This site grew out of a Macintosh software project. Michael H. Dickman and Andrew McDaniel wrote a Mac program to help compose double-crostic puzzles. Naturally, they started writing some puzzles and Michael then wrote a JavaScript program to display the puzzles online.
Double-crostic puzzles were invented in 1934 by Elizabeth Kingsley. She wrote many for the Saturday Review, as did Thomas H. Middleton later. When the Saturday Review folded, Harper’s Magazine published the puzzles for a while. Several newspapers have published them, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.
To contact Michael, email him at michael-acrostica (replace the hyphen with an at symbol and add .com at the end). But since he usually forgets to check his mail at that address, michaeld42-aol would probably be more efficient.
To solve these puzzles, type in as many of the words as you can, based on the clues. Then look at the grid and make some guesses, if you can, about the words in the quote. A three-letter-word with the middle letter “H” is almost always “THE” but is occasionally SHE or WHO. A two-letter word starting with “T” is almost always “TO”. A six-letter word with “EO” as the second and third letters is usually “PEOPLE”. You may see more patterns as you gain more experience. Don’t forget to use the fact that the first letters of the clue words spell out the author and title of the work.
Happy puzzling!