In the crossword puzzle below, each answer is not entered as it is actually spelled, but rather, the letters are placed in alphabetical order. For example, if a correct answer were ANSWER, you'd enter AENRSW, either across or down.

1	2	3	4	5	6
7
8
9
10
11

Across	Down
1. Building Front	1. Light that rhymes with 2 Down
7. Pamper	2. Messiah composer
8. Inn resident	3. Writing computer programs
9. Drug known as "smack"	4. Soup strand
10.Open, as a sleeping bag	5. Robber in a riot
11.Chinese soup dumpling	6. Wrinkle, as your brow

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From 365 Brain Puzzlers: the Mensa Calendar, for 2014, by Mark Danna and Fraser Simpson, Workman Publishing, New York; Puzzle for January 6.

This puzzle is interesting, but quite easy.  Over half of the clues were obvious.  It sort of has to be this way.  If you don't get a word, the intersecting letters will not be in the correct positions.

It looks like finding words to construct a 6x6 square this way would be very hard to do.  The first words need to be composed of letters at the beginning of the alphabet and the last near the end.

But then again, if you have 6 letters in alphabetical order they just need one permutation to be a word.  So maybe it wouldn't be so hard.

Would it be easier or harder to construct a 6x6 alphabetical ordered word square than a regular 6x6 word square?

Posted by Jer on 2014-01-09 13:42:05