Acrostic Puzzles: How Double-Crostics Work and How to Solve Them

Acrostic puzzles are word puzzles where letters you find in one place spell out a hidden message somewhere else. The most popular kind today, often called a double-crostic, gives you a list of clues. You solve the clues, then copy each answer letter into a numbered grid, where the letters slowly reveal a quotation. As a bonus, the first letters of the clue answers, read top to bottom, spell the name of the author and the work the quote comes from. It's part crossword, part cryptogram, and very satisfying when the quote clicks into place.

This guide explains how acrostic puzzles work, where the idea came from (it's much older than you might think), and how to solve one step by step. We've included a small acrostic you can solve right on this page. We built it ourselves and checked it with a short computer program to make sure every letter of the answers lands in exactly one square of the quotation.

What are acrostic puzzles?

The word "acrostic" covers two related things, and it helps to keep them apart.

• An acrostic poem or text is writing where certain letters, read in order, spell a word or phrase. Usually it's the first letter of each line. Write a poem where the lines start with M, O, M and you've written an acrostic.
• An acrostic puzzle (also called a double-crostic, crostic or anacrostic) is a game built on that idea. You solve clues to find words, and the letters of those words fill in a hidden quotation. The first letters of the answers form an acrostic of their own.

Dictionary.com defines the double-crostic as a word game where the player fits word definitions to numbered spaces to produce a quotation. It labels the word as American and notes it's a trademark, which tells you something about where the modern puzzle took off: in American magazines and newspapers of the twentieth century.

If you've ever done a crossword, you already have half the skills you need. If you've done a cryptogram, where you decode a quotation letter by letter, you have the other half. The acrostic combines them. Our guides to crossword puzzles and our cryptogram maker are good warm-ups if you're new to either.

Where the word "acrostic" comes from

According to Dictionary.com, "acrostic" comes from the Greek akrostichís, built from akro-, meaning tip or end, and stichos, meaning line or row. So an acrostic is literally about "the tips of the lines," the letters at the edge of a poem. The word was first recorded in English around 1580 to 1590.

The Academy of American Poets describes the acrostic as a form in which names or words are spelled out through the first letter of each line, and notes it grew out of the abecedarian, a poem whose lines start with the letters of the alphabet in order. The Academy's glossary points out that even William Blake used one: in the third stanza of his poem "London," the first letters of the lines spell a word that underlines the poem's dark mood.

Famous acrostics in literature

Writers have loved hiding names in their work for centuries. A few well-documented examples:

Writer	Work	What's hidden	How it's hidden
Edgar Allan Poe	"An Acrostic," written around 1829 in the album of his cousin Elizabeth Herring	ELIZABETH	First letter of each line
Edgar Allan Poe	"A Valentine," written in February 1846	FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD	First letter of line 1, second letter of line 2, third letter of line 3, and so on
Lewis Carroll	Closing poem of Through the Looking-Glass, beginning "A boat beneath a sunny sky"	ALICE PLEASANCE LIDDELL	First letter of each line
William Blake	"London," third stanza	A single word	First letter of each line

The Poe details come from the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, whose edition of the Herring manuscript shows the lines beginning E, L, I, Z, A, B, E, T, H. Poe's "A Valentine" is cleverer. The Poe Society's notes on the poem record that one early manuscript was titled "For Her Whose Name is Written Within," and that a later newspaper reprinted it as "A Riddle for Somebody to Unriddle." Take the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second line, the third of the third, and so on through the 1849 text, and you get the name of the poet Frances Sargent Osgood. That diagonal trick is a true puzzle, and readers had to work for it.

Lewis Carroll's poem is easier to spot once you know to look. Check the first letter of each line of the final poem in the Project Gutenberg edition of Through the Looking-Glass, and you'll find the full name of Alice Liddell, the real girl behind the Alice books.

From poem to puzzle

For most of their history, acrostics were something a writer hid and a reader might or might not notice. The puzzle version flips that around. Now the hidden message is the point, and the reader is challenged to dig it out. An early puzzle form was the "double acrostic," which Dictionary.com describes as an acrostic formed by the first and last letters of each line. In puzzle form, the solver gets a riddle for each line and has to find words whose first letters spell one answer and whose last letters spell another.

The modern double-crostic, with its numbered quotation grid, is the American twentieth-century version. Puzzle historians generally credit Elizabeth Kingsley, who created it for the Saturday Review of Literature in the 1930s. The format proved popular enough that it's still printed in major newspapers and puzzle magazines today.

How a double-crostic works: the three parts

Every acrostic puzzle of the modern kind has three parts that depend on each other.

1. The clue list

A set of clues, each labeled with a letter: A, B, C and so on. Under each clue is a row of blanks, and under each blank is a number. The answers are ordinary words or short phrases, clued much like a crossword: definitions, fill-in-the-blanks, and sometimes a pun.

2. The quotation grid

A grid of numbered squares, read left to right and top to bottom, like a page of text. Black squares (or gaps) separate the words. Each white square has a number and, usually, the letter of the clue it comes from. When you write an answer letter on the blank numbered 14, you also write it in square 14 of the grid.

3. The acrostic

The first letters of all the clue answers, read in order from clue A down to the last clue, spell out the author's name and, in most puzzles, the title of the work the quotation comes from. That's the "acrostic" part of the name, and it's a powerful hint once you have a few letters.

The magic is that every letter does double duty. Every letter of every answer goes into exactly one square of the quotation, and every square of the quotation comes from exactly one answer letter. Nothing is left over. That means the answers, taken together, are an anagram of the whole quote. It also means progress in one place always helps somewhere else.

Part	What you see	What it gives you	How it helps the other parts
Clue list	Lettered clues with numbered blanks	Whole words you can solve directly	Fills scattered letters of the quotation
Quotation grid	Numbered squares with word breaks	The quote, once enough letters are in	Partial words in the quote let you guess letters, which you send back to the clues
Acrostic	First letters of the answers	Author and source	Knowing the author tells you the first letter of every answer

Try a mini acrostic puzzle

Here's a small acrostic puzzle we made for this guide. The quotation is a familiar proverb with 26 letters. There are six clues, and the first letters of the answers spell a single word describing what the quote is (instead of an author and title, since a proverb has no single author). Real acrostics are much bigger, often with 25 or more clues and a quote of 150 letters or more, but this one shows every mechanic.

The quotation grid

Each square is shown as its number plus the clue letter it comes from. So "1C" means square 1, filled by a letter from the answer to clue C. The quote has six words.

Word	Squares
Word 1 (5 letters)	1C, 2B, 3A, 4C, 5C
Word 2 (5 letters)	6D, 7A, 8A, 9F, 10B
Word 3 (3 letters)	11D, 12C, 13A
Word 4 (1 letter)	14B
Word 5 (6 letters)	15A, 16D, 17F, 18A, 19F, 20F
Word 6 (6 letters)	21E, 22E, 23D, 24B, 25E, 26F

The clues

Clue	Definition	Squares the answer goes into
A	Figures out, as a puzzle (6 letters)	13, 8, 7, 18, 3, 15
B	Eager, keen (4)	14, 2, 24, 10
C	About 365 days (4)	5, 1, 12, 4
D	One-twelfth of a foot (4)	16, 23, 6, 11
E	Zero, in a soccer score (3)	25, 22, 21
F	Thin porridge that Oliver Twist asks for more of (5)	26, 20, 9, 19, 17

Try it before you read on. The answers and a full walkthrough are in the next section.

How to solve acrostic puzzles, step by step

Here's the general method, followed by a walkthrough of the mini puzzle above.

1. Read every clue once. Solve the ones you're sure of first. Don't guess yet.
2. Transfer every letter right away. Each time you fill a blank, copy that letter into the matching numbered square in the grid. This is the habit that makes acrostics work.
3. Look at the grid for partial words. Short words fill in fast. A three-letter word ending in E is probably THE. A one-letter word is A or I.
4. Guess quote words and send letters back. When you can read a word in the grid, fill in its missing squares, then look at each square's clue letter and copy the new letter back into the right clue blank.
5. Use the acrostic. Once you have a few first letters, try to guess the author or title. Each correct guess gives you the first letter of a clue answer.
6. Repeat. New letters in the clues make new answers solvable, which fills more of the grid. The puzzle speeds up as you go.

Walkthrough of the mini puzzle

Round 1: the easy clues. Clue C, "about 365 days," is YEAR. Clue D, "one-twelfth of a foot," is INCH. Clue E, "zero, in a soccer score," is NIL. Transfer them:

• YEAR goes into squares 5, 1, 12, 4. So square 5 is Y, square 1 is E, square 12 is A, square 4 is R.
• INCH goes into squares 16, 23, 6, 11: I, N, C, H.
• NIL goes into squares 25, 22, 21: N, I, L.

Now the grid reads, with blanks as underscores:

E__RY / C____ / HA_ / _ / _I____ / LIN_N_

Round 2: read the grid. The first word is E _ _ R Y. EVERY fits nicely. The last word is L I N _ N _, which is almost certainly LINING. And the third word, H A _, followed by a one-letter word, suggests HAS A. So far the quote looks like "EVERY C____ HAS A _I____ LINING." If you know the proverb, you've got it: Every cloud has a silver lining.

Round 3: send letters back. Fill in the whole quote, then copy each new letter back to its clue using the square labels:

• Clue A takes squares 13, 8, 7, 18, 3, 15. Those squares hold S, O, L, V, E, S. Answer: SOLVES.
• Clue B takes squares 14, 2, 24, 10: A, V, I, D. Answer: AVID.
• Clue F takes squares 26, 20, 9, 19, 17: G, R, U, E, L. Answer: GRUEL.

Round 4: check the acrostic. The first letters of the answers, A through F, are S (SOLVES), A (AVID), Y (YEAR), I (INCH), N (NIL) and G (GRUEL). They spell SAYING, which is exactly what a proverb is. Every check passes, so the puzzle is solved.

In a real acrostic, round 2 rarely happens that fast. You'll usually go back and forth several times. But the rhythm is always the same: solve a clue, transfer, read the grid, guess, send letters back.

Strategies that make acrostics easier

Start with the short quote words

One-, two- and three-letter words in the quotation are the easiest to crack. In English, a one-letter word is almost always A or I. Common two-letter words include OF, TO, IN, IS, IT, AN, AS, AT, BE, BY, HE, WE, OR, ON and SO. Three-letter words are often THE, AND, FOR, BUT, NOT, YOU, ARE or WAS. Fill these in early and send the letters back to the clues.

Watch for apostrophes and punctuation

Many acrostic grids show punctuation. An apostrophe followed by one square is very often S or T (as in IT'S or DON'T). Two squares after an apostrophe suggest LL, RE or VE (as in WE'LL, THEY'RE or I'VE).

Use the letter count

Since the answers use exactly the letters of the quote, you can sometimes rule out an answer because it needs a letter the quote doesn't have enough of. This is advanced, and most solvers use it only near the end. But if you're stuck between two possible answers, a quick tally of the remaining letters can settle it.

Guess the author early

Look at the first letters you have so far, top to bottom. Even three or four letters plus the number of clues can suggest a name. Many puzzles quote well-known writers, so a pattern like "M _ R K T W _ _ N" is easy to finish. Once you know the author, every clue's first letter is known, which makes the remaining clues much easier.

Think about the quote's subject

Once you can read a few words of the quotation, you'll get a sense of its topic. If it's about gardening, expect words like SOIL, BLOOM and SEASON. Guessing the topic often unlocks longer words in the grid.

Mark uncertain letters lightly

Use a pencil, and write guesses small or in a corner of the square. Because every letter appears in two places, one wrong guess can spread errors in both directions. Light marks are easy to erase.

Clue types you'll meet in acrostic puzzles

Acrostic clues are usually more straightforward than crossword clues, because the setter has to fit specific letters into the quotation and can't always choose fancy answers. Still, you'll see a handful of recurring styles.

• Plain definitions. "Eager, keen" for AVID. These are the backbone of most acrostics.
• Fill in the blank. "Folk ___ (traditional stories)" for LORE. These are often the easiest way in, so look for them first.
• Two-word answers. Some answers are short phrases, like a title or an idiom. The number of blanks and any gap between them will tell you.
• Quotation clues. A line from a famous poem or song with one word missing. If you know the line, you get a free answer.
• Category clues. "Shakespeare comedy" or "Planet with rings." These reward general knowledge.
• Wordplay clues. A question mark at the end usually signals a pun or a playful meaning, just as in crosswords.

Because the answers' first letters are fixed by the author's name, setters sometimes have to use an unusual word for one clue. If one answer seems obscure, don't spend too long on it. Letters from the quotation will fill it in later.

Practice: reading a half-finished quote

The most important skill in acrostic solving is reading a quotation with gaps. Here are six partial words like the ones you'll see mid-solve, with the most likely answers. Cover the right column and try them.

Pattern in the grid	Likely word	Why
T H _	THE	One of the most common words in English
_ N D	AND	Very common, and few other words fit
W _ _ C H	WHICH	Common in older quotations
_ O U L D	WOULD, COULD or SHOULD (if 6 squares)	Use the clue letters in the squares to test each one
_ _ I N G	A word ending in -ING, like BEING or THING	Verb endings are a gift; check the first two letters against your clues
N _ _ E R	NEVER	Few other five-letter words fit

When a pattern has more than one possible answer, like _OULD, try each option and see which one makes a real word in the clue that the missing square belongs to. That cross-check is what makes acrostics so satisfying: the grid and the clues keep each other honest.

Acrostic variations at a glance

You'll run into several related puzzles and writing forms that share the acrostic idea. Here's a quick guide to telling them apart.

• Acrostic poem. The first letter of each line spells a word or name. The simplest and oldest form, and a common writing exercise.
• Abecedarian. A poem whose lines start with the letters of the alphabet in order. The Academy of American Poets describes the acrostic as derived from this form.
• Double acrostic. Both the first and last letters of each line spell something, as Dictionary.com explains. Dictionary.com also mentions a triple acrostic that adds a middle letter.
• Diagonal acrostic. The hidden letters step one place to the right on each line, as in Poe's "A Valentine."
• Double-crostic. The modern puzzle with clues, a numbered quotation grid and an author-and-title acrostic. This is what most people mean by "acrostic puzzle" today.

Acrostic vs. crossword vs. cryptogram

Acrostics share features with other popular puzzles. Here's how they compare:

Feature	Acrostic (double-crostic)	Crossword	Cryptogram
Clues	Yes, lettered A, B, C	Yes, numbered Across and Down	No, only the coded text
Hidden quotation	Yes	Sometimes, as a theme	Yes, the whole puzzle
How letters interlock	Each answer letter maps to one grid square	Across and Down answers share squares	Each coded letter stands for one real letter
Extra hidden message	Author and title in the answers' first letters	Rarely	No
Main skills	Vocabulary plus pattern guessing	Vocabulary and wordplay	Letter frequency and pattern logic
Typical solving time	Long; a big one can take an evening	Varies widely	Short to medium

If you enjoy acrostics, you'll probably enjoy tougher crosswords too. Our pages on crossword puzzles for adults and hard crossword puzzles are good next stops.

Getting set up for your first full-size acrostic

A full acrostic is a bigger commitment than a quick crossword, so a little preparation makes the experience much more pleasant.

• Use a pencil with a good eraser. You'll make guesses in two places at once, and you'll want to undo them cleanly.
• Print it large if you can. The numbers under each blank are small. If you're printing at home, scale the page up or use a larger paper size so you can read the numbers without squinting.
• Keep a scrap sheet nearby. Use it to jot possible authors, letter tallies, or words you suspect but haven't confirmed.
• Work in short sessions. Acrostics reward fresh eyes. If you're stuck, put it down for an hour. When you come back, a half-finished word in the grid will often jump out at you.
• Solve with a partner. One person can work the clues while the other reads the grid and calls out guesses. It's a great puzzle to share, since the two halves of the puzzle split naturally.
• Check your transfers as you go. Every ten letters or so, glance back and confirm that what's in the clue blank matches what's in the grid square. Catching a slip early saves a lot of erasing later.

Most solvers find the first acrostic the slowest. Once you've done two or three, the back-and-forth rhythm becomes second nature, and you start reading the quotation long before the grid is full.

Common mistakes when solving acrostic puzzles

• Forgetting to transfer letters. If you solve clues but don't copy the letters into the grid, you lose the main advantage of the puzzle. Transfer every letter as soon as you write it.
• Transferring to the wrong square. Numbers can be close together, like 46 and 64. Double-check each one. A wrong transfer makes the quote look like nonsense and can send you on a wild goose chase.
• Ignoring the clue letter in each square. The small letter in each grid square tells you which clue it belongs to. When you guess a quote word, use those letters to send each new letter back to the right clue.
• Forcing a clue answer. If an answer doesn't fit the letters coming from the grid, it's probably wrong, even if it fits the clue. Trust the crossing information.
• Assuming the author's full name. Some puzzles use only the last name, or a name plus a short title. Count the clues before you commit.
• Reading word breaks wrong. Make sure you know where each word in the grid starts and ends. Some grids wrap words across lines, and some show punctuation in its own square.

How to make your own acrostic puzzle

Building an acrostic is a fun challenge, and it's a great way to really understand how they work. Here's the process we used for the mini puzzle above.

1. Choose a quotation. Pick something with a mix of common letters. Very short quotes are hard to build because you have fewer letters to work with. Proverbs and public-domain quotes are safest to reprint.
2. Decide what the acrostic spells. Traditionally it's the author and title. For a short practice puzzle, you can spell a single word. Every letter of that word must appear in the quote, since each answer's first letter comes from the quote's letters.
3. Count the quote's letters. Make a tally: how many A's, B's, C's and so on. Our proverb had 26 letters, including 3 E's, 3 I's and 3 L's.
4. Pick answer words. Choose one word starting with each acrostic letter, crossing letters off your tally as you use them. The goal is to use up every letter exactly once. This is the hard part, and you'll swap words in and out many times.
5. Check the tally reaches zero. If you have one letter left over, look for a word that can absorb it (we turned SOLVE into SOLVES to use up a spare S). If you're one letter short, swap a word for one that uses fewer letters.
6. Assign squares. For each letter of each answer, pick an unused square in the quote that holds the same letter. Mix them up so that answers don't fill neighboring squares; that keeps the puzzle from being too easy.
7. Write the clues. Keep them fair. A solver should be able to get some answers without any letters at all.
8. Test it. Solve it yourself from the clues alone, or better, have a friend try it. Then make an answer key with the filled grid and all the answers.

For step 8, our guide on how to make an answer key walks through layouts that are easy to check against.

A quick tally check you can do by hand

Here's the tally for our proverb, EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING, and the answers that used it up:

Letter	Times in the quote	Where the answers use it
A	2	AVID, YEAR
C	1	INCH
D	1	AVID
E	3	SOLVES, YEAR, GRUEL
G	1	GRUEL
H	1	INCH
I	3	AVID, INCH, NIL
L	3	SOLVES, NIL, GRUEL
N	2	INCH, NIL
O	1	SOLVES
R	2	YEAR, GRUEL
S	2	SOLVES (twice)
U	1	GRUEL
V	2	SOLVES, AVID
Y	1	YEAR

Add the middle column: 2 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 26. The answers have 6 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 5 = 26 letters too. The counts match letter for letter, which is exactly what a correct acrostic needs.

Acrostic poems: a gentle starting point

If the full puzzle feels like a lot, acrostic poems are a friendly way in, for kids and adults alike. Write a word down the left side of the page, one letter per line, and start each line with that letter. Names, seasons and holidays work well.

Here's a short example spelling PUZZLE, one line per bullet:

• Pencil in hand, I sit and stare,
• Until a word appears from air.
• Zigzag letters, row on row,
• Zero clues where I should go,
• Long I ponder, then I see:
• Every answer waits for me.

Turning the idea around makes a nice group activity: hide a word in a poem and ask others to find it. Poe's trick of using the first letter of line 1, the second letter of line 2 and so on is a fun challenge for older students. For more ways to use word puzzles with a group, see our ideas for puzzles for classroom centers.

Make word puzzles to go with your acrostics

Acrostics take a while to build by hand, so it's nice to pair one with quicker puzzles on the same theme. Use the answer words from your acrostic, or words from the quotation's topic, as a word list.

Our free puzzle maker lets you type your own words or pick a theme, choose a puzzle type, and print it with an answer key. A themed word search or crossword next to a homemade acrostic makes a full puzzle page for a book club, a classroom or a long afternoon.

Five Acrostic Forms Side by Side

Several puzzles and writing forms share the acrostic idea. This table sets five of them next to each other so you can tell them apart.

Form	How it works	Good to know
Acrostic poem	The first letter of each line spells a word or name	The simplest and oldest form, and a common writing exercise
Abecedarian	The lines start with the letters of the alphabet in order	The Academy of American Poets describes the acrostic as derived from this form
Double acrostic	Both the first and last letters of each line spell something	Dictionary.com also mentions a triple acrostic that adds a middle letter
Diagonal acrostic	The hidden letters step one place to the right on each line	Poe's "A Valentine" is an example
Double-crostic	You solve clues, copy the answer letters into a numbered grid and reveal a quotation, while the answers' first letters spell the author and title	This is what most people mean by "acrostic puzzle" today

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an acrostic puzzle?

An acrostic puzzle, often called a double-crostic, is a word puzzle with two linked parts: a list of lettered clues and a grid of numbered squares. You solve the clues, then copy each letter of each answer into the matching numbered square. As the grid fills, it reveals a quotation. The first letters of the clue answers, read in order, usually spell the author's name and the title of the work the quote comes from. Every letter of the answers is used exactly once in the quotation.

What is the difference between an acrostic and a crossword?

In a crossword, answers cross each other in a grid, so Across and Down words share letters. In an acrostic, the answers don't cross. Instead, each answer letter is sent to a numbered square in a separate quotation grid. A crossword's reward is a filled grid, while an acrostic's reward is a hidden quote plus an author and title spelled by the answers' first letters. Acrostics also let you work backward, guessing words in the quote and sending those letters back to the clues.

How do you start solving an acrostic puzzle?

Read through all the clues and solve the ones you're confident about, such as definitions you know right away. Copy every letter into its numbered square in the quotation grid as soon as you write it. Then look at the grid for short words you can recognize, like A, I, THE, AND or OF. Fill those in and send their letters back to the clues using the small clue letter in each square. Keep alternating between clues and grid, and the puzzle speeds up.

What does the acrostic in an acrostic puzzle spell?

In most published acrostic puzzles, the first letters of the clue answers, read from the first clue down to the last, spell the name of the author of the quotation, often followed by the title of the book, poem or speech it comes from. This hidden line is the acrostic that gives the puzzle its name. Smaller or homemade puzzles sometimes spell a single word instead, such as a theme word. Guessing the author early is one of the best shortcuts, because it gives you the first letter of every answer.

Where does the word acrostic come from?

According to Dictionary.com, acrostic comes from the Greek akrostichis, made from akro-, meaning tip or end, and stichos, meaning line or row. So it refers to the letters at the tips of the lines of a poem, usually the first letter of each line. The word was first recorded in English around 1580 to 1590. Acrostic poems are much older than acrostic puzzles; the modern puzzle with a numbered quotation grid is a twentieth-century American form.

What are some famous acrostic poems?

Edgar Allan Poe wrote an acrostic around 1829 in the album of his cousin Elizabeth Herring, with lines beginning with the letters of ELIZABETH. His 1846 poem A Valentine hides the name Frances Sargent Osgood diagonally: first letter of line one, second letter of line two, and so on. Lewis Carroll ended Through the Looking-Glass with a poem whose first letters spell ALICE PLEASANCE LIDDELL. The Academy of American Poets notes that William Blake used an acrostic in the third stanza of London.

Are acrostic puzzles hard?

Full-size acrostics are usually considered challenging, mainly because they're long and need both vocabulary and pattern-spotting skills. A newspaper-size acrostic can have two dozen clues and a quote of well over a hundred letters, so it often takes an evening. But the puzzle is very forgiving: if you can't solve a clue, letters from the quotation will eventually fill it in. Beginners do well starting with smaller acrostics, like the six-clue example on this page, and working up.

How do I make my own acrostic puzzle?

Pick a quotation and decide what the first letters of your answers will spell, such as the author and title. Count every letter in the quote. Then choose one answer word for each acrostic letter, crossing letters off your tally as you go, until every letter of the quote is used exactly once. Assign each answer letter to a matching square in the quote, write fair clues, and test-solve it. The letter-balancing step takes the most time, so expect to swap words in and out.

Are acrostic poems good for kids?

Acrostic poems are a popular, low-pressure writing activity because the structure gives children a starting point for every line. Writing a name, season or holiday down the side of the page and starting each line with that letter helps kids think about word choice and spelling without worrying about rhyme. Older students can try harder versions, like hiding a word diagonally the way Poe did, or swapping poems and searching for each other's hidden words. Full acrostic puzzles suit older kids and adults.

Sources

We checked every source below while writing this guide. Last reviewed October 30, 2026, by Joan Ramos.

1. Double-Crostic (definition) (Dictionary.com)
2. Acrostic (definition and word origin) (Dictionary.com)
3. Acrostic (Glossary of Poetic Terms) (Academy of American Poets)
4. Poe's Works: An Acrostic (editorial notes) (The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore)
5. An Acrostic (Herring manuscript text) (The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore)
6. Poe's Works: A Valentine (editorial notes) (The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore)
7. A Valentine (Sartain's Union Magazine text, March 1849) (The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore)
8. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (Lewis Carroll) (Project Gutenberg)