The Acrostic program allows you to enter the grid for an Acrostic puzzle, and the numbers that cross-reference the clues, and then solve the puzzle without worrying about the bookkeeping any more. Any letters entered in the grid are simultaneously entered in the words, and vice-versa.

Until recently this was only mildly exciting, as making the cross-reference entries is DULL, DULL, DULL.

But now, The New York Times on the Web is publishing the Acrostic as a web page, and that web page can be SAVEd by your browser AS an HTML file. The Acrostic program can read that HTML file and extract the cross-reference numbers and the clues, so all you have to do is enter the spaces (and maybe hyphens) in the grid with a few mouse clicks, load the HTML file, and off you go.

More detailed instructions are in the HELP for the program.  Acrostic II includes instructions to load a new Acrostic from HTML.  See the README here, and in the distribution for more information.

Solving the puzzle is now much nicer, especially if you do not do it alone. I originally wrote this program because we found that the one of the two of us having most of the fun was the one not holding the pencil.

PDF of June 1, 2003 Acrostic (printed after loading into 'Acrostic (OSX)')

New Acrostic — now for the Mac and for Windows — all are ... http://www.realbasic.com
Updated 6/3/2003 v 1.2 'Acrostic (OSX)' for Mac OS X more	Click the button below to download a disk image file, ACROOSX.DMG  880,514 bytes Copy the program from the folder in the disk image.
Updated 6/3/2003 v 1.2 'Acrostic' for Mac OS 9 more	Click the button below to download a disk image file, ACROOS9.DMG 892,540 bytes   Copy the program from the folder in the disk image.
Updated 6/3/2003 v 1.2 'AcrosticII.exe' for 32 bit Windows more (This is the new program for Windows)	Click the button to download a self-extracting archive file, ACROIISU.EXE. 741,376 bytes Click the file to run it and extract ACROSTICII.EXE. This is the program. There is no setup required.
Original Version
A program for 32 bit Windows. (W95 W98 WME NT4 W2K WXP).	Click the button to download a self-extracting archive file, ACROSU.EXE, 32 bit version. 1,780,224 bytes.
Installation Instructions:	For NT or W2K or XP Professional be sure that you are logged in with Administrator rights before you run SETUP.EXE or Uninstall from Control Panel. Save the downloaded file to an empty folder. Run ACROSU.EXE  which will extract the files, SETUP.EXE, SETUP.LST and ACROSTIC.CAB. Run SETUP.EXE from the no longer empty folder. GO HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SETUP The new folder and the files in it are not needed after the setup is complete.
Versions:	Click here to read about fixes and updates.

Register:

Your comments will be welcomed by michael@phred.org. (And if you will send me your e-mail address I will keep you informed of changes to the program.)

Changes may be necessary if you wish to continue to use the program after the NYT makes changes to the web page which the program uses to load the acrostic. The first format change which 'broke' the program was September 28, 1997.   Read Fixes and Updates below for details of more recent changes to the program.

Clear Acrostic (for Windows):

This program will "unsolve" the THM files used by Acrostic. It can save the solutions in a file. Download ACROCLSU.EXE (1,510,912 bytes) from here. The installation method is the same as that for Acrostic, except for the name of the CAB file.

Setup Notes for Windows Versions 5.04 and later:

Version 5.06 is now compiled with Microsoft Visual Basic Version 6, Service Pack 5. Read this article - Q197298 if you have a problem with the "Setup" on your machine. My installing SP5 is supposed to have solved it.

The information following is still correct regarding what happens during Setup. Any problems mentioned appear to have been solved by the installation of Service Pack 5.

Since version 5.04,  Acrostic has been compiled with Visual Basic/Visual Studio 6.0 and packaged with a new Wizard that creates a CAB file for distribution.  The Setup program produced by the new Wizard has a behavior which has disconcerted some people.  It installs 7 files, telling you about each one, and then it may say that Setup cannot continue because your system is out of date.  It did this to me on a new Win98 machine.  The only response if you wish to install Acrostic is to continue.  Setup updates the file(s) that it needs, restarts your machine, and then you run Setup again.  It will copy those seven files once more to TEMP, and then continue to install Acrostic, and again remove the seven files from TEMP.

The seven files are copied to a TEMP directory, then their versions are checked against the files in the SYSTEM directory.  If any of the seven files is newer in TEMP than in SYSTEM, then a message is issued that your system needs to be restarted before setup can continue.  This will replace the older file(s) in SYSTEM with those in TEMP.

When Setup is run again, the process is done all over again, but the SYSTEM files are all now current, and the message to re-boot is not given.

This information was gleaned from an article Q193034 in Microsoft's Knowledge Base. The 5.05 version is not subject to the problem described there. The Service Pack for the compiler (SP4) that fixed it is installed. (Now SP5 has fixed it again). See Q197298

Life would be simpler if Microsoft would not choose to update your system on the back of my program.  Anyway, once your system is up to date, installing Acrostic places the following files on your system, in the PROGRAM directory:

Usually:
SYSTEM is C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
TEMP is C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
PROGRAM is C:\PROGRAM FILES\ACROSTIC
These may be different depending on choices made during the configuration of your computer.

Fixes and Updates:

Date:	25 May 2003
Description:	Added 3 new Mac and Windows programs that are
Version:	Acrostic II Version 1.1.5.

Last Updated 06/03/2003.