A few days ago I published an article called Superstition: A puzzle on three levels
I didn’t address the topic of superstition directly, but from, if you like, sideways on. Well, I’m a Cancerian, so what do you expect?
The post included numbers, and it’s fairly easy to find information on the significance of different numbers in various cultural and religious traditions. Therefore, I see little value in dwelling on that aspect of the story.
More importantly, it included a diagonal acrostic. An acrostic is a device by which when you take certain letters from certain words they form a word or phrase. These are usually straightforward once you’ve twigged that it’s an acrostic you’re trying to solve.
An example:
What is my profession? Read on to find out. It should be easy for you to figure out. There are no prizes though, sorry! Errors will attract no penalties either. Refer to my Oulipo posts if you find yourself floundering.
You may have deduced that if you take the first letter of each word in that sentence it will spell out the word “writer”.
However, I decided that that was too easy, and that a diagonal acrostic would be more challenging. I was partly inspired by the fact that in Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, there is a diagonal row of ‘g’s that is not immediately obvious. You can read about that here: Life: A User’s Manual (Ch.51).
So, I set about creating a diagonal acrostic. This was the result:
What were the difficulties, and how did I do it?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Eclecticism: Reflections on literature, writing and life to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.