Sunday, February 25, 2007

Our Weekly Sunday Puzzle Page

First, we would like to extend a thank-you to those of you who contacted your representatives about conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital. There is nothing like a good dose of public outrage to awaken politicians to their responsibilites to the people who elected them to office. It feels very good to be able to report that the military administrators are taking this seriously. There are still numerous dark corners in this country that are capable of being illuminated and cleansed by the sunshine of journalistic scrutiny, and we can only hope that the light will shine in.

We are (we hope humbly) proud to announce that we have created a new type of puzzle, one that combines our love of puzzles and our propensity to play with the Paint program. While it is a variation on other types of puzzles, still we believe it to be unique, and we have created a mechanism to allow for three levels of challenge to accommodate those who may not have scads of time to devote to solving. We would warmly appreciate any feedback that you might care to give us.

We are, at present, calling this a word cube. As you can see, it has some letters already filled in, and all that is required of you, the solver, is to fill in the empty spaces using letters from the list(s).

We have designed letter lists to offer three levels of challenge - the first list, offering the toughest challenge, is simply a comprehensive list of all the letters to be filled in.

The second list offers a bit of help by breaking the list into two parts, one for the horizontal letters and the other for the vertical letters. Admittedly, this particular method may be the most confusing, but for those who can solve in more than one dimension, it may be helpful.

The third list is broken into three parts; each numbered list represents the letters assigned to one of the visible faces of the cube (i.e., #1 might represent the front face, and all the letters in that part will be used to fill in that face.)

As an additional aid, for those who might want it, here is a breakdown of the characteristics of the words -

1 word has 3 of one letter repeated, 2 of another repeated, e.g. cocoons (none of the examples listed appear in the actual puzzle.)

1 word has 3 of one letter repeated, e.g. groggy (after the fact, we discovered that there is an alternate word that has exactly the same letters, but slightly rearranged; either word is acceptable. Someday we'll be professionals, but we're not there yet.)

5 words have 2 of one letter repeated, and 2 of another repeated, e.g., tactics.

The remaining 11 words all have one letter that is repeated, e.g. furry.

We hope that, if you decide to solve the word cube, you derive some enjoyment from it; that is, at end, the reason we're here.

Happy Sunday, happy solving, and

Peace.

Bonnie and Walt

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Sunday to you!

I will attempt this in the most difficult fashion first.   I may end up banging my head on the wall, but hey, at least I have opportunity to switch to 'easy' if needed.

Argh.  You guys!  Very clever of you.

Anonymous said...

my goodness, you are some smart people
Marti

Anonymous said...

Oh my, your talents are showing! I don't think I could solve this one in a month of Sundays. LOL Hope you had a better weekend than we in TX.  I won't get graphic, but the 3 yr old has been running to the restroom. Ugghh!!! LOL I guess that's the way it will go...round and round till we're all sick. You all take care and bug free.
Hugs, Barb  

Anonymous said...

love the pugzle!!  esp that you give several options for solving it and don't jump immediately to the easiest.  i was surprised at how difficult it could be, i didn't think something that looks so simple would be so challenging.  good on you, dudes!  grins, debra

Anonymous said...

That is a gorgeous cube you have there.