Boo!
Halloween seems to us an appropriate time of year for an acrostic about witches. Okay, we confess that we are also looking forward to Wicked for Good, the second film installment of the Broadway adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked, which, in turn, retells and reorients L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the 1939 blockbuster movie it spawned, which remains indelibly etched in the memories of generations of moviegoers. Whew!
The business of witches, of course, expands well beyond the realms of fantasy literature and musical comedy. The Penguin Book of Witches, from which we borrowed the quotation in this week’s puzzle, presents a truly dark history of the abuse, torture, and execution of women (and some men) as witches in Britain and North America. We learned, for example, that King James VI of Scotland wrote a manual on witch-hunting entitled Daemonologie, published in 1597. His reign as King James I of England, which began six years later, ushered in an era of witch hunts and witch trials in England that were far more extensive than those in Salem or elsewhere in the American colonies.
We regularly learn fun facts in constructing our puzzles, and this week’s proved no exception. We had previously assumed that “eye of newt,” an ingredient in the potion brewed by the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, referred to, well, the eye of a newt. Instead, as you saw in Clue C., the phrase was at that time another name for mustard seed.
For an arresting recitation of the full recipe of that potion from Macbeth – a play that dates from 1606, three years into King James’s reign – take a look at this:
How many other references to witches and witchcraft did you spot?
Have been enjoying the many puzzles with Halloween themes, as this one. A real joy. I was pleased to see the word WARDROBE a la C.S. Lewis and his Narnia. I worked on the sound in a play adaptation. “Macbeth” was the final show I lit to get my MFA in Theater Design and Production, when I had great fun creating a multi-colored light cauldron rising up from a grate in the stage floor that our witches hovered over. My research noted that Shakespeare purposefully wrote the play for the new monarch, James I in England (James VI in Scotland).
I don’t know if writing the name of The Scottish Play in this blog is as bad as saying the name of the play aloud in a theater, but you never know. A well-chosen therapeutic incantation may help. Aside from that, the meaning of “eye or newt” is a fun fact. Who knew? A great acrostic!
“Eye of newt”
Lest we forget Malleus Maleficarum.
Wickedly good Acrostic.
Thanks.
Another enjoyable acrostic, both the quotation and the commentary. Both my wife and I were also under the impression that “eye of newt” meant what it said in Macbeth. It’s actually a bit disappointing to learn that it just meant mustard seed.
It also turns out (also to my surprise) that “toe of frog“ means buttercup and “wool of bat” means moss or holly. So it begins to sound less like a witches’ brew and more like an esoteric nouvelle cuisine soup. On second thought, maybe not. Probably hard to choke down “scale of dragon,” “tooth of wolf,” “root of hemlock,” and the “finger of a birth-strangled babe.”
It’s always gratifying when one’s store of relatively arcane knowledge yields cool and relatively obscure answers. But sometimes one’s brain is just a repository of cultural shards and rubbish – which also comes in handy. Broom-Hilda is, at best, a third-rate, forgettable comic strip. But her warty image immediately popped into my head. So did perky Elizabeth Montgomery, playing Samantha Stephens in “Bewitched.” Sigh.
This was truly a bewitching acrostic, that cast a spell over me, but which was spookily fun to solve. Seeing the theme fairly quickly, I was able to get the first witchcraft in the quote with only the W and the final T. That in turn led to recognition of the second witchcraft, and the witch hunt was on. Bonus points for using a quote containing the word quotidian.
yes – and “anomalous” as well!
Here are a few of the answers that might or might not have been immediately recognizable as thematic:
–Clue A. Twister (as in what lifted the house that landed on the Wicked Witch of the West)
–Clue E. Equinox. Wiccans celebrate the spring and fall equinoxes under the names Ostara and Mabon, which we opted not to include!
–Clue H. Unlimited : an important lyric from the musical “Wicked”‘s song “Defying Gravity” — a word consciously set to the opening intervals of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
–Clue T. Crucible (as in Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” set during the Salem witch trials)
Thanks for that amplification. I certainly didn’t know the “Unlimited.” Connection. So your puzzle was even more ingenious than I had thought!
For some reason this reminded me of an earworm of a song I learned in Canada, “Watch out for the witch…”
I am getting squeeze in ads that block the puzzle and are really frustrating to me. After paying for access this doesn’t really feel great to me. Are you moving from a subscription-based system to an ad-based system?
Kathryn — thanks for calling our attention to this problem; we had no idea. We don’t run or manage the xwordinfo site, but have contacted the person who does in hopes of getting this issue fixed. Stay tuned.
I am the person responsible for XWord Info. Sorry about the ads. There weren’t supposed to be aggressive ads on that page, but apparently some snuck through, so I’ve reverted to the older more static system and sacked the developer responsible. Apparently, he can be replaced by A.I. anyway.
Seriously, sorry about that. My goal is to support Acrostics in a way that makes them delightful to solve. While still making a few pennies every time someone clicks on an ad.