My 12:57 Acrostic Riddle

Question

My altered name is lurking slyly here
As my self-referential words make clear.
You've guessed my easy riddle now, I fear.

Answer?

A hint:

The title could have been: "My 25% Odds Acrostic Riddle"

Another hint:

https://www.google.ch/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=acrostic In this case, I used another marker

Hinting again, and summarizing clues from comments

One piece of punctuation was a misdirection
All parts of the puzzle (everything above "A hint:") are significant
This is not a usual acrostic. The title is a key or map to the solution

For instance

The "My" in the title is a clue that the word "my" is the acrostic marker
3 2 1 is not an ordering and the digits may mean different things

There is always a trick

The word "self-referential" applies in more than one way here
There is a certain tricky sense in which this puzzle is indeed easy

Want something specific?

There are six letters in the solution.

Answer 1

Answer?

yes, it is.

Because:

The title indeed gives away the key, "My". It also tells how to use it with 12:57 which can also be stated as 3 to 1, homophone for 321. For the 3 "my"s you take the next 2 words and use their 1st letter. My altered name, my self-referential words, my easy riddle. It is, in fact, easy because you give it away with the last line.

Answer 2

The time 12:57 is

Three minutes to 1

And 25% odds are

Three to one

And the pattern of lines is

3, then 1

So the "name" is

321

Since we have 3 lines, and the word acrostic in the title, we can use the first letter of each line, in this order:

Y A M

But then it says "altered" meaning we can use whatever order we like after all.

Of the permutations AYM, AMY, MAY, MYA, YAM, and YMA, May is possibly a name,

but I think

Amy

Is more clearly and obviously a name.

Answer 3

Me

Explanation:

1. it's a different ('altered') version of one's name.
2. It's self-referential.
3. It's the 12th and 57th letter of the question respectively (see the title - 12:57).
4. It's answered by the time you read the third line which says 'You've guessed my easy riddle now' i.e. before the third line, the answer is apparent.

Answer 4

Your name could be

My altered name is lurking slyly here As my self-referential words make clear. You've guessed my easy riddle now, I fear.

But it probably isn't

It's probably

MAY, based on the work some others have done (12:57 $\rightarrow$ "three to one" $\rightarrow$ 3 2 1 $\rightarrow$ Y A M + "altered" $\rightarrow$ MAY), as well as the "acrostic" part of the hint.

And yet! It could also be

ESA (this sounds like a stretch, but the last couple of attempts from myself and Kate Gregory were rejected) based on "acrostic" and OP's hint that his marker had changed. Self-referential words could refer to the recurring "my", and the first letter after each "my" are A, S, and E, in that order. Giving them the 3-2-1 treatment mentioned by Kate Gregory, we get Esa, which the internet assures me is a name.

_{If we're also taking "altered" into account, the name could be "SEA". Yes, I literally know a person named Sea.}

Answer 5

I suspect your name is

My altered name is lurking slyly here
As my self-referential words make clear.
You've guessed my easy riddle now, I fear.
Answer?

How this fits (in my opinion):

Maya is a common female name. The clues 'self-referential' and 'lurking slyly' make me think I'm onto something by picking up the initials of each line. Also, Maya sounds like the last name Meyers of the OP, which is where 'altered name' fits well.

Answer 6

Very similar to @KateGregory 's answer, my guess would be

YAM

because

3 to one ~ three two one ~ line three, line two, line one

thats not a good answer, I fear

but something something here

rhyming is difficult, my dear

second guess

man (3 2 1 of name, as in altered name)

Answer 7

I agree with manshu's answer (unfortunately, now deleted) but have a different reasoning.

The answer is

Hugh Meyers.

Here's why:

The 'acrostic' refers to the first word of each line: My As You (technically "You've" for the last). Motivated by Kate Gregory's 3-2-1, the 12:57 is 3-to-1, which leaves 2 last. Taking this as the word order, we get You My As, which is a 'slyly lurking' and 'altered' version that sounds like "Hugh Meyers", the OP's name. It's a self-referential riddle, referencing the OP's self; and 'easy' because the actual name is in full view.

The hints:

The '25% Odds' is 1:3, as Kate Gregory points out in comments below her answer. If we read this a "one to three", it could be considered a hint to swap the first and third words, reducing to the above line of reasoning. I'm not sure what to make of the second hint, except that it highlights the acrostic as a large part of the puzzle.

Answer 8

the word is "easy"!!

My altered name is lurking slyly here

As my self-referential words make clear.

You've guessed my easy riddle now, I fear.

Answer 9

Another answer (based off the authors comment to @got it):

Ire. (It's a name)
The first letter of the 3rd word after the 1st 'my' is 'I'. The first letter of the 2nd word after the 2nd 'my' is 'r'. And the first letter of the 1st word after the 3rd 'my' is 'e'.
The 321 refers to the 'my' which is '123', as an anchor for the 3rd 2nd 1st words after them.
Long shot....

Answer 10

Building up on the rest of solutions. The hints relative to the text itself I think have been covered already. Yet nobody seems to pay much attention to

the "acrostic" part of the title, meaning that the first letter of each line gives the answer.

Therefore it should be

MAY