My latest obsession is crossword puzzles. I've spend the last two years Doing All the Puzzles and now I've gotten the harebrained idea of making them myself. I want to make enough to self-publish a little puzzle magazine, maybe 30-50. After a shaky start, I think I'm sort of catching on and am ready to have one beta tested. I'm attempting to follow the normal crossword conventions with two exceptions. I like to do diagonals. This puzzle has one. I also like using color in all sorts of ways: decoration, illustration of my theme, hints, adjunct puzzles worked into the main one, and whatever else I can come up with. I won't say what the colors in this one do or do not do. :) I'm open to all feedback. Spelling, definition or numbering errors. You can't do that comments. How easy or hard it seems. (This one I made especially for a friend, Mary, who asked for an easy one.) Whatever. All feedback welcome. The third attachment is the solutions, so you might want to hold off clicking that. NOTE: 59 down should be "Solar system's 2nd largest planet." Lord help me, it's not the 2nd largest either. But it's big. I promise. And in the solar system. Really.
Are you okay with people off-forum testing them? My dad loves crossword puzzles, I could print this out for him and ask what he thinks
Yes. That would be great. They're in Paint and Word, so I think off-forum testing is about the only way to do them, actually.
I meant, are you okay with the puzzles being passed on to people who are not on the forums. But great, I'll have him try it when he gets home!
Oh, I see. Yes. That's fine. I've passed out copies to nearly everyone I know IRL and no one has given any feedback. They're probably afraid of hurting my feelings or have no desire whatsoever to work the puzzles. LOL I'm hoping my online correspondents will be their usual frank selves.
OK. Here's the finished version of my "On a Picnic" crossword. I've made changes on the Grid, so I've replaced the old file I posted here earlier. The third file is the answers. This one isn't particularly meant to be easy. But maybe it is. I don't know. :) I hope it's error free but I am the Error Queen.
I am attempting the first one, but a lot of the trivia is going over my head X) eta: (also, as someone who lives east of winnipeg, I was really suprised to see a question about a small town east of winnipeg :P)
Ok, overall impressions: Spoiler I figured out the color mechanic really early on, and it made the beginning of the puzzle a little tedious since whenever I got a the first square of a color I had to go and fill in all the other squares of the color. It also made a lot of the other answers easier, since there were scattered letters already filled in. The largest planet in the solar system is still Jupiter!! I had no idea "ort" meant leftover tidbit, I had to look that up afterwards to check. Ones I couldn't get and had to google, cuz they were at the intersection of two things I didn't know: abris/Aliya/lys animi/Enid - I guessed it and was right, but unsure. shroo/Anola The rest was pretty easy, so I guess you achieved your goal! :D Oh, also I did think the diagonal was cool - I'm not used to them, and I kept looking at it and only seeing the first four letters or so and not realizing it was the WHOLE diagonal. Which had the side effect that when I finally successfully read it I had filled it almost completely in from other clues, which was a cool moment.
Another small thing - "a friend in French" or however you worded it... The answer is "aime", which I think is supposed to be "aimé" - but that's more "loved" or "beloved" than "friend", which would be "amie".
Spoiler so each coloured space is meant to hold the same letter as all the othe spaces f the same colour, right? and 69 across is meant to be 'repeated'? right now w the colour coding it spells repTated, heads up!
oh!!!! yeah that works that's what i get for not finishing the whole thing before saying something :p thanks!
