The acrostic is an ancient form of verse in which the initial letters of a word, phrase, or line spell a key word

Eiss, Harry

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given name, tle indicating designa tion. of people who ented factua 1­malar state ) not fit into n at the din­253 DETECTiVE ACROSTICS HARRY EISS Havre, Montana The Acrostic is an ancient form of verse in which the initial letters of a word, phrase, or line spell a key word. The Greek word for fish, Ix0Y1: , served as a secret password for Christians because of its symbolic, acrostic meaning: I r)(JOVS Jesus XPIOTOS Christ 0EOU Of God Y10S Son 1:WTfJp Saviour The original Hebrew verses of the Psalms consisted of twenty-two lines or stanzas, each stanza beginning with a different letter of the alphabet in order. Although this has not been retained in translation, Psalm cxix is somewhat artificially divided with con­secutive letters of the alphabet. Sir John Davies 0570-1626) is the best-known of the early English acrosticians. Queen Victoria is reputed to have created a double acrostic (an acrostic in which both the first and last letters of a poem spell words). Gyles Brandreth suggests in his book, The World I s Best Indoor Games (Pantheon Books: New York, 1981), a game based on the idea of the double acrostic. Choose a word of approximately six to eight letters, write the word down the left side of a sheet of pa per and in reverse down the right side of the same sheet of pa­per, and create the longest possible words related to the subject of the initial acrostic word, using the indicated beginnings and endings. For example: M orta R - useful for water murders U nexcusabl E - at least if you're caught ReD - a sin b 100d D efie R - if you care to fight back E t t U - et tu, Brute: Caesar I s murderer R edru M - from The Shining Brandreth I s double acrostics are rather difficult. 1 suggest in­stead that the reader choose a writer of detective or mystery fic­tion, and write his name down the left side of a sheet of paper. The object of the game is to find words associated with this writer which begin in turn with these letters. For example: J. J. CONNINGTON, the pseudonym of Alfred Walter Steward 0880­1947), British chemist and detective fiction writer 254 Jack-in-the-Box, the title of a novel he wrote in 1944 Jealous husband, the man murdered in The Tau Cross Mystery Chemist, the author's profession in addition to writing Occult, the subject-matter of a number of his novels Nemesis at Raynham Parva, one of his novels Nordenholt, the main character in Nordenhol t' s Million 1nspector Loxton, in Common Sense Is All You Need Nordenholt's Millions, the novel mentioned above Grim Vengeance. another one of his novels Tragedy at Ra vensthorpe. yet another novel Obscura. the eye (a camera obscura) in The Eye in the Museum No Past Is Dead, another novel Try your hand at Detective Acrostics with RICHARD HULL. OSM ING­TON MILLS. or A. CONAN DOYLE. WORD MASTERY This 86-page paperback, written by David Miller of the Uni­versity of Warwick in England, generalizes the century-old concept of the !./ord ladder in various J.-fays. The word ladder, as most Word Ways readers are aware, changes one word into another by single-letter substitutions: WORD-FORD-FORE-FARE­FAME-GAME. Word ladders, of course, cannot connect Fords of different lengths, and for J.-lOrds of five or more letters it is often impossible to join a given pair. To get around this problem, Miller has devised a variety of solitaire \vord games T.>lhich employ other rules for word transformation sing­ly or in combination: insertions and deletions, anagrams, transadditions and transdeletions, splices (join mOVE and Ro\.1 to form OVER), syzygies (paSTRAmi to STRAtegies, stra­tEGIES to elEGIES), and the like. His goal is to find a group of transformation rules v.lhich enables a player to move from one \.Iord to a lmost any other v.lord tha t can be constructed out of its letters (for example, cArpenTeR to ART, or EaGle to EGG) vllthout mak ing the game too easy. The subtitle of the book, Word Games for Formal Logic, draVi/s attention to a less-than-successful attempt to relate these transforma­tions to various axioms and theorems of mathematical logic; hOl>rever, the T.>rord games can be enjoyed by the non-mathema­tical reader. The book has been circulated in a preliminary edition of only 101 copies, and it is hoped that a commercial publisher can be found. A.NSNERS WHAT DO YOU 1. doe dough 5. mussel mus guerrilla 9. 12. boar bore 16. lox locks 20. ewe I s yew 24. roomer rUT seas 28. sla) 31. stationary 34. sail sale 38 . p1a i n p1a r se ller 42. he 45. sweet suit bazaar 49. p profit 53. ba 56. principal 59. cowered c< 62. heals heel boos 66. winl 69. great gra1 lessons 73." KICKSHAWS b' A Literary Sal 

Detective Acrostics

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Detective Acrostics

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