PUZZLES BY TRIP PAYNE

CUSTOMIZED PUZZLE EXAMPLES

Let's say that you want a puzzle made that features the last names of employees in your organization. For the sake of this example, I'm using the current list of the 30 most common surnames in America.

There are two options: a standard crossword or a crisscross. First, let's look at the crossword. It's the same size (15x15 squares) as most daily newspaper crosswords. In this example, I managed to fit in 15 of the 30 names (shaded in the answer diagram); as you can see, the puzzle includes many entries aside from those names. It is impossible to create a standard crossword that contains only the words relevant to the theme.

CROSSWORD

The crisscross is a more freeform grid -- in this case, it's 23x14 squares -- but it contains the full list of 30 names and no other words.

CRISSCROSS

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