CynAcrostics Volume 1: Say What?

by Cynthia Morris

Are you ready for a fun brain workout? CynAcrostics Volume 1, Say What?, features 50 challenging, contemporary acrostic puzzles guaranteed to get your "cynapses" firing!

Clever clues and answers slyly mirror the puzzles' quirky quotation solutions by an eclectic assortment of authors -- including actors, adventurers, scientists, journalists, comedians, and musicians.

Seasoned solvers will love this modern take on the classic acrostic puzzle, and newcomers are sure to be hooked in no time on this fresh, funny, and thought-provoking series.

128 pages, Paperback

Published February 11, 2016

About the author

Cynthia (Cyn) Morris is a writer and editor with a lifelong addiction to coffee and acrostic puzzles. She has written several nonfiction books, and thousands of news and feature articles on topics ranging from camel farming in the desert to wormholes in outer space.

Cyn's puzzle series include CynAcrostics (eclectic topics), American Acrostics (American history, culture, and trivia), and AnimaCrostics (animal-themed puzzles for kids). Her puzzles are published by Egghead Games, and are also available on Amazon.

Cyn's books include the Role of Police in American Society and Capital Punishment in the United States, both published by Greenwood Press (now Bloomsbury Publishing). She is also the co-author of Micronesian Blues, the true story of former L.A. street cop Bryan Vila's hilarious road to cross-cultural enlightenment as a police chief in the far Pacific islands of Micronesia.

More information at acrosticsbycyn.com and micronesianblues.com.

Reviews

[Katie Harder-schauer]

I'm not actually finished with this, but as it's not a reading book, I feel like it's okay to write my review already. I am currently on the first puzzle, and this stuff is hard! (That might be partially because I haven't even done a normal crossword puzzle in a while so I'm a little rusty on puzzle stuff to begin with.) This is making me feel like I'm way dumber than I believe myself to actually be (and I've already checked the answers in the back to discover that I was wrong on the very first clue (In my defense, morse and dress ARE both types of codes with only 5 letters. Only one of them is correct though.)

So why would I give it 5 stars if I think it's hard? Because I personally think you should WANT a challenge if you're doing puzzles, and this is definitely a challenge. I'm hoping to get a bit better at acrostic puzzles by the time I reach the end of the book (although I also imagine I will do a fair amount of cheating/checking the answers to get there.) If you enjoy doing puzzles, I think you'd definitely enjoy this book.

[FPK1]

I solved this author's other puzzle series, American Acrostics, online, and then I bought the books when they came out a couple months ago. The books are even better than the online puzzles were.

I wasn't sure I'd like the new series because of the contemporary theme, but I love it. The quotation solutions are really funny, and by some of my favorite authors. A lot of these puzzles are pretty heavily themed (clues fit the quotation solution), but in a non-obvious way, so you don't always realize it until you've solved the puzzle. And the puzzle titles are hilarious.

I still love the history puzzles, but CynAcrostics are every bit as good -- and challenging, too!