# My 12:57 Acrostic Riddle

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

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.

• This is my first composition and I wasn't sure how hard to make it. Some of the answers to other puzzles seemed supernaturally brilliant. I believe adding the word "acrostic" makes it fairer. Good luck to all! – Hugh Meyers Feb 11 '16 at 15:19
• Wait. It's an acrostic? Now it's a dead giveaway: the answer is BENGHAZI – question_asker Feb 11 '16 at 16:00
• @question_asker you've been watching too many debates. – corsiKa Feb 11 '16 at 21:10
• The title gives a key to the way the acrostic works. One piece of punctuation is a misdirection. The word "self-reference" works on several levels. When you find the solution, you will understand why it can be considered an easy riddle. – Hugh Meyers Feb 12 '16 at 12:59
• You're killing me, Hugh. – question_asker Feb 12 '16 at 13:05

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.

• aha. so "referential" doesn't count as a word – question_asker Feb 12 '16 at 15:52
• Well done! Hopefully I can strike a better balance between challenging and impossible if I do another puzzle. I do hope you enjoyed the chase. – Hugh Meyers Feb 12 '16 at 15:54
• @question_asker "self-referential" is a hyphenated word. I was afraid people were miscounting so I referred to it as "the word" in a comment and in a hint. Sorry about that. – Hugh Meyers Feb 12 '16 at 15:58
• @HughMeyers No need to apologize for that! If I had correctly interpreted the appropriate hint in the first place, I would have thought to "ignore" it as a word – question_asker Feb 12 '16 at 16:00
• How does 12:57 become 3 to 1? – Nic Hartley Feb 12 '16 at 20:51

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.

• How is 321 a name? – CodeNewbie Feb 11 '16 at 12:44
• Spoilers, dude! Anyway that's why I used quotes – Kate Gregory Feb 11 '16 at 12:45
• In India, Yam is the name of the god of death... – manshu Feb 11 '16 at 16:05
• @ermanen the end of the second-last spoiler block mentions the other, but I feel the one I chose is more clearly a name, even though that other was a first name in the past... then again you could claim that two names out of 8 permutations is indeed 25% odds as mentioned in a hint. :-) – Kate Gregory Feb 11 '16 at 16:07
• seems like you have the right answer, although it is a bit strange that the title tells you to pick the letters in the correct order only to tell you to order them however you want in the first line. Kind of makes the whole 12:57 part pointless. – DasBeasto Feb 11 '16 at 20:07

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.

• Well, this has to be it. Nice work! – question_asker Feb 11 '16 at 12:04
• @question_asker thanks! let's see what the author had in mind... – Ben Feb 11 '16 at 12:06
• Well worth an upvote! As a coincidence, it's in the Psalm 46 league. – Hugh Meyers Feb 11 '16 at 12:13
• @HughMeyers this comment of yours makes me wonder if the answer is 'luke'... :o – manshu Feb 11 '16 at 18:42
• @manshu lmao Luke 12:57 (NIV) is "Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?" – question_asker Feb 11 '16 at 19:16

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.

• Wow. I didn't see that. An upvote for seeing a solution the author didn't, – Hugh Meyers Feb 11 '16 at 11:51
• If the answer is "may", it's a very lame puzzle. Especially if the reason it's "may" is that the rhyme leads you to take the first letters of the puzzle in a non-standard order, and then "scramble" them into some other order, when doing so is equivalent to just saying "Take the first letters of the lines, in the natural reading order." That's almost like saying, "Can you figure out my name? It's an anagram of 'David Richerby'." – David Richerby Feb 11 '16 at 20:14
• @question_asker Since we don't yet know what the "official" answer is, I don't see anywhere to post "If that's the answer, the question is bad", except below the answer. – David Richerby Feb 11 '16 at 21:46
• @DavidRicherby Maybe you should have waited then. – question_asker Feb 11 '16 at 22:12

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

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.

• I think this is almost right. I don't think the final letter is necessary. – chepner Feb 11 '16 at 14:55
• HOw does it comply to the hint that it's supposed to be six characters? – Konrad Viltersten Feb 14 '16 at 10:48
• @KonradViltersten: The 6 letters hint came MUCH later than my answer. Most of the incorrect answers came before the last hint. – CodeNewbie Feb 16 '16 at 5:06

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)

• Warmer still... – Hugh Meyers Feb 11 '16 at 13:44

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

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.

• I'm still not totally convinced on the 12:57 thing (and I suspect I won't be until OP confirms it) but this is the most convincing answer yet. – question_asker Feb 12 '16 at 14:14

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.

• Some of the thinking here is very close to the mark. – Hugh Meyers Feb 11 '16 at 17:28

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....

• Ire is a name? Can you give an example of somebody called that? ("Ira", sure, but I've never heard of anyone called "Ire". Wikipedia doesn't have a page about anyone called Ire; see list of all pages with titles beginning "Ire" and use your web browser's text search to look for "Ire" with a space after it.) – David Richerby Feb 11 '16 at 20:17
• @DavidRicherby here and here. I had no idea that such a name exists... said it was a long shot... :-) – Ben Feb 11 '16 at 22:41

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