The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is Coming!
We will be participating in the 2025 ACPT — hope to see you there. On Friday evening, April 4, there will be an acrostic-solving competition for which we are constructing a special puzzle. The tournament as a whole will take place in Stamford, Connecticut April 4-6. You can register here.
Meanwhile, we are delighted to be constructing acrostics that appear every other Sunday in the New York Times Magazine. You can also find our acrostics on the Select Acrostics page at www.xwordinfo.com. On an ongoing basis, we post entries here every two weeks, offering reflections on each new acrostic. Spoiler alert: The posts are geared to folks who have already completed that acrostic.
We really want to know what you think. Please share your opinions – politely, collegially – on the acrostics as a whole (too hard, too easy, just right), on particular clues and answers, on the quotation, or on anything else that comes to mind. Which aspects of acrostics do you most value: exposure to esoteric new words, clever puns, thematic material, trivia, meaningful quotations? We also welcome suggestions for future acrostics; are there authors or themes you would like us to consider using? Do you have ideas for new wrinkles or formats?
For those who are new to acrostics, or who may be introducing them to the next generation of solvers, take a look at our pages on What Is an Acrostic? and Beginner Tips. And while we’re at it, would you like to see some acrostics geared to children?
And speaking of acrostics geared to all ages, this year’s Puzzle Mania section in the December 1 edition of the New York Times includes an acrostic that we constructed especially to draw in new solvers. A number of the clues and answers are geared toward kids and teens, with the idea that multiple generations might solve the puzzle together. That acrostic appears both in the hard copy Puzzle Mania insert and also on www.xwordinfo.com. Give it a try and tell us what you think!
For those who have not yet explored the wonders of www.xwordinfo.com, we highly recommend it for puzzlers everywhere.