![]() "The acrostic is still in the magazine, it’s just moved to a different page. I’m trying to track down more information but don’t worry, flip through the pages and you’ll find the Second Sunday puzzle. Sorry for the confusion. Put the word "acrostic" into the search tool, though, and you get a link to the Times's puzzle blog, "Wordplay." This provides a link to the acrostic, and an initially somewhat confused explanation from Wordplay editor Jim Horne: Click on "Sunday magazine." It's not there-just a link to "premium crosswords," which the Times charges for. Go to (assuming you are near a computer). Shortz said he doesn't know how to find the acrostic online, but we tried (the site may since have updated it). He says he has no idea how many acrostics and other variety puzzles will find their way into the print magazine in the future.Įditors at the magazine and a spokesperson for the Times couldn't immediately be reached. They then agreed to put them in the magazine if there were the ads to support it. ![]() They came to him and said that there was no room for the variety puzzles at all in the new downsized magazine and they would have to go online only. Shortz said his bosses had a more radical plan at first. The magazine has a "cleaner, more modern feel." And, he adds, "On the puzzles page you can now play KenKen." Words per page has "hardly been affected," he writes. Marzorati owns up to it being "regrettable," but then goes on to gamely argue that this won't interefere much with words and pictures. It's a familiar story-this is a cost-cutting move to save on newsprint. Sunday magazine Editor Gerald Marzaroti explained it to readers in the June 14 this way: "the magazine you are holding is 9 percent smaller-a little off the top, a little off the sides"" (This letter seems to be nowhere on the Web, but here's an article about the move.) Such shrinkage has afflicted all papers, including this one. So, yet another casualty of the newspaper meltdown, the death by a thousand cuts that all papers are enduring, shedding readers in tiny, persistent dollops by removing features readers had come to expect. The first letters of each answer spell out the author. This is one of those things that's perfect for the print medium-better than online." Acrostics call on solvers to answer clues and then transfer the letters to a grid that spells out a quotation. "This will be the tipping point for them. "Literally thousands of people buy it for these puzzles," Shortz said. "A lot of people have been complaining," he said in an interview today. No one told the editor of the Times's puzzle blog, either. Or rather, they told him that the variety puzzle was going to be compromised by the downsizing, but not that it would go missing in the second week. Rothlein's favorite clue he's devised reads "Fair Game?" The answer is fiendishly clever: "White Meat." Diehard fans would probably figure out the answer as they fill in the words from vertical grids.But nobody told Will Shortz, Times puzzle editor (and NPR puzzle master). "I'm one of the few people who like puns," he grinned. Rothlein has always been a Scrabble fan and word guy. Each puzzle takes him about a month at least to construct. He often wakes up in the middle of the night with a clue that could go into a future puzzle. While many constructors rely on a computer program to build their grids, Rothlein prefers the human touch. He said he receives some 100 potential puzzle submissions each week. Will Shortz has served as only the fourth crossword puzzle editor for the Times. The Times didn't publish its first Sunday puzzle until 1942. This is not a game at all, and it hardly can be called a sport." In 1924, the newspaper sniffed at the "sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex. The New York Times was a latecomer to the fad that swept the nation. By 1916, the puzzles were popular in other newspapers, including dailies in Pittsburgh and Boston. In late 1913, British journalist Arthur Wynne published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New World, considered the first crossword puzzle. Puzzles have been popular for the past 100 years. I decided I could make one of these myself." "After four or five years, I was getting pretty good at solving them. "I thought no one ever really solved the Saturday puzzle." Each day of the week grows progressively harder with the toughest clues and grids coming on Friday and Saturday. He started with The New York Times, the premier puzzle. From stretching his body, Rothlein got interested in stretching his mind with the devilishly difficult crosswords after watching the documentary "Word Play" around 2007.
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