January 22nd, 2009 Brian Herzog
Here’s another way to be interactive with flickr - a cool little find-a-word puzzle.
Check out the puzzle on flickr, log in, and use the Add Note tool to circle words as you find them. Because this is flickr, all the words are either horizontal or vertical, but can be either forwards or backwards.
I put a lot of words in to hopefully let a lot of people play - please only circle a couple words, so everyone can have a chance. All of the hidden words are listed below the image in the description.
I thought this could be a fun thing for libraries to do for their patrons. The puzzle is easy to create (I used a spreadsheet [xls] and print preview - not quite as easy as the library crossword, I admit) and can be made on any theme. I also like that more than one person can work on it, so they can be solved as teams.
I’m actually stealing this idea and modifying it with library words. There are other puzzles on flickr, and where this idea originated will be obvious - but NSFW.
Tags: find, find-a-word, flickr, libraries, Library, public, puzzle, puzzles, web 2.0, web2.0, word See Also
Posted under Library, Technology | 4 Comments »
December 6th, 2007 Brian Herzog
This doesn’t have much to do with libraries, but I like crossword puzzles and thought it was neat:
A recent discussion on ME-LIBS mentioned the puzzlemaker, from Discovery Education. This website automatically generates crossword puzzles (and other types of puzzles, too) from a list of words and clues you enter.
It’s fun. Not quite the New York Times puzzle, of course, but then again, I’m not quite Will Shortz.
One drawback is that it just generates the puzzle to a webpage, which you’re then supposed to print out. A “play online” version would be more fun; also helpful would be a print-friendly pdf version (I had to tweak my Library 2.0 Crossword in Word before printing to pdf).
While looking for one with more output options, I found that there seems to be a lot of software to generate puzzles, but only a few are free:
This could be used as a fun library program for kids or teens, for staff, for making an activity to go along with a book display, for local history/events/landmarks, or even for a book display on crosswords (incidentally, the first crossword puzzle was complied by Arthur Wynne and appeared in the New York World on Dec. 21st, 1913).
creator, crossword, crosswords, maker, online, puzzle, puzzles
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Posted under Library, Resources | 1 Comment »
