A Lotta Alliteration
Countless crossword clues — plus Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck, e.g. — contain clever combinations of echoing consonants. We decided to bring the party to acrostics-land, challenging ourselves to fit at least one example of alliteration into each clue/answer combination.
The quote we settled on featured some tricky elements, such as the inclusion of single letters that are neither a nor i and the word “star-cross’d.” But we suspected our savvy solvers might catch on early to the theme, especially if reading the clues aloud. If you guessed that any non-alliterative clues probably pointed to alliterative answers, you got a leg up to counteract the above-mentioned confounding aspects of the quote. We also surmised that solvers who are Shakespeare scholars would not stumble over “star-cross’d.”
Will Shortz, who customarily — and brilliantly — fiddles with/replaces a few of our clues, got in on the fun and revealed his knowledge of Trekkie trivia with Clue B (replacing our rather clunkier “communications character in the cosmos”).
Our esteemed predecessors Cox and Rathvon occasionally made full-puzzle themes out of literary devices, as we did here and in our rhyme-themed acrostic of May 5, 2024. Does this type of teaser tickle you?
For those of you who remember Peter Tork of the Monkees (and for those of who don’t), check this out:
I struggled more than usual with this one, in part because I didn’t notice the alliteration in the clues/answers until I read this post. However, finally recognizing the repeated word “alliteration” twice in the quote and in the title helped me immensely. I was already suspecting that the words following the single letters F and L were SOUNDS, which helped me hesitate to immediately erase those wrong-looking single letters. The Namibian park ETOSHA was new to me, but I made a lucky and correct guess of LOCH LOMOND.
Knowing the Hawthorn collection helped me get the single letters in the quote as I had a definite L, so when “sounds” began to appear, I had a nice breakthrough. Took longer to puzzle out the …SD combination of letters, until I realized it was Shakespeare. I didn’t fully appreciate the clues/words alliterations until finished, so had the post-completion enjoyment, particularly clue J. I found it interesting how I have come to like and admire alliteration without noticing.
The solution of this Acrostic was, for me, long-lasting but so satisfying. A trickier treat than usual.
Wow! The single letters and “star-cross’d” sure hung me up for a while (along with knowing few of the clues!) but somehow the two “one with…sounds” came together and got me on the right track. Somehow though “sounds” convinced me that there was a “fatal noise” happening, and it took a while to straighten that out…A choice challenge!
Splendid fun, as usual. I knew something was tricky when two “gimme” answers (loose-leaf and twice-told) yielded f and l as single letter words in the quote. Fortunately, things began to fall fairly quickly when I detected “Romeo and Juliet” and the two “alliteration”s.
But I was too dense to initially see how cleverly you had stocked each set of clues and answers with alliteration. Really nice!
Etosha was new to me, and I certainly read about the independence of East Timor when it happened 23 years ago, but promptly forgot about it.
Never knew Ishtar was a Babylonian battle goddess. But when a few letters popped up, it brought to mind the colossal failure of the movie of the same name, starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. So I popped it in, fairly confident that it must be right.
I started slowly with this particular puzzle, which had a plethora of pitfalls. The single letters F and L appearing in the quote as well as the D at the end of STAR-CROSSD provided plenty of uncertainty. Delightfully devious. Eventually I spotted ALLITERATION in the quote, and then again, and then in the title of the quote, and then actual alliteration in many of the answers, and it came together totally. Thousands of thanks!
Hurray for the reference to Richard Russo. His North Bath trilogy, Nobody’s Fool, Everybody’s Fool, and Somebody’s Fool make for delightful reading, and the movie adaptation of Nobody’s Fool, with great performances by Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy, Bruce Willis and many others is charming.
A Towhee is not in the Sparrow species. Towhees and Sparrows belong to the Sparrow family but they are distinct species.
A quick solve for me, and besides the pleasures of encountering Romeo and Juliet and learning about alliteration in the prologue to the play, I enjoyed the treat of the alliterating answers. But how could I have missed the alliteration in the clues? My only thought about “Newbie newts” was “How cute!” I’m sorry I couldn’t appreciate your full constructing artistry at the time but certainly do now after the fact. Does this type of teaser please me? Totally!
Hard for me until Romeo and Juliet revealed themselves. And great fun. But I was SO disappointed not to be able to find anything on google about the author and title.
Dear Friends,
Thanks so much for the friendly feedback and all your added alliteration! Thanks in particular to Edwin, who educated us on towhees and sparrows. Dave had Etosha on his mind, as he is planning a trip to Namibia this summer.
As for the quotation and its author, we found them in an online resource for writers called LitCharts (probably geared to young writers) that you can also find here: https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/alliteration. We’re afraid we don’t know anything more about the author.