Wall Street Journal – Acrostic

Wall Street journal approached us to develop a new digital crossword, as they wanted to expand their offer of crossword and chose a great and interesting classic. Acrostic.

Acrostics were the creation of Elizabeth Kingsley, a schoolteacher in Brooklyn, New York, back in 1933. Her puzzles were first published in the Saturday Review in 1934. Since that time, acrostic puzzles by various constructors have been published in many magazines.

Solving acrostic puzzles is easier than it looks. Simply start by filling in as many of the answers to the clues as you can, just like solving a crossword puzzle. Then transfer the letters from the words list to the quotation grid – the corresponding grid number appears beneath each letter of the answers.

As you fill in these letters, words and partial words will start to emerge in the quotation grid. The number and letter inside each box of the grid indicates where the letter you enter in that box can be found in the answers to the clues. Work back and forth between the clues/words and the quotation grid until all the letters have been filled in.

When each puzzle is solved, a concise quotation from a published work will appear in the quotation grid. In addition, the first letters of the words list, when read down, will spell out the name of the author and the title of the work the quote is taken from.

As you can imagine from the above description of the game, the logic is pretty complex for a crossword and it was certainly challenging to make sure that the digital version of it was faithful to its original gameplay. But don’t we love a challenge!

After few iterations of the game and with continuous collaboration with the client we managed to produce a great digital game that can be found in the (digital) pages of the magazine once a week.