I was trying to solve this Quote Acrostic puzzle. (For anyone unfamiliar with this kind of puzzle, you have to define words based on the given clues and then transfer the defined words’ individual letters to a grid, according to the number under each letter. The words in the grid will spell out a quotation. Once you have enough letters in the word list and in the grid, you can work back and forth between the two to figure out other words in each.)
Anyways, what really annoyed me were the clues for these two words in the word list :
“Curved symbols to indicate a qualifying remark”. I thought “parentheses” but the “correct” answer was “parenthesis”
The clue for another word was “Observable event”. I didn’t figure that one out right away. It turns out the “correct” answer is “phenomena”.
There seemed to me to be disagreements of plural and singular nouns in both clues and what were supposed to be their correct answers. Am I wrong?
It was published in the STARS Magazine section of the Syracuse, N.Y. Post-Standard on August 26. The fine print under the puzzle’s grid says (copyright)* 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
*I don’t know how to do that c-within-a-circle symbol.
The “parenthesis” one is perhaps just about acceptable (but I agree with you really) as you could try to argue that the “(but I agree with you really)” in this sentence is a parenthesis (though it is more properly referred to as a parenthetical [remark], I think). But no such excuse for the second one. I would also have been annoyed by both.