PUZZLE TIME: To help celebrate the Bradford Area Public
Library’s Derby Gala, which will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. May 2 at
the Bradford Club, Dr. Eric Schlonblom, the son of the late Aline
“Inie” Schlonblom, a longtime Bradford resident, created a puzzle.
But not just any puzzle. He created a traditional double acrostic
puzzle with a Kentucky Derby theme.

Dr. Schonblom is no stranger to developing puzzles. He created
them for a long time for his mother who enjoyed solving them.
Similar puzzles are regularly featured in the Sunday New York Times
magazine. Dr. Schonblom, who now lives in Buckhorn, Ky., developed
this latest one, called A Derby Puzzle “One of the Losers,” to
commemorate the Gala.

If you want to try your hand at the puzzle, you can find copies
at the library, the Bradford Club, the Bradford Area Chamber of
Commerce and at our front counter. You’ll be able to get the
answers, too, in case you get stuck.

For online readers, you can download the puzzle off The Era’s
website (www.bradfordera.com). The link is posted next to our RTS
logo.

According to Dr. Schonblom, puzzle lovers answer clues A through
BB. A number is assigned to each letter of an answer. Transfer each
letter of the answer to the box on the puzzle with the
corresponding number. As the puzzle gets filled in, words will
become obvious there. When the puzzle page is completed, you will
see a quotation relating to the Kentucky Derby.

To assist you in solving the puzzle, the first letter in each of
the answers on the page of clues will spell out vertically the
author of that quotation and the title of the book in which the
quote appears. You can find the book at the Bradford library if
you’d like to read it. Of course, we can’t give you the title; that
would give the answer away.

Dr. Schonblom tells Linda Newman, the library’s director, that
in creating such a puzzle, “the hard part is finding a quotation of
the right length (about 200 to 250 letters) that includes the
letters of the author’s name and the book title. These two combined
need to be 20 to 26 letters long, and that eliminates many
books.”

Tickets can be purchased at the Bradford Club or library. This
event benefits the library’s endowment fund.