[Now for something completely different...]

The two new word games in Squeak are fruits of my taking last weekend "off" (although my wife disputed this notion ;-).  I've had them on my list for a long time, because they are each puzzles that are much more fun with the aid of a computer (since copying and making changes on paper can be tedious).  [The last time I tried them it was in (shhh) Visual Basic].

A lot of people don't know about acrostic puzzles, but IHMO they are much more fun than crosswords.  Everything in a crossword puzzle is the same.  But in an acrostic, you also rely heavily on the part of your brain that can "see" the completion of an incomplete message.  It's a talent at which humans are truly brilliant.

I dug up one of my favorite acrostics, and have attached it.  Use the fileList to decompress it.  You can then open it with the 'open...' command on any CrosticPanel.

It is full of tricky clues, such as anagrams, inclusions, puns and reversals.  For instance, consider the following clue:

	"Mobile home backs up in a stream, a balanced arrangement"

The answer is ALABAMA, so you can see that "Mobile home" is the definition (for outlanders, Mobile is a large city in the state of Alabama).

The key word "in" means that the answer can be found in the rest of the clue.

The key phrase "backs up" means that it will likely be found reversed.

And now, scanning backwards, you will see the answer hidden in "...am, a bala..."

If you haven't ever done one of these, it's useful to know that each clue consists of two parts (which may be mixed): a definition and a clue.

Incidentally, this one also includes the delightful

	"Nur, a car"

Now you know enough to recognize why the answer is "RUNABOUT", with "about" being a key word (as in "about face") indicating reversal (this is shady, since part of the clue resides in the answer).

Sometiumes the clues are anagrams, so you should notice in

	Why worn set becomes interesting

that "why worn set" has the same number of letters as the answer, so "becomes" may mean "is an anagram for", and the answer should then fit the definition, "interesting".

Have fun!

	- Dan
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