As is well known, anagrams are ancient. Today, we see them as an interesting genre of wordplay. But they were hardly perceived as such in the past, and to an extent even today. Anagrams of people’s ...

Perhaps you’ve done this. You take the first letter of each line to make a poem or just a name or phrase. When you read it vertically, you see the poem. Many of us have indulged in this fun pastime.

David Balton and Jane Stewart provide an endearing, confessional puzzle. By Caitlin Lovinger ACROSTIC — Solving this puzzle made me very nostalgic. It’s a passage by David Sedaris, a writer whom I ...