The Atlantic Puzzler

By Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

CRYPTIC PING-PONG

The diagram for this puzzle represents a ping-pong table. Answers to Across clues may begin on either side and will bounce back and forth, letter by letter, across the net (the heavy bar dividing left from right), with each word staying in its correspondingly lettered row (a-h). In any given row, each side of the table has no repeated letters. By entering the 8-letter answers to the Down clues (1-14) normally, you should be able to place the ping-ponging Across letters. However, some of the rows contain more than 14 letters. When this occurs, bounce the extra letter into the shaded column (in proper alternating order). When every answer has been placed, the letters in the shaded columns will indicate the outcome of the game. Answers include one proper noun.

The solution to last month’s Puzzler appears on page 105.

ACROSS

a. Player finally put in service ace to get resounding defeat Fix piano lamp

b. Shove around in back, to discipline A medieval soldier takes in meager pay

c. Pretty hack English Flat fish in beam of light Competed with 100 amid table tennis noise and leaping about

d. Crown princess made crackers Loudly voice disapproval of pie topping? This will come back to you

e. Country house stocks an ice cream flavor

Public transportation’s smack Salami roll sandwiches—surrealist

f. Authentic coin of Spain Fuss with a coiffure Left to kindle coal

g. Huge sum made by American playwright with charged matter about Theodore Roosevelt (two words) Herb’s a wise guy

h. Manufacture pule in purplish color Around the first of November, fetch fellow

Express bewilderment for at least 48 hours

DOWN

1. Introduce hotel with a roundish shape

2. Misplaced cigar and sweater

3. Added a couple of pages and quit

4. Leroy has worked with a rasp

5. Plot outline: arsenic poisoned organization’s head

6. Trim phone in upraised model

7. Trade for purple kind of cherry

8. Old Oila monster eating a flower

9. Characteristic’s first found in a wise old Greek’s forebear

10. Words for a nag: glue, potentially

11. Martinet has Stravinsky held in dismal stir

12. Hard, in a way, to call time out

13. Senator Kennedy goes around city wearing Indian headdress

14. Ship carrying the man on French sea looks like a mirage

Note: The instructions above are for this month’s puzzle only. It is assumed that you know how to decipher clues, tor a complete introduction to clue-solving, write to The Atlantic Reprint Department, 8 Arlington Street, Poston, Mass. 02116, enclosing a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Answers to the April Puzzler, “BOOKSHELVES”

Top Shelf: 2. LEDGE(R)S; BA(nd)-SALT 3. SC-RAM; K(ANGARO)0 (groan anag.) 4. SE(ASH-OR)E; ENACT (anag.) Bottom Shelf: 7. M(ESS)Y; DI-GESTED (homophone of jested) 8. ESTATE (anag.); C-HAR(AD)E 9. ANNU(A)L; A-ER0S-0(i)L (sore rev.) Five-Letter Words: A(GI)LE; AM-END; BEECH (homophone); BEN-CH; CEDAR (homophone); DECOY (hidden); DEGAS (pun); F-ROCK; G(RAY)S; HAGUE (anag.); HE-MEN (hidden); JA(SO)N; LASTS (pun); LA(Z)ED (anag. + Z); LOCAL (double def.); NO(I)SE; PANTS (double def.); PARK-A; RAVE-N; S(L)IDE; S(Q)UAB (anag. + q); S-WORN; TAC(I)T; TARRY (pun); TAX-IS; TOTE-M