Printable Crosswords

Naughty Printable Crosswords

I guess it’s true: Anything you could possible imagine is on the Internet, somewhere! It’s estimated that more than 70% of the Internet’s traffic is either porn or spam e-mails, or a combination of the two. So there is obviously a high demand for adult-related material, and why should printable crosswords be any different?

Back in 2006, Jorge Stafford who writes over at Nerve.com, had published a series of naughty printable crosswords. Maybe you could print out one of these to pack in your husband’s lunch to get him ready for a night of passion. Or maybe your just a pervert who likes printable crosswords. Whatever your reason or desire, Mr. Stafford has some fun for you!

You can see the list of all ten naughty crosswords here. Clicking on each one will take you to a page where you can play online. You can, however, find printable versions by clicking on the little printer icon on the puzzles upper right corner. But to simplify things for you, here are direct links to the naughty printable crosswords:

So go grab a copy of these, you never know when they might come in handy! Bachelorette parties, getting your crosswords addict spouse in the mood, or maybe to do together over a dimly light dinner one night. I’m sure you can find a way to put some naughty printable crosswords to good use!

Christmas Crosswords Ornament Gift Idea

My wife just sent me this link to this great Christmas Crosswords Ornament! Think I should take that as a hint??

The ornament features a woman sitting in a chair, crosswords puzzle in her lap, pondering what her next answer is going to be. Behind the chair is a white placard with a crossword puzzle on it, off to the left side. The right side, however, can be custom tailored with you loved-one’s name, or other message that will fit in the given space.

I just ordered three of them for the three crossword addicted females in my family. Hopefully they’ll love their Christmas crosswords ornaments!

New Beekeeper Printable Crosswords Has Been Posted!

Here’s a printable crosswords to take with you over the holidays. This week, The BeeKeeper brings us “Stop. Pay Troll.”

“And what”, you might ask, “do you have for us this week?” Well, we’re glad that you asked. What we’ve got is 36 black squares, 189 white squares, and 76 clues — all artfully arranged in such a way as to maximize your solving pleasure. “But you just described an ordinary crossword puzzle, right?” Well, perhaps, but I could just as easily be describing a most excellent crossword puzzle. You get to decide for yourself which one this is. Once you figure it out, feel free to let us know. The comment section is always open.

I hadn’t had a chance to work on this one yet, but I’m sure it will be good as all the rest of them are!

» Printable Crosswords

San Diego State University Printable Crosswords

I just stumbled across the SDSU Geological Science Department’s blog and noticed they had posted a printable crosswords for November with the theme being seismology. Upon further digging, they have an entire set of printable crosswords in their puzzles section! Topics include Mineralogy, Geologic Time, Volcanology, and Paleontology.

The other great thing about their site is the fact that you can either play the crosswords online, or if you choose, you an download the printable crosswords in PDF format and play them on-the-go! The printable crosswords also sport a stylish grid with graphics, instead of just your standard black and white squares. Check it out!

See What You Can Be: A Printable Crosswords Designer!

Being a fairly new parent (my ~~Satan’s-Spawn~~ daughter is almost 5), I’m starting to do some forward thinking about raising her. I ran across a wonderful book geared towards the 9-12 year old crowd, but went ahead and picked it up to have on our bookshelf. It’s entitled See What You Can Be: Explore Careers That Could Be For You!, and is a part of the American Girl Library.

The book covers almost fifty different potential career choices, ranging in careers from fashion design to astronauts. The unique thing about this book is that it is also filled with puzzles, quizzes, and pages for them to journal their thoughts after reading certain material. By the time they are done with the book, they will hopefully have learned a little bit about themselves, and maybe have a few new dreams and goals to shoot for.

So what does this have to do with printable crosswords? It’s actually one of the career choices covered in the book! And not only is the topic covered in the book, but then goes on with an activity to have your child create a crossword puzzle all by themselves!

Making printable crosswords doesn’t have to be just for fun, you can actually make a career out of it!

Wordplay: The Movie

Last night I had some free time and sat down to watch the movie Wordplay by Patrick Creadon and Christine O’Malley. If you’re a hardcore printable crosswords enthusiast, you will enjoy this documentary on the crosswords cult that exists in our society.

Witness the inner workings of Will Shortz, NY Times Editor and NPR Puzzle Master, and his brilliant, entertaining and often hilarious contributors as well as surprising celebrity fans. Wordplay takes us through the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament where almost five hundred competitors battled it out for the title “Crossword Champ” and showed their true colors along the way.

This documentary is not about the casual crosswords puzzler who occasionally does one while waiting in the doctor’s waiting room. Oh no. This is about the hard-core, die-hard, live-to-solve puzzlers. There are individual interviews with different people from across America who share an obsession with printable crosswords. Some of the people interviewed include Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, Ken Burns, and The Indigo Girls.

You also learn a bit of history behind the NYT puzzles, how they come up with ideas, how they construct them, how puzzles are made to be more difficult, the rules of puzzle making, and the effects of certain types of puzzles on it’s solvers.

They also cover the World Crossword Puzzle Championship that takes place each March in Stamford, Connecticut. The viewer is taken through how the tournament is organized and operates, how players are ranked and scored, and finally taken to the final, where the top three finalists all compete against time and each other to solve their crosswords on large easels setup on a stage, while the crowd stares on.

Even if you only have a light interest in printable crosswords as a hobby, this documentary will be well received and will open your eyes to an entire almost underground-cult that exists around printable crosswords.

So check out the documentary Wordplay, I promise you won’t be disappointed! If you enjoy the documentary, there is also the Wordplay Official Companion Book by renowned crosswords maker Will Shortz. I haven’t had a chance to checkout the companion book yet, but from some of the reviews I’ve read, it’s a great extension to what’s covered in the movie. And a little secret, you can save a few bucks by buying them both together. Check out this page on Amazon.com, scroll down to the “Better Together” section to get your discount.

Printable Crosswords Variants

According to Wikipedia, there are several different types of printable crosswords variants that go beyond your basic odd grid shape or odd clues. Some of these variants require completely different methodologies for solving them, going above and beyond a typical crosswords puzzle. Today we’ll cover four of the major printable crosswords variants.

One of my favorites are “crossnumbers”. Crossnumbers is somewhere in between a crossword puzzle and sudoku. The clues are typically mathematical expressions or formulas, but could also be verbal clues to reference specific numbers, such as dates or population.

Next we have “fill-in crosswords”, or what some geeks call “plug-n-play crosswords”. The puzzles feature a grid that is partially filled in. Your objective is to fill in the blanks so that each word is valid and all integrate with each other with the proper spelling. Ironically, the words are typically longer because with this type of puzzle, the more characters you start working from, the easier the puzzle will be to solve.

There is also the “diagramless crosswords”, or to those across the pond, a “skeleton crosswords”. The puzzles follow your typical grid-style layout, but the majority of the clue numbers and black spaces are unspecified! Not only do you have to come up with the correct answers to the given clues, but you must also figure out how to arrange answers in to larger arrays, using properly spaced black squares. A lot of the puzzles follow the basic symmetry rule, while others employ left-to-right symmetry, and even others following specific shapes. If the symmetry is known up front, the player can use this to their advantage.

Lastly, and another one of my favorites, are the “cipher crosswords”. In a cipher crosswords, the clues for each entry are replaced by clues for each white cell of the grid. A number between 1 and 26 is printed in the corner of each white square. The numbers server as the cipher of the puzzle, meaning that cells with matching numbers will also have matching letters/answers. No two numbers will stand for the same letter throughout the entire puzzle. Typically, one or more of the number and letter cipher combinations are give to help you get started in solving the puzzle. It should be noted that these puzzles lean more towards codes than quizzes, therefore a completely different skill set is required to solve them. Using basic cryptography techniques such as guessing likely vowels are often the answer to solving these puzzles.

So rather than just trying to create your typical crosswords like everyone else, why not explore and research some of the possible variants? I like a good challenge, and some of these might take you days, or even longer, to solve.

Once you get really good a creating printable crosswords for a specific niche based upon a variant, the value of y our puzzle goes up tremendously. Helen Marie covers these topics, and more, on her web site.

Heros Printable Crosswords

LiveJournal user heroes_geek has created a Hero’s themed printable crosswords for us all to enjoy! If you are not only a crossword addict but also a Hero’s fan, here’s a good one for you!

Two Cool Gadgets for the Printable Crosswords Geek

If in addition to being a printable crosswords junkie you’re also a technology geek, then I have two extremely cool, inexpensive gadgets that you won’t be able to live without.

The first is the Franklin CWP-206 Crossword Puzzle Solver. It comes in at less than $30, and amazon has a few used up for around $25 or so. It’s pre-programmed with over 250,000 words and phrases taken directly from Merriam-Webster. In addition to crosswords, it can also easily and quickly solve Scrabble and Jumble puzzles too! It’s best feature is that it’s built with a typical clam shell design, meaning you can close the lid to protect the screen and keyboard while storing it in your pocket or purse. The instructions were printed on the inside of the top case, so every time you open it the directions are readily available.

Next is The NY Times Electronic Crossword Puzzle. This is a small and compact handheld crossword game platform, pre-programmed with The New York Times’ best crossword puzzles. Complete with a full QWERTY keyboard, it sports automatic power-off to save the batteries, which are only 2 tiny AAAs. It also allows you to save unfinished puzzles for later play! There is also a convenient check key that will highlight incorrect answers.

While these two devices wont allow you to make printable crosswords, they are two handy gadgets no crossword geek should be without!