If I were to say to you,
After I wrote last week’s Postcard, “Paper Pills - Part 1”, I sharpened my pencil and began writing Part 2 …
… it would sound a little quaint. But this was exactly the mood of the 1930’s, when Elizabeth Kingsley published the first-ever double-acrostic in The Saturday Review, May 13th, 1934.
The Directions say,
Either before (preferably) of after placing the letters you have guessed in their squares, write them in the WORDS column. The initial letters of these words spell the author of the quotation and the title of the piece from which it has been taken. …
After you have solved some of these puzzles, let us know if they are too hard or too easy, and if the directions are clear.
Here’s a more modern acrostic, below. Too easy? Too hard?
I was intrigued to find an earlier “primal” version of the acrostic, below,
where the words are pictured instead of described. When the seven objects have been rightly guessed and written one below another, the initial letters will spell the surname of a famous man.
In a cryptogram, another kind of word puzzle, you analyze coded letters to form a few lines of clever advice or an observation. Cryptograms began as military or personal ciphers, but by the Middle Ages, idle monks were using them for entertainment.
The shorter the quote, the harder it is to solve.
Right now I have this book of cryptograms near my reading chair:
In case you’re ready to solve something a little easier than the turmoil in Congress right now, here’s an example from from my book. The answer is in the notes at the end of this post, and even if you don’t work the puzzle, I hope you will read the quote.
Finally, I’m going to stretch my topic of “Paper Pills” to include real-card solitaire. I remember my mother playing it at the kitchen table while minding the stove at dinnertime. Later, I did the same.
A confession. I’ve mostly recovered from playing solitaire on my phone. Somehow I figured out that, in the words of a psychologist,
playing the game with real cards rather than on a screen adds to the stress-quelling quality of the game. This and other hands-on activities ‘distract us from stress and focus us on a task. It’s quiet, it’s movement, it’s using our eyes and concentrating our hands, so we’re doing the opposite of what stress does to us, which is overstimulating and overwhelming.’
Like this:
And someday, when I wear down the erasers on all my Paper Mate Sharpwriters, I’ll tell you how much fun word games are when they’re online, too!
I enjoy working cryptos so the quote was easy for me to figure out, and yes, it's excellent!
I agree with Judy, and thank you for sharing all your research. Speaking of puzzles, are you playing the NYT's Wordle and Connections games? We love them!
Thanks for sharing and your research on all this.