Top 10 Search Phrases Crossword

Triond's top ten search phrases is the theme of this puzzle.  Unfortunately, illness delayed my completion of this project.  A few of the terms have moved off the list since I constructed the grid.  Even so, most of the search terms on the current list are the same as those from ten days ago.  Some Triond writers check these terms frequently; this puzzle will contain few surprises for them.  For the rest of us, I've included a screenshot of the top ten search terms as they were when I made the puzzle.  You can find the solution to the puzzle at the end of the article.

Puzzle

Clues

Across

1. You can get these from chia

5. Long Island or 51

6. Before Pirates of the Caribbean V, we saw POTC _.

8. ___ out means scrape by

9. Where the power of chia is concentrated

10. Acrostico del  ___ __ __ madre, Triond's only recent Spanish-language search term in the top 10 

12. Kid

14. Social insect

17. Extrasensory Perception

18. High direction

19. Used to attach feathers

20. Disjunctive conjunction

21. Iron ___ Stream

23. Home Box Office

24. This giant bird carried off Sinbad

27. I bring it, and you eat it.

31. Is this gooey stuff good for you?

33. Age

34. Like or __

35. Israel's country code

36. Watch out for this free download

Down

1. Hairstyle named after a teen singer

2. Something indispensable

3. Maradona said this organization "is a big museum."

4. Grab

5. Confederate general

6. Concepts

7. Very special

9. Droop

11. _____ has not yet taken Margaret Thatcher.

13. Purchase

15. Arrest

16. Someone who provokes an argument on the Internet

17. To make a mistake

22. Praise

25. Triond readers are searching for the worst job in this country.

26. Something I do with my little eye

28. A high silk hat

29. Stoner

30. Scottish politician Hardie

31. Scoffing laugh

32. Moray, for one

Notes and Observations

My goal is to crack the crossword market.  This crossword is built on a 13 x 13 grid, the minimum saleable size in the U.S.  The puzzle also has the 180-degree rotational symmetry required here.  The puzzle remains unsaleable in the U.S. for several reasons:

Unchecked squares.  In the US each blank square of a crossword puzzle must be checked; that is, the letter for each blank square must be a part of a word from the across list and one from the down list.  In the UK,  where crossword puzzles have a more lattice-like look,  unchecked squares are fine.

Two-letter words.  Saleable puzzles have none.  Indeed, in the US many editors won't buy puzzles with too many three-letter words.

Too many solid blocks.  Ideally, an American crossword should be about 16% solid blocks.

Forbidden topics.  Death, drugs, disease and (dare we say it) sex are not acceptable. 

Here's a video about making American-style crosswords.  Notice the use of software.  I use a pencil.

I'll try again soon.

 

Answer

Top 10 Search Phrases Crossword by Mark Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

On May 22, 2012, a version of this article appeared on Triond's Quazen site:

http://quazen.com/games/puzzles/top-10-search-phrases-crossword/

Review: Puzzlebook Trilogy: 303 Puzzle Quizzes by the Grabarchuk Family

The members of the Grabarchuk family, for those unfamiliar with them, make puzzles for Puzzles.com. "Trilogy 303 Puzzle Quizzes" collects into one omnibus volume their three previous Kindle books : "Puzzlebook: 100 Puzzle Quizzes (color and interactive!)," "Puzzlebook: 101 Puzzle Quizzes (color and interactive!)" and "Puzzlebook: 102 Puzzle Quizzes (color and interactive!)." The puzzles are colorful, geometric and ingenious.

Puzzles

The puzzles are indeed colorful. Most of the puzzles are graphic and geometric, so color helps the solver visualize. Moreover, color gives the puzzle creator an additional tool. The 19th century puzzler Sam Loyd once wrote: "By giving no two pieces the same shape, other ways of doing the puzzle are prevented, and the feat is more difficult of accomplishment.” Similarly, giving the pieces of a geometrical puzzle different colors and then making the solution depend on putting the right colors together offers another way for a puzzle creator to make a puzzle with a unique solution.

The Grabarchuks' collection is varied, but the puzzles fall into a number of types. Here are descriptions of a few to give readers a taste:

Counting

A number of puzzles require the solver to count the number of times a given geometrical figure or letter appears in a complex design.

Geometry

Plenty of puzzles present the solver with views of four very similar geometrical figures and ask which one isn't like the others.

Matchsticks

In these puzzles, the solver is presented with matchsticks placed in a geometrical array. The puzzle is to remove as few as matchsticks possible to change the diagram in some way.

Coins

The solver is asked how many ways there are to form a geometric figure, say a square or an equilateral triangle, by placing coins on the vertices of a geometric figure.

Double Letters

The solver is presented with a number of pairs of double letters. To solve the puzzle, the letters must be arranged--with a few overlapped--to form a word. A semantic clue is also given.

Viewing

I read plenty of Kindle books, but I don't have a Kindle. I used to read with Kindle for PC, but I switched to the Kindle Cloud Reader and have never gone back. Using Kindle Cloud Reader, I worked through these puzzles on a large laptop PC with a 17" diagonal screen. A brief note below the copyright notice in “Trilogy 303 Puzzle Quizzes” explains how this collection may best be viewed:

Optimized for 3rd font size; "sans serif" typeface; "medium" line spacing; "default" words per line; and "portrait" screen rotation.

The settings I used were nothing like the recommendations. I prefer large letters, wide margins and sepia pages. I didn't find my unusual choices interfered with my enjoyment of the puzzle collection.

Navigation

Each volume has a visual table of contents. Puzzle elements are used as icons. To go to a puzzle, click on the icon. Below each icon is a descriptive title. For example, the first puzzle in the collection has an icon of yellow arrows on a white field. The arrows point in different directions. The name of the puzzle is "Nine Arrows." Thus, the solver has a visual and verbal hint about what the puzzle is like.

It is not necessary to go to the page of icons to move from puzzle to puzzle. You can also move through the book by clicking on answers. The puzzles are multiple choice with two to four answers for each puzzle. To select an answer, the solver clicks a button. If the answer the solver selects is incorrect, the button leads him to a page with the emoticon ;( and the message "Your answer is incorrect. Please try again." Below the statement is a button marked Return to puzzle. If the answer is correct, the button takes the solver to a page where the solution is shown. This page has two buttons: Back to Puzzle and Next Puzzle. To skip a puzzle, simply click on the right arrow to go to the next one.

The puzzles in each volume are numbered and rated as to difficulty with one to five stars. Easier puzzles come first. At the end of volumes one and two is a five star puzzle. Solving that puzzle correctly takes you to an answer page with Back to Puzzle and Next Puzzle buttons. Clicking Next Puzzle takes you to the first puzzle of the next volume. The end of volume three doesn't work the same way. The answer page for the last five star puzzle in the collection has no Next Puzzle button, and absentminded solvers who click the right arrow on the screen to move along will go to the section of "Wrong Answer" pages. This was the only problem with navigation I found.

Recommendation

I recommend buying this volume if you enjoy working geometric and logic puzzles. I worked through this puzzle collection in less than a month. There are more than 300 in the collection, so I have to admit to an addiction to these puzzles. I'm looking forward to purchasing the fourth volume in the series, which the Grabarchuk family recently released.

You can find more information about Trilogy 303 Puzzle Quizzes on the Grabarchuk family website: http://www.grabarchukpuzzles.com/puzzlebook/303puzzlequizzes/index.htm.

Please note that some Kindle devices do not have color screens. The owners of such devices may not be satisfied with this Kindle book.

A slightly different version of this column appears on Triond's Quazen website: http://quazen.com/games/puzzles/review-trilogy-303-puzzle-quizzes-by-the-grabarchuk-family/

Pirates of The Caribbean 5, the Crossword

Newspapers, magazines and puzzle websites pay the authors of professional-quality crossword puzzles $50 to $1000 for each puzzle.  Compensation at this level dwarfs the income most bloggers or self-published novelists receive for their efforts.  Always on the lookout for new opportunities, I put together a crossword based on what little we know about “Pirates of the Caribbean 5.” 

Triond readers and obsessed, pitiable souls who search day after day for new information about “Pirates of the Caribbean 5,” welcome. I invite you to solve my puzzle.  After the puzzle, I discuss how close (not very) I came to creating a crossword that a puzzle editor might buy.  The answer to the puzzle appears at the end of the article.  

Pirate Music

First, some pirate music from Elizabeth Velez Urie put you in the mood:

Puzzle

Across

1. This actress may return for "Pirates of the Caribbean 5."

3. Sparrow's actor's last

6. Eighth of a piece of eight

7. Pirate talk or Accident Risk Assessment Report

8. Utah or University of Tennessee

10. Will it be an epic film or an epic ____?

12. Four ______ theme parks have Pirates of the Caribbean rides.

13. ____ was I ere I saw Elba.

15.  The two-eared Van Gogh brother

17.  Negative response

19.  Hear "Hi-yo ______" in the next Depp film. 

 

Down

1.  Body of water between Miami and Maracaibo

2. Tow-toed sloth kept as pet by pirates

4. "Pirates of the Caribbean 5" is expected to ____ billions.

5. First two words of movie series title.

8. Unmanned Aircraft System

9. In the video Elizabeth Velez Urie plays a hornpipe on a ___ whistle.

10. POTC 1,2,3,4 and soon _.

11. Not right

14. Latter Day Saints

15. Movie starring Charlton Heston, "Ben-___."

17. Netherlands, National League etc.

18. Output Voltage

Problems

Unau PD-US Image by Davepape via Wikipedia.

A good crossword puzzle must satisfy aesthetic standards of symmetry and language.   After I made the puzzle, I reviewed the writer's guidelines for five possible markets for crossword puzzles.  The puzzle above has numerous problems:

• It’s the wrong shape.  A puzzle fit for publication must have 180 degree rotational symmetry; that is, the puzzle must be the same shape when you turn it upside down.  My puzzle has bilateral (mirror) symmetry.
• The sides have an even number of squares.  Saleable crosswords have an odd number of squares on each side.
• A good puzzle can have very few three-letter words and no two-letter words.  I have two three-letter words and four two-letter words.
• I used a partial phrase, “_______ __ the Caribbean.”
• I have one word of crosswordese.  Most experienced crossword solvers know unau is a vernacular name for a two-toed sloth and Ea was a god of the Babylonians, but they don’t want to see these words very often. (I used unau for fun.  Besides, I read somewhere that pirates kept them as pets.  I swear it.  Really.)

I could go on and on.

I do plan to make some more crossword puzzles, but I’ll try for a saleable puzzle next time.  This one was just for fun.  

In case you were wondering, the author of a Sunday crossword in the New York Times receives $1000 on publication.

Answer

This article originally appeared on Triond's Quazen website:  http://quazen.com/games/puzzles/pirates-of-the-caribbean-5-the-crossword/

A Tik-Tok of Oz Puzzle

 PD-US via Wikipedia

I have an unrealized ambition to create a series of puzzles based on the Oz books of L. Frank Baum.  These fifteen books, containing hundreds of characters, color plates and line drawings, provide ample material for puzzles of many kinds.   I offer the first of the series below.

In case you’re unfamiliar with him, Tik-Tok is a mechanical man Dorothy Gale meets and winds up when she’s trapped by the wheelers in “Ozma of Oz,” the third volume of the series.  A popular character, he figures in many of the later books, and Baum later wrote a book around him, “Tik-Tok of Oz.”

The puzzle has three parts: a passage with a few words omitted and replaced with blanks, a set of scrambled words, and a word search puzzle in which the scrambled words appear unscrambled.  Once you’ve puzzled out the words, use them to fill in the blanks in the passage.  The passage is the speech from “Ozma of Oz” in which Tik-Tok explains his origin.  I edited the speech very slightly to improve continuity.

If you get stuck unscrambling the words, try picking them out of the word search, where they appear unscrambled, or guessing them from the blanks in the passage.  On the other hand, if you’re good at unscrambling words, you’ll have a word search puzzle to enjoy once you’ve figured out the passage.

In the Oz books, Tik-Tok speaks with a mechanical voice, which Baum represents by stringing the words together with hyphens.  Robotic speech is all about us today, so I give the answer to this puzzle in an unusual form, an Xtranormal video I made in which Tik-Tok tells his story.

Tik-Tok of Oz (PD-US)

The Passage

Wordsearch

The answer spoken by Tik-Tok himself:

Puzzles are for Fun

You won’t get rich making puzzles.  Once upon a time you could make money constructing puzzles for magazines, but now most of the puzzle magazines you see on newsstands print only computer-generated puzzles.  (If you have a mental picture of sweating bots shoveling digits into the flaming furnace of a Sudokumatic 2012, you’re not far from wrong.)  A good crossword puzzle, on the other hand, still requires considerable human ingenuity and can fetch $200 or more.

This puzzle was computer generated.  After picking out the words in the passage I wanted to hide in the word search portion of the puzzle, I created the word search and scrambled the words using armoredpenguin.com.  Next I sat down to solve it myself to guard against mistakes and to check on the difficulty of the puzzle.  My memory isn’t particularly strong.  I was taken aback by the scrambled word “clpdietcoma” and had to consult the word search.

I hope you enjoy my puzzle.

Answers

An earlier version of this article appeared on Triond's Quazen website: http://quazen.com/games/puzzles/review-trilogy-303-puzzle-quizzes-by-the-grabarchuk-family/

A Puzzle Through the Looking-Glass

The word puzzles on this blog have a word search portion and a fill-in-the-blank portion.  The puzzle is solved when all the words in the word search portion have been found and placed in the proper blanks in a passage from a famous book.

I've put together an easier--but slightly twisted--puzzle for this post.  I'm telling solvers the book title for the fill-in portion of the puzzle, and the clue list is (almost) straightforward.   The book is "Through the Looking-Glass" by Lewis Carroll.   The twist?  The word search puzzle and the clue list are both presented as mirror images.  You can find the answers at the end of the post.  I always present the answers upside down.  This time I present the answer to the word search both as an upside-down mirror image and as an ordinary upside-down image. 

A mirror-image word search puzzle is a treat for the author, too.  I used the website armoredpenguin.com to create the word search puzzles from the list of clues, and I flipped the result using MS Paint.  Thus, I was only slightly more familiar with the word search puzzle (as presented) than any other solver.  I spent 40 minutes solving the word search.  My brain doesn't process mirror images well.   

(You can find a printer-friendly .pdf file of this puzzle on scribd.com at http://www.scribd.com/doc/87642560 )

Word Search Puzzle

Clue List

Passage

Answers

Mirror Image

Ordinary

Passage Answer

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

My article "Chaos in Mali" is on ExpertsColumn. Below you can find a link to my favorite CD of Malian music and a link to the article.




"Chaos in Mali": http://expertscolumn.com/content/chaos-mali

Review: "The Fifth Harmonic" by F Paul Wilson

Famous for his Repairman Jack and The Adversary series of horror/adventure novels, Wilson morphs his keyboard into a Ouija to write this New Age quest romance.

                             

The Set-Up

Physician Wilbur Cecil Burleigh learns he has an aggressive cancerous tumor in his throat.  By chance he meets a former patient whom he did not expect to survive her cancer.   She claims a  New Age healer named Maya cured her.  Although extremely prejudiced against alternative medicine, Burleigh visits the mysterious healer Maya and seeks a cure through her on her terms.  She requires him to give away his money and travel with her to Central America to seek healing “tines” hidden by an unknown ancient civilization.  The tines are necessary for a cure.  He goes, but not without a “Kevorkian kit” to end his life if Maya’s cure doesn’t work.

My Take

Granted, the plot is an old one: guided by a magical or divine being, a hero goes on a quest to learn about the spiritual nature of death and mortality.  You’ve seen this story before in Book VI of Virgil’s “Aeneid” or in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” or, more trivially, in Captain Jack Sparrow’s quest for the Fountain of Youth in “Pirates of the Caribbean 4.”   I admire Wilson’s sense of invention for mashing up this old plot with “physician heal thyself” and a romance between middle-aged adults.  Wilson also gets plus marks from me for writing a New Age story without extraterrestrials, monsters, or ghosts.

Amazon reviewers rate this book across the full range of possible ratings.  Half the eighteen reviewers gave the book five stars, but the other half assigned ratings of one, two, three, or four stars.  This book with a monstrous but real antagonist--cancer--didn’t appeal to some fans of Wilson’s horror/adventure novels.

I suggest that Wilson’s fans who are disappointed with this book don’t recognize its genre.  Looking over the negative reviews on Amazon, I see readers of horror/adventure novels who are hungry for more.  They buy this book expecting it to be like his other novels, but it’s not.  This novel is a romance with man and woman who can’t stand each other at first ending up as a happy couple.  Thus, it’s a romance/adventure and more like a Louis L’Amour novel than a Michael Crichton book.  I have to confess that the romance element of the novel sneaked up on me.

Observations

• The romance, especially the sexual element of the romance, runs counter to popular notions of the attractiveness of terminal cancer patients (or of middle-aged people).
• Having a healer named Maya take the hero to the country of the Maya people of Central America causes some confusion with names.   
• F. Paul Wilson still practiced medicine when he wrote this book.  Even though this work is fiction, Wilson’s obvious interest in mind-over-matter medicine astonished me.
• Wilson did some small amount of research into Maya civilization for this book.  His references to the Maya people are respectful.  Some of Wilson’s Maya characters are suspicious of the healer, showing that you don’t have to be a scientist to distrust her.
• In my favorite scene in the novel,  Burleigh  shelters himself from rain and flooding alone in an ancient temple.  Many animals from the jungle--even some very large ones--also shelter themselves there.
• The novel does not attribute the mystical tines to the ancient Maya civilization, but to a mysterious pre-Maya people of Central America.
• No discussion of the end of the world in 2012 occurs in this book.   

Recommendation

Readers who don’t mind some adventure thrown into tales of spiritual quests or romances will enjoy this book.  If every book you like has an alien or a serial killer, stay away.

This review originally appeared on Triond's Bookstove site here.