“Where Did We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”
Paul Gauguin gave his enigmatic masterpiece, above, a title in three questions. The painting, set in his adopted home of Tahiti, captures the two themes of this acrostic: the Pacific Islands, and the wonder felt by people the world over as they ponder their origins.
For those who have not spent time in this region of the globe, some of the clues and answers might have seemed a bit obscure, including Clue U (“Capital of French Polynesia”). But that answer does get referenced in the opening lines of a classic song by Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Southern Cross”:
Got out of town on a boat goin’ to Southern islands
Sailing a reach before a followin’ sea
She was makin’ for the trades on the outside
And the downhill run to Papeete
And speaking of classics, we had fun dredging up a couple of characters from TV shows of old, Hoss (from Bonanza) and Endora (from Bewitched). Yes, we are dating ourselves …
As for Te Pō, we learned that this phrase comes from the Māori language. We cannot say for certain, but we like to think that it’s the first Māori phrase to find its way into a New York Times acrostic. Oh, and it’s also the title of another work by Paul Gauguin, a woodcut that one can find in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City:
Your thoughts on this acrostic? Did it make anyone consider jumping on a boat to the South Seas?
I enjoyed the acrostic very much even though it put up quite a fight. I was pretty sure but not certain that BYU is in Provo, but that led to a two-letter word beginning with a P–definitely not a good sign. Also incorrectly put in astronomy right off the bat in response to the Hubble constant clue. Had “outback” before Oceania and was unfamiliar with the Hawaiian greeting. Still miraculously managed to navigate my way to successful completion without cheating and enjoyed the journey. Many thanks!
Thanks for another challenge! I had trouble with some clues I should have known – like where Stevenson is buried – but somehow came up with the capital of Tahiti (though I was awful shaky on the spelling..) Also fell for the “astronomy” trap. For a long time I thought there were more words in another language than just the two. Then the intersection of themes started emerging.
I was able to avoid the “astronomy” trap, but otherwise had much the same experience as Greg A. I hadn’t heard the phrase “Te Po” before, and so that caused a lot of difficulty before the fog cleared.
I love acrostics – wish they weren’t new only every other week! I wish this one had let me cross check with something known, because I got “known to be po” instead of Known as te po” – and there wasn’t much to fix that except needing sots instead of sobs and guessing that te po meant something. But overall the Pacific theme was interesting and I learned new things.
I’ve been a cataloger at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for 26 years. To say that this was right in my wheelhouse would be an extreme understatement. Can’t recall making quicker work of a NYT acrostic since the one where the quote was from Don Van Natta’s “Presidential golfers.”
Very enjoyable too of course. Mahalo for it!
Aloha,
Mike Chopey
Catalog Librarian and Chair, Cataloging & Metadata Dept.
University of Hawaii at Manoa Libraries
The Hawaiian greeting got me because I couldn’t figure out SKY in the quote. I knew SAMOA was right and had to run the alphabet for the middle letter. And I also put ASTRONOMY for the Hubbell constant answer, then realized it had to end in OLOGY and for a brief moment was afraid you’d suggested ASTROLOGY was a science. Shudder. Very glad to realize that wasn’t so!
My lifelong fascination with the South Seas helped make short work of this one. On first pass, I drew a blank on most of the regular definition clues, but everything Polynesia-related between NENE and PAPEETE went right in and provided enough traction in the quote for pattern recognition to carry me a long way. But I did need an alphabet run for the middle letter of SKY! Thanks for the Gaugin painting!
it was the middle letter of “Sky” that stumped me – I was stuck on “say” for some reason
Thanks to all who took up our South Seas challenge qua acrostic, and particularly to those who offered comments. We have always suspected that the acrostics community contains multitudes, as Whitman might say, including people well-versed in Polynesian culture and geography.
We readily acknowledge that the use of an unfamiliar foreign phrase in an acrostic — even a short one — creates a special challenge. In this case, we felt that the challenge was justified, in that Te Pō figures so prominently in the meaning of this quotation.
For those interested to learn more, Christina Thompson’s book that served as the source of this quotation won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary award for Nonfiction, among a number of other honors.
Till next time,
Jane and Dave
This one was fascinating but really hard. Lots of trivia where it was a struggle to make an educated guess.
I’ve started a YouTube series where I solve the acrostics in real time, so if anyone wants to follow along with my thought process (or more likely yell at the screen for my goofs) please check it out here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70QEgpm2_60
I suggest putting on captions and maybe running the video at 1.5 speed just to pick up the pace.
This is the first one in the series that I didn’t completely finish. Turns out I was off by just one letter, which I figured out after quitting and then discovering the button that highlights wrong letters!.
Fun challenge!