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From: das@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.games
Subject: Re: Crossword puzzles
Message-ID: <3593@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 6-Feb-85 01:33:54 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.3593
Posted: Wed Feb  6 01:33:54 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Feb-85 04:31:18 EST
References: <7727@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: das@ucla-cs.UUCP (David Smallberg)
Distribution: net
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 32
Xref: watmath net.nlang:2532 net.games:1560
Summary: 

Will Martin writes:

> I recall a Thai fellow-student in an Army class at Ft. Lee being completely
> bewildered by a puzzle I was solving (it happened to be a Kingsley double-
> crostic, but in many ways similar to ordinary crosswords); he found it to
> be something completely alien to his experience.

If there's a language written with an alphabet that would be hard to construct
crossword puzzles in, it's probably Thai.  Out of curiosity, I naively tried
to learn the alphabet to be able to sound out the names on Thai menus -- the
book (!) explaining it was about 60 pages long.  [Thai is written with an
alphabet, not a syllabary.]  The forms and positions of the vowels change
depending on their tone and the tones of other syllables.  Some vowels are
written like Pakistan at the Partition -- part before and part after the 
consonant which precedes it when spoken.  Sometimes different vowels in
different circumstances have the same written form.  [I may have some details
wrong, but you get the idea.]  I gave up.

From an information theoretic viewpoint, it seems clear that the more
redundant a language, the harder it is to construct an American-style
crossword puzzle (i.e. highly interconnected).

A crossword puzzle construction book I read (forgot the title & author) said
that the easiest way to construct a puzzle is to draw the framework, blacken
the pattern, fill every other square (checkerboard style) with random
consonants, and then fill the rest with random vowels.  Then perturb it until
every horizontal and vertical is a word (work on the long ones first, then go
area by area, changing letters until everything's set).  Then make up
definitions.  If there's a theme to the puzzle, you might first fill in the
long words with words/phrases of the theme before adding the random letters.

-- David Smallberg, das@ucla-cs.ARPA, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das