ACROSTIC — Today’s passage begins in space and ends in the recesses of our minds, which is no mean feat in some 35 words. It’s an excerpt from a 1987 book by Jean Aitchison, a linguist, called “Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon.” In it, Ms. Aitchison differentiates between syntax, which organizes how we link words and structures our communication, like mortar, and vocabulary, which builds up in our memory block by block, like bricks.
This is a fascinating concept, especially for puzzle enthusiasts: Consider how idioms work, or what makes a pun funny or how quickly your mind categorizes a new word that has a root that you know. How about neologisms and portmanteaus? You might never have seen the term “flexicon” before, but you probably will have parsed it before you finish this sentence.
This is David Balton and Jane Stewart’s 10th acrostic puzzle for The New York Times; Jim Horne has been posting their puzzles on XWord Info for digital solving. He has also published some biographical information about their interesting path to puzzlemaking along with an explanation of their process for constructing acrostics.
Today’s clues are difficult to break into, but there are several terrific, unusual words in the entries. I always think of that as an extra payoff — not only do I finish the puzzle, but I’m reminded of some of the odder-shaped bricks in my head.
My progress started slowly: “Quick trips; brewery needs” are HOPS; “Prayer leaders at the Dome of the Rock” are IMAMS; and the “Title setting for Victor Hugo novel (hyph.)” is NOTRE-DAME.
These few letters helped me deduce APHASIA, for “Linguistic loss”; OVERHYPING, for “Praising too much, as a rabid fan is apt to”; and the word for “Drums tuned with a foot pedal.” However, I spelled that last entry wrong — although “timpani” and TYMPANI seem to be interchangeable in real life, having an “I” instead of a “Y” led me to make an erroneous assumption in syntax. I had “its” instead of YET, and that affected the way I structured a whole sentence I was trying to piece together.
I was saved by a short entry. I don’t often note those entries in an acrostic puzzle’s clue set, because longer words are more likely to move me along in the passage, but “Irritable; avant-garde,” or EDGY, came along at the perfect time. The E let me fill out the first word of the passage, PLANETS, and the G helped me see an unusual expression — I had doubted some of the letters in the grid before this point.
This is where those interesting entries started falling. “Part of a traditional Christian church service” solves to OFFERTORY, which sounds to me like a newfangled way of saying “collection plate,” but is from Medieval Latin for “place where offerings are brought.” I did not expect the answer for “Birdbrain, dimwit” to be DUNDERHEAD; the DUNDER part may come from the Middle Dutch “donder,” for “thunder,” describing someone who makes a lot of meaningless loud noises.
My favorite eccentric word is the answer to “Mean dishonesty and trickery”: SKULLDUGGERY. While it sounds morbid, this is a morphing of a 1700s Scottish term for adultery, “sculdudrie.” I hope I remember that little nugget.