Sunday September 11: Song of the Reed

We were in a guessing mood today, ready to take the barest hint and plunge forward. Single letters were enough to prompt several clue answers. Guess, guess, guess almost always feels right for an acrostic – at least if you do it in pencil.

In our first pass through the puzzle, we appreciated the dual definition Hot Spot - later we learned there are other more obscure definitions; who knows how one without even thinking about it enters Bethesda for a defense contractor – you’d think that most would be over in Arlington; and we promptly entered “At Once” and only much later, in re-reading the clue more carefully realized on time was right; Swatch was easy.

Ah, then in filling in these four answers, much more became evident. The ‘d’ from the Lockheed-Martin locale, screamed out as the last letter of ‘and’ and its ‘a’ mved us away from thinking about those cities being opposites but more topologically antipoles – well okay, we were close – antipodes. Remarkably only 4% of land has land opposite it in that line through the center of the earth. Beijing and Buenos Aries are certainly the biggest cities that are close to being antipodes.

The phasing of the Bogart question immediately made us think he came from privilege (his father was a surgeon). We suspected a prep school, and antipodes then led us to the word human in the quote which gave us the ‘A’ of Phillips Andover. What a fabulous actor!


Buchan's line about an atheist is amusing.  He was Scottish, 1st Baron Tweeedsmuir.

One mid-puzzle guess was the Eagles as winners in 2001, but in fact they've never won.  The 'a' and 's' though proved helpful in solving the puzzle and eventually a few erasures later, Ravens fell into place.

Okay, don't want to suffer from motor mouth, enough said on this week's acrostic, except for the words of Rumi's Song of the Reed.

Rumi’s Song of the Reed:

Listen to the song of the reed,

How it wails with the pain of separation:

“Ever since I was taken from my reed bed

My woeful song has caused men and women to weep.

I seek out those whose hearts are torn by separation

For only they understand the pain of this longing.

Whoever is taken away from his homeland

Yearns for the day he will return.

In every gathering, among those who are happy or sad,

I cry with the same lament.

Everyone hears according to his own understanding,

None has searched for the secrets within me.

My secret is found in my lament

But an eye or ear without light cannot know it..”

The sound of the reed comes from fire, not wind

What use is one’s life without this fire?

It is the fire of love that brings music to the reed.

It is the ferment of love that gives taste to the wine.

The song of the reed soothes the pain of lost love.

Its melody sweeps the veils from the heart.

Can there be a poison so bitter or a sugar so sweet

As the song of the reed?

To hear the song of the reed

everything you have ever known must be left behind.