Poetic Tie-in Puzzles

I’ve been enjoying the New York Times game called “Connections,” even if it’s usually as stacked as a one armed bandit in a Western saloon. And I noticed they’ve created a sports version called “Connections: Sports Edition,” which I’ve not tried. I’ve enough sports watching my home team Dodgers falter down the stretch. But it occurred to me to try my hand at a poetry puzzle version.

How to Play: Find the solution that ties all the words in the puzzle table together. Click the footnote number in the bottom right hand corner of each table to view that table’s solution. Or feel free to post your own solution in a comment to the post.

Puzzle #1:

orange	month	wolf	marathon
galaxy	angst	twelfth	problem
silver	circle	ninth	shadow
music	chaos	depth	rhythm1

Puzzle #2:

supercalifragilisticexpialidociously	asslowaspossible	sesquipedalian	connectificationly
essayification	ifificationally	irresistibly	unnameable
antidisestablishmentarianism	incomprehensibilities	multitudinously	uncharacteristically
irresponsibility	everyapproachingly	existentiallity	hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia2

Puzzle #3:

moon	yellow	tumble	guitar
sound	yard	yearn	quill
whippoorwill	dandelion	nightcrawler	singular
lazuli	wanderlust	hollow	oils1

Solutions:

1. English words difficult to rhyme. ↩︎
2. Long words set in small font. ↩︎
3. Country western song pastiche. ↩︎

Definitions to words in Puzzle #2 above:

1. From Disney’s Mary Poppins, here changed to an adverb, a multi-compound word.
2. A musical term: “As Slow As Possible” (notable example, John Cage’s organ composition ORGAN²/ASLSP).
3. A person who uses long words, from Latin for a foot and a half long.
4. Making connections.
5. Making an essay out of it.
6. To be unable to move forward for fear of “ifs.”
7. The correct spelling of irresistably.
8. 1953 Samuel Beckett novel: The Unnameable.
9. Once considered the longest word in English. Refers to a 19th-century political movement in Britain opposing proposals to disestablish (separate) the Church of England from the state. It’s a turnaround word.
10. Can’t make sense of things.
11. The Strand on a sunny weekend.
12. Wearing the wrong uniform.
13. Taking off on a closed out wave.
14. You never quite get there.
15. An overused word that used to mean something.
16. Fear of long words.