way, just unsuitable, or tedious. For example, twice in as many days I have had the experience of solving a puzzle where the quote was from Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian". On the second one, a previous solver had left a plaintive note to the effect that the quote was hard to solve because it didn't really make a whole lot of sense. To put a positive gloss on it, McCarthy's style is just so idiosyncratic that any excerpt from his work is likely to be essentially unguessable to a person who uses words in a more conventional manner. My own comment was far less tactful:

"What a pretentious git Cormac McCarthy is. This is a perfect example of his self-indulgent bloviation -- words strung together in undisciplined heaving masses, the overdependence on adjectives, the absence of any kind of sense -- all to what end? To further his reputation -- look at me, I'm the great Cormac McCarthy, I'm not required to make sense, and no editor will dare to correct me?

I agree with the previous comment that this kind of writing, which thumbs its nose at making sense, in service of being high-falutin' is inherently unsuited for acrostic puzzles.

A few other repeat offenders come to mind: the Annies Proulx and Dillard, for instance."

Well, this is perhaps stated a little too vehemently, and my opinion is just that -- one person's opinion. But I would be very interested to hear what other people think about this. To sum up my objection: some "literary" authors' styles are simply so idiosyncratic in their use of language that it renders much of their prose unsuited for use in acrostic puzzles (the solution of which, after all, is dependent on being able to apply intelligent guesswork and have that guesswork be rewarded). To what extent do other users agree with this opinion?

In a future comment I will vent my frustration at the rampant obsession with the interplay of light sources and bodies of water that seems to dominate the longer quotes. Or the whole trees/autumn/color trope, take your pick.

But I have certainly whined enough for one post.

[admin]

Hi sionnach57 -

Thanks for your feedback! Be sure to use the new up/down voting tool for each quote when you feel strongly about them... I'm actively using the results of this tool (and the public comments threads) to mark highly unpopular quotes for deletion.

We launched 12,500 new puzzles in September, and these tended to be quotes that were "visually descriptive" - so yes, lots of colors, skies, birds, clouds, seasons, sunrises, landscapes, etc. The next batch, which I hope to have ready by March/April 2021 will be much more eclectic, with more of a focus on witty/insightful/impactful passages. Right now I've got about 6,500 of the new batch ready (though not yet fully clued) - the goal is to get it to about 8,000 for the next launch.

This project has been my main focus since the pandemic started, and continues to be - I'm putting in 20-30 hours a week, each and every week, combing through thousands of books looking for quotable content. It's a fair bet that no one is going to love each and every one! Cormac McCarthy is a good example - many love his writing, but many others can't stand it... and I personally love Annie Dillard, for what it's worth! I'm also doing my best to keep quotes out of circulation that would not lend themselves well to acrostic format: i.e. quotes with unusual names, unusual grammar, sentence structure or outdated or regional spellings. Though of course some may have slipped through, and what I personally feel might work well for a puzzle might not end up being the shared opinion of the majority.

I do, however, feel that it is appropriate that an acrostic puzzle might occasionally include a word or phrase in the quote, or a term in its clues, that is somewhat unusual or out-of-the-ordinary - as long as it can be reasonably deduced via context and/or the other, more common, clues within the same puzzle. For me, at least, there is some joy/value in learning something completely new during the solving process.

So again... please make sure you use the up/down voting tool to register your likes/dislikes and I will be actively monitoring the results and pruning those that get the most negative responses. The same goes for individual clues - please up/down vote to your heart's content (and add comments too). I am constantly working through these feedback mechanisms to tinker and improve our puzzles.

PS: I really like the question you've put at the top of this thread - "What makes an acrostic puzzle fun?". And I'd love to hear more from our players in that vein.

[SweetCC]

This is going to be a great thread. I personally love how the acrostics force my brain to think in different ways all the time, although I guess when I first started playing I did get frustrated with the harder to decipher writing styles. The one thing I really object to is when the author of the quote is guilty of a grammatical error. I will make an effort to use the thumbs down on those few that are there when I come across them. For the record, I actually like having regional differences represented. Being a Canadian, I like that it doesn't feel all American (side thought - I hate that most of the quotes with the word "judgement" in them spell it without the "e" in the middle. That is a strictly American thing, and while Canadians tend to be very good at living on the cusp between British and American spelling variations, this one is just unheard of here) and I dare say that working with these regional differences actually helps me in my job where I teach literacy to kids with Learning Disabilities and ADHD. The better I understand the variations of the language that we can come across when we are reading, the better I can help my students understand and be able to tolerate these differences.

Mostly I just like doing any acrostic, but if I have any complaints it's that there are too many quotes that refer to God. This may have everything to do with my recent struggles with how I define and feel about Christianity and nothing to do with anything else, but I still roll my eyes when it turns out to be a "God" quote.

I'm very glad to hear there are more new ones coming. Because I play rather obsessively to settle my nerves or center myself in my day (especially during Covid) and because I've now been playing for quite some time, I feel like I'm dominating the boards. I've tried to stay away from the new ones that say they don't have enough statistics yet, so that others can get high scores while I continue to challenge myself with the older ones that have much harder high scores to beat, but now the new ones mostly have enough statistics that I can't separate them anymore. For those that say that the high scores I achieve are impossible, or are possibly made up users, I'm here to tell you they are legit. Your brain just gets really good at figuring them out, that's all. Oh, and, of course, your brain does sometimes recognize a quote at some point if you have done the puzzle before. But there is no help for that. I also have no idea how to improve my average time, so I don't dominate on that board. I just noticed today that HootMon is back. So I'm not likely to dominate anymore anyway.

When I first started playing I really enjoyed being able to look up the book the quote had come from. I added a number of books to my Goodreads list just based on having come across a quote that I liked and investigating the book, so I am very happy that the connection to the book is back.

So, what makes an acrostic puzzle fun? The challenge of being able to work on the puzzle from two different angles at the same time, the flexibility that they force on your mind, and the opportunity to learn new things. For me, it's also simply because words are magic.

[sewaneesue]

Stephen, the "unusual names" foil me every time. I am playing less puzzles now than I used to. But even if I did play more, I'm no match for Hootmon or SweetCC.

[admin]

When I first started playing I really enjoyed being able to look up the book he quote had come from. I added a number of books to my Goodreads list just based on having come across a quote that I liked and investigating the book, so I am very happy that the connection to the book is back.

I love hearing that! Part of the joy of acrostics, for me, has always been the thrill of peeking into the works of authors I've never tried before. Sometimes even just a few well-crafted sentences can be enough to convince you that this is an author you definitely want to follow from now on.

[jugl11]

SweetCC makes some valid points. I especially agree with the comment about "god" quotes. Looking forward to some new witty/insightful/impactful challenges.

[hootmon]

I would like to begin by giving a shoutout to the admin. Based on the comments I read, most folks only want to talk trash about errors and such. When you consider how many puzzles there are, and how many players (all with different opinions), I think it is amazing that the site is as good as it is. And it would be nice to see an occasional comment that appreciates changes made in response to requests: You know, like that should be two words, etc.

I love this site because acrostics are more challenging than most crossword puzzles. And because you can see how you are doing against other players. Yes I am retired and yes I am obsessive and this site is an innocent place to get those competitive juices flowing. And I am a word person so that is very important as well. I suppose you have to be a word person to play here. As SweetCC put it so well: Words are magic

[admin]

Much appreciated, hootmon!

[canswp1]

I love the brain workout. I learn something new every day. I can't count how many times I've gone and looked something up that interested me after completing a game. Thanks!

[k4knee]

This is a question I've never considered - I just love doing them. I've always enjoyed word puzzles, and I think I've tried every kind there is. Finally settled in on acrostics and crosswords, mostly acrostics. I started those in my early teens, "helping" my Dad do them, and I've been at it ever since. With this site, I get the joy of all these quotes, and the fun of a little friendly competition (although I don't think I'll ever be in Hootman's league!). Keep up the good work, Admin. You don't get enough credit for making all of this possible.

[LMood]

I have enjoyed solving acrostics since I discovered them in the back of "Saturday Review of Literature" magazines in the 1960's (and yes, I am that old). Acrostics are so much easier to do on-line than with a pencil where every letter has to be written twice, and erased twice when you make a mistake.

I agree the new puzzles, while a pleasant change from what we were getting before, are a little heavy on flowery and over-written descriptions of nature. My biggest issue is with the clues. There are too many pop cultural references: i.e. songs and movies titles. I like word puzzles and puns; Trivial Pursuit not so much.

[Feanor]

I am becoming addicted to these acrostics. The high point for me is when after staring at the screen with a sense of hopelessness for a few minutes I suddenly get that "AHA" moment and fill in a long word that unlocks the whole thing.

The new game board is a great improvement, especially having the author and source below the quote. Sometimes guessing a word in that can open things up wonderfully, because it gives you the initial letters.

One improvement I would really like to see is to use a different colour highlight for the quote and the clues. Lots of times I guess something and start furiously typing only to discover I've put letters in all kinds of random places incorrectly.

Keep doing what you're doing, this site is great.

[admin]

My biggest issue is with the clues. There are too many pop cultural references: i.e. songs and movies titles. I like word puzzles and puns; Trivial Pursuit not so much.

I understand. It's a difficult balancing act when you're creating a site with 20,000+ Acrostic puzzles, each with an average of 18-26 clues each. That's roughly half-a-million total terms, and standard English has a very finite number of words to choose from (its estimated the average person knows 20,000.... and a highly educated person knows about 40,000, and of those approximately half are too short or too long to use in acrostics, or they have letter distributions that make them particularly useless for this purpose). So the choices are either (a) use a limited number of hidden terms which will, by necessity, need to be repeated many dozens of times each or (b) extend the range of terms to include multi-word phrases, song titles, place names, movie titles, pop-culture references, etc. so that we can still have an enormous library of puzzles with minimal clue repetition. I do my best to only include cultural references that are widely known, though obviously what is common knowledge for one person is not always common knowledge to another.

One improvement I would really like to see is to use a different colour highlight for the quote and the clues.

This is frequently requested - I will bump this up higher on my to-do list. Thanks!

[admin]

I've bumped up the color for the yellow highlight feature now.

[sionnach57]

Every so often I come back to this thread and vent for a couple of paragraphs about particular texts/authors/themes that have, in my view, worn out their welcome. Then I read over what I've written, decide it's way too mean-spirited for a family game site, delete it, and move on.

This time I'm going to leave it out there, so I will be specific and (hopefully) concise.

ENOUGH WITH THE MOUNTAINS ALREADY! Over the last several months I have been unwillingly exposed to some of the worst writing imaginable, and a surprisingly large chunk of it seems to be inspired by mountains. We've got that old ex-CIA villain Peter Matthiessen roaming around the Himalayas and rambling incoherently and interminably about it. If I wanted to read The Snow Leopard, I'm sure it's not hard to find. It's certainly hard to avoid around here if you choose longer puzzles and it seems as if I'm being forced to read it, one incoherent paragraph at a time VERY MUCH AGAINST MY WILL.
There are other offenders, of course -- the sight of a mountain apparently drives John Muir into the kind of incoherent frenzy of quasi-mystical logorrhea that should be grounds for commitment to a mental institution. Sadly, the quality of his writing never exceeds that of a boy scout given access to a thesaurus.
And then there's my countrywoman, the indefatigable Dervla Murphy, who decided that instead of sending her daughter to school, she would just drag the poor kid to every godforsaken corner of the globe. Normally, Dervla's writing is not so hideous (despite a certain fondness for listing different colors, an insufferable tic shared by many of the lazy nature writers so vastly over-represented on this site) but stick her in the mountains and that lack of oxygen kicks in and she too starts to drivel on in the familiar quasi-mystical manner.

We get it. There are mountains. There are clouds. There is snow. The light changes, depending on the time of day and the altitude. Why is that, in any sense, interesting?

And, to try to establish that I am not an absolute monster who rejects all kinds of writing about nature, let me acknowledge my appreciation for certain authors who manage to do it well. For instance, Robert MacFarlane, Patrick Fermor, Edward Abbey, Olivia Manning, Mary Renault, Gerald Durrell.

You may well be thinking "I rarely, if ever, come across quotes from these authors. What is sionnach going on about?" And this is an entirely reasonable question. Fact is, to some extent I bring this upon myself. Because I generally choose puzzles with 24 to 26 clues. And well, it just so happens that MATTHIESSENTHESNOWLEOPARD has 25 letters. So does MURPHYONASHOESTRINGTOCOORG. If you choose a 26-letter puzzle, why then you may very well get MYFIRSTSUMMERINTHESIERRAS . Or EDWARDABBEYDESERTSOLITAIRE . 24 letters and you risk hitting THEMOUNTAINSOFCALIFORNIA and another steaming dose of John Muir.

Thank you. I feel much better now. I love the site and offering any criticism at all seems wretched and ungrateful. But John Muir will do that to a person.