Sunday August 28: Quirky Words

What a wonderful quote for this week’s acrostic. – always like it when the puzzle itself speaks about words.  It is the quirkiness of language that often makes the acrostic itself intriguing.  Of course, it’s the regularity of word patterns that often makes it doable.

This week’s puzzle started slowly as the theme was captured in several quirky-clues, like derby and TV Show and fairways. We started with only a few quick answers: ironic getting us going, then in the mood for irony necktie was apparent. Nest egg was also straightforward. 

It was clear though that to solve this puzzler, back and forth between the quote and clues and, of course, lots of guessing would be the order of the day.  Was it De Gama who crossed this country?  Didn’t seem right, but the guess did provide a few valuable letters..  Hmm, why doesn’t O’Keefe[sic] fit? Ah, like Mitterrand of the puzzle before, double the consonant and there we go. 

Hyphenated words often are two-digit numbers and the starting ‘t’ that we had filled in made twenty-something seem like a real possibility.  With our false answer from clue K, we were left with only one possible number – and lots of new letters to fill into the clues.

Given the paucity of doubleheaders, nightcap took a moment, but the fact that the Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox played two on Saturday (to avoid Hurricane Irene on Sunday) had put the word on the Sports pages of the Times on Sunday.

Growing up you don’t quite know whether expressions your parents use are commonplace or not.  “Ersatz for oleo” I always attributed to my mother, now I finally see its usage is more common.

Kipling was the first English and youngest ever winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.  Floating up the Irrawaddy, how can you argue with the meter of -

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
    Come you back to Mandalay,
    Where the old Flotilla lay:
    Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
    On the road to Mandalay,
    Where the flyin'-fishes play,
    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

Several weeks ago we learned of bisque as a croquet term, funny to see it appear again in yet another of one of it’s less common usages.

For a moment the quote with words like ‘QI’ looked like gibberish, yet the pieces seemed to be following in place, although first an amusing diversion into what the BBC show was all about.

Once O’Keeffe got all her letters and De Gama gave way to De Soto, we could raise our eyebrows in a smug, happy, expression.