Acrostic¶
acrostic · letter · validated
A text whose initial letters, read down the lines, spell out a target word or phrase.
Provenance¶
- Source: Lewis Carroll, A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky (1871)
- Attribution:
traditional— classical or folk; no single origin to name - Checkability:
self— decidable from the text and its parameters alone - Attested:
codified— formulated as a rule by a tradition rather than declared by an author
Details¶
- Kind: restrictive
- Languages: en, de
- Requires:
tokens,fold_diacritics - Deterministic: yes
- In other languages: Akrostichon (de), Acrostiche (fr)
Prompt hint¶
Write a poem whose lines begin with the letters of the target word, in order.
Parameters¶
| Name | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
fold_diacritics |
boolean | True |
Treat accented letters as their base letter, and ß as ss. |
target |
string | — |
The word or phrase the unit letters must spell. |
unit |
string | line |
What carries a letter. |
Examples¶
carroll-alice¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
A boat beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July
Children three that nestle near
Eager eye and willing ear
Parameters: target='ALICE'
Source: Lewis Carroll, A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky (1871), opening stanza
wrong-initials¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Apple
Zebra
Parameters: target='AB'
Source: constructed counterexample
welt¶
de — this text satisfies the procedure.
Wolken ziehen weit
Einsam steht der Baum
Leise fällt der Schnee
Traum und Nacht vergehn
Parameters: target='WELT'
Source: constructed example
falsche-initialen¶
de — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
Wolken ziehen weit
Nebel steht im Tal
Parameters: target='WE'
Source: constructed counterexample
eszett-target-claims-two-units¶
de — this text satisfies the procedure.
Sonne
sehr
tanzt
Parameters: target='ßt', unit='line'
Source: constructed example; ß folds to ss and the text side already spends two units on it, so the target must too (ADR 0035)