ACROSTIC — There is something especially suspenseful about solving an acrostic puzzle that turns out to be about a great discovery; in this case, it’s one that has captured the world’s imagination and led to the notion of an ancient curse, disseminated by the writers Marie Corelli and Arthur Conan Doyle, that still persists.
Today’s excerpt is from “The Tomb of Tutankhamen,” by Howard Carter, the archaeologist who excavated the burial chamber of the boy pharaoh in November 1922. That dig was epic, and the puzzle’s passage places us right at the entrance of the tomb. Imagine how astonishing it was to see the rooms when they were opened! Mr. Carter likened their pristine condition to “the property room of an opera of a vanished civilization.” Some 5,000 artifacts were removed, cataloged and preserved in Egypt. The items have all been gathered in a new museum near the pyramids of Giza that is supposed to open completely in 2024, after years of delays.
Having solved a few acrostics before, I am attuned to the presence of one- and two-letter words, which got me off to a good start in this puzzle, as I recognized that the passage was written from a first-person perspective. I came up with hardly any letters from my first few solves: “‘Exodus’ author,” who is Leon URIS; “Tiny criticisms,” or NITS; and “Gangsters’ sexy sidekicks,” or MOLLS. Yet I was still able to build a few words in the passage and start deducing some longer entries.
Lots of these answers are pertinent to the passage, many quite cleverly so; I uncovered them slowly over the course of my solve. I remembered that RAMSES was the “Ruler whose sculpted visage was the subject of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias,’” and that Marc ANTONY was the one “Who said, in Shakespeare, ‘Let Rome in Tiber melt … Here is my space.’” Then I figured that the “Subject of an iconic painted bust discovered in 1912” would be “Cleopatra.” This is the last clue in the puzzle, but the trivia actually refers to a famous and beautiful depiction of NEFERTITI. The first clue in the puzzle, “Greek monarch who reigned in Africa,” is CLEOPATRA (these powerful women make interesting bookends).
I had no idea what a “Narrow sailing vessel used on the Nile and in the Mediterranean” might be, and couldn’t recall ever seeing the term FELUCCA before. There’s another aquatic entry, well concealed: “Where parting was far from sweet sorrow?” isn’t another Shakespeare reference; it’s a pun clue for the RED SEA. Finally, a very innocent clue made me slap my forehead when I got it: “Certain parent, in totspeak” could have been “daddy,” “momma” or “mommy”; eventually, every letter filled in and MUMMY appeared.
Constructor Notes
Jane’s obsession with Egyptology once led us to take a family trip to Egypt, which included exploring the hillside burial tombs in the Valley of the Kings (not for claustrophobes like Dave!) and reciting Shelley’s “Ozymandias” beside the enormous fallen statue of Ramses the Great.
For this puzzle, we continue to enjoy cluing some themed answers sideways by taking advantage of non-themed meanings or contexts. Examples of this approach include our clues for KINGS, THE GREAT and MUMMY. (After solving Hex puzzles, we always delighted in perusing the clues and answers for those subtler thematic connections.)
Too bad we couldn’t weave in a reference to Steve Martin for his iconic song, “King Tut.”