Word Square
I’ve been working on all sorts of puzzles the past few days – from codewords to skyscraper sudoku to all sorts of word puzzles, including the attached: a word square. None of the ones I’ve made for the current book I’m working on are quite as large as this, however!
The aim is simple – by starting on any letter and moving from square to adjacent square in any direction, including diagonals, how many words can you form? For each word you cannot visit a square more than once on your path. For example, starting at the left you could make ‘TEND’ by running up the left column and then across, but you could not go on to also make ‘TENDED’ because that would be reusing at least the ‘D’.
There is an 18-letter word in there for you to find. If you find 100 words you’ve done well; if you find 140 you’ve done extremely well; and if you get to 175 then frankly I’m amazed! Any reasonable English word is valid, so long as it can be written without a capital letter.
Good luck!
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about 15 years ago
I don’t normally bother with word puzzles but decided to have a go at this. I’m only up to 85 words so far, so am a long way off target, but my first word was the 18 letter one which was a good start!
about 15 years ago
Here’s the words I found, excluding potentially offensive ones:
ace, aced, acre, acres, act, acted, actress, ail, ant, anti, antis, ants, arc, arced, arcs, ardent, are, arena, arenas, ares, arsenal, art, ascend, ass, assail, assent, assents, assert, asserted, can, canal, cane, caned, canes, canned, cans, cant, cants, car, card, cards, care, cared, cares, caress, caret, cars, cart, carted, case, cased, cast, casts, cede, cedes, crane, craned, cranes, crass, credential, cress, decant, decants, den, dens, dent, dental, dentist, dentists, dents, descant, descants, dress, enact, enacted, end, ends, ensnare, ensnared, entail, era, eras, erase, erased, ere, erect, its, lane, lanes, lass, last, lasts, lats, list, lists, lit, nacre, nail, nasal, net, race, raced, ran, rant, rants, recant, recants, recast, recasts, red, reds, renal, rend, rends, rent, rental, rents, sac, sacred, sacs, sail, salt, sane, saner, sans, sat, scan, scanned, scanner, scans, scant, scants, scar, scare, scared, senna, sent, sere, sered, silt, sit, sits, snail, snare, snared, snares, tail, tan, tanned, tanner, tanners, tans, tat, tats, ten, tend, tender, tenders, tends, tern, terse, tilt, tit, titan, titans, trace, traced, transcend, transcendent, transcendentalist, transcendentalists, trend, trends, tress, tsar, tsars