Howdy, folks. I have a blog where I post a Magic-themed crossword puzzle each week, as well as the occasional article about Magic, game design, and whatnot. Not a lot of people seem to know that a source of free, high-quality, MTG crosswords exists, so (after getting the OK from Annorax) I made this thread to help get the word out and invite discussion. I'll update this post and bump the thread whenever I post a new puzzle. Stay tuned!
Sounds fun, I'm a big fan of pen and paper puzzles, especially Kakuro. Have you considered organizing the puzzles by format or whatever? Like standard, modern, and legacy puzzles? As a standard player I doubt I could do a puzzle about broad general magic knowledge.
Sounds fun, I'm a big fan of pen and paper puzzles, especially Kakuro. Have you considered organizing the puzzles by format or whatever? Like standard, modern, and legacy puzzles? As a standard player I doubt I could do a puzzle about broad general magic knowledge.
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to make decent puzzles with small dictionaries, and the corpus of "somehow related to Magic" words is already fairly small. (Though I'm continually expanding my dictionary and my knowledge with research on Gatherer, the MTG Salvation wiki, WotC's "Planeswalker's Guides", etc.) If I restricted myself to, say, just one format, the quality of the puzzles would undoubtedly suffer.
That being said, I did attempt a theme in puzzle 3, which has a somewhat high density of Planechase-related clues. I don't think that puzzle turned out very well, though.
Are the foreign-language questions meant to be a jab at how the vast majority of US Americans are monolingual?
Oh no, not at all. I include the foreign language questions for two reasons:
It really, really helps ease the task of filling in recalcitrant blocks of 3s, 4s, and 5s, since lots of the simple foreign words have low Scrabble scores. (That is, they are composed of mostly vowels and RSTLN.)
I personally think it's fun to learn the foreign words for things like numbers, or really common Magic concepts like basic lands or evergreen mechanics. (And I only use languages that Magic is actually printed in.)
To finish off a puzzle, I may occasionally feel the need to sneak in something like "AVE" (Spanish for the bird creature type, in puzzle 33), but I always try to make sure clues like that are reasonable or unsurprising to English speakers. "Ave", for example, comes from the same Latin root as the English "avian", so with the help of crosses and a bit of intuition, it shouldn't be too difficult for most people to figure clues like that out.
Oops, I missed a week! Here are Magic crosswords 38 and 39.
I also recently finished a series on ridiculously slow combos: Life in the Fast Lane · Part 2 · Part 3. If any readers come up with a silly combo of their own, I'd be happy to write up a blog post about it, as well, or let you write your own guest post.
Sorry, it's been a while since I updated, but here's Magic crossword 54. The OP also now has links to all 15 of the new crossword puzzles I wrote in the intervening time. Hope you like 'em!
I've been poking around at them, started at 55 and working my way back. I keep a couple tabs open (mainly gatherer and google translate). They are well done =)
W may only be paid with white mana. U may only be paid with blue mana. B may only be paid with black mana. R may only be paid with red mana. G may only be paid with green mana. C may only be paid with colorless mana. 1 may be paid with white, blue, black, red, green, or clolorless mana.
Magic-themed Crossword Puzzles
01 · 02 · 03 · 04 · 05 · 06 · 07 · 08 · 09 · 10
11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20
21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27 · 28 · 29 · 30
31 · 32 · 33 · 34 · 35 · 36 · 37 · 38 · 39 · 40
41 · 42 · 43 · 44 · 45 · 46 · 47 · 48 · 49 · 50
51 · 52 · 53 · 54 · 55 · 56 · 57 · 58 · 59 · 60
61 · 62
Magic Sundry
Blue Creature Keywords
Ieuan, the Baneslayer (And Other Win Cons) · Part 2 · Part 3
Life in the Fast Lane · Part 2 · Part 3
Bestow Woes
Simple Magic Card Tooltips
Miscellaneous
To the Window, To the Wall: Sexism in Sports and an Analysis of Skeet Shooting at the London Olympics
Simple Inline Tooltips
StarCraft is Life
Avatar by Numotflame96 of Maelstrom Graphics
Sig banner thanks to DarkNightCavalier of Heroes of the Plane Studios!
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to make decent puzzles with small dictionaries, and the corpus of "somehow related to Magic" words is already fairly small. (Though I'm continually expanding my dictionary and my knowledge with research on Gatherer, the MTG Salvation wiki, WotC's "Planeswalker's Guides", etc.) If I restricted myself to, say, just one format, the quality of the puzzles would undoubtedly suffer.
That being said, I did attempt a theme in puzzle 3, which has a somewhat high density of Planechase-related clues. I don't think that puzzle turned out very well, though.
Oh no, not at all. I include the foreign language questions for two reasons:
- It really, really helps ease the task of filling in recalcitrant blocks of 3s, 4s, and 5s, since lots of the simple foreign words have low Scrabble scores. (That is, they are composed of mostly vowels and RSTLN.)
- I personally think it's fun to learn the foreign words for things like numbers, or really common Magic concepts like basic lands or evergreen mechanics. (And I only use languages that Magic is actually printed in.)
To finish off a puzzle, I may occasionally feel the need to sneak in something like "AVE" (Spanish for the bird creature type, in puzzle 33), but I always try to make sure clues like that are reasonable or unsurprising to English speakers. "Ave", for example, comes from the same Latin root as the English "avian", so with the help of crosses and a bit of intuition, it shouldn't be too difficult for most people to figure clues like that out.Avatar by Numotflame96 of Maelstrom Graphics
Sig banner thanks to DarkNightCavalier of Heroes of the Plane Studios!
Nope, just a mistake. I'll reclue it shortly. In the meantime, try your hand at Magic crossword 37!
I also recently finished a series on ridiculously slow combos: Life in the Fast Lane · Part 2 · Part 3. If any readers come up with a silly combo of their own, I'd be happy to write up a blog post about it, as well, or let you write your own guest post.