Alright, let’s dive into this whole “a whole lot crossword” thing. It was a real head-scratcher at first, but I kinda figured it out, so here’s the lowdown.
First off, what’s the deal? Basically, I stumbled upon this crossword puzzle generator deal. Looked kinda fun, so I thought, “Why not give it a shot?” Never made a crossword before, always just solved ’em.
Getting Started – The Word List: The whole thing started with a list of words, right? I needed some words to put into the crossword. So, I started brainstorming some random words. Nothing fancy, just words that popped into my head. At first I just started typing random words, then I realized I needed some kind of theme or something. Finally went with some of my favorite movies.
Plugging it in: So, I copied my list of words and pasted it into the crossword generator. Hit the “Generate” button and bam! A crossword grid popped up. Kinda cool, I guess. But also… kinda messy. Some words were overlapping weirdly, and there were these big empty spaces everywhere.
The Tweaking Begins: Here’s where things got a little tedious. I started moving words around, trying to make the grid look less like a jumbled mess. Some words I had to take out completely ’cause they just wouldn’t fit right. Then I had to find some new words. It was like a puzzle within a puzzle, you know?
Clue Time: Okay, now I had a grid that looked somewhat decent. Next step: writing the clues. This was harder than I thought. Coming up with clever, but not too obscure, clues is tough! I wanted something that would be fun to solve, not frustrating. Ended up spending way more time on the clues than on the grid itself.
Testing, Testing: After writing the clues, I had my wife take a crack at solving the crossword. Turns out some of my clues were total garbage. She was like, “What is this even supposed to mean?” So, I rewrote those. Then she found a word that was spelled wrong (oops!). Fixed that too.
Final touches: After what felt like a lifetime, I had a finished crossword. I tweaked the layout and font, and then got to share it! Felt pretty good, seeing something I made from scratch. It’s not perfect, but it was a fun project.
- Learned a bit about crossword construction.
- Discovered I’m not as good at writing clues as I thought.
- Realized making a good crossword takes way more time than solving one.
Overall, it was a fun little side project. Might try it again sometime, but next time I’ll definitely plan out my word list a bit better.
