Personal Education
Puzzles
Updated weekly. Have fun!
Wicked wonderful
visual idiom puzzles.
Wordie Rules
Each wordie is designed to represent an idiom or common phrase.
In the sample puzzle below, the word "cow" is the focus in the puzzle frame. Circle bits have been removed to make it look like holes in the word. "Holy Cow" is the target idiom or common phrase, including a play on spelling "holey" becomes "holy".
Sample Wordie Puzzle
Sometimes words have shapes or are outside the frame, or are on top, etc. Those hints should help to make you think of the desired idiom.
The wordies here have been made with Inkscape,
the excellent Free Software (open source) graphic design program. It is available for
many different computer types including Macintosh, Windows and Linux.
If you are interested in making your own wordies, check out these instructions.
Wordie Answer
get on the stick
A one-word word search puzzle
Embroidery Rules
- There is one "right" word to be found. The hint is significant.
- Start with one of the letters on the gray background.
- Move either horizontally or vertically to the next letter.
- You may not move diagonally.
- You may not use a square more than once.
- The "non-starter" letter on gray background may be used within the word.
- Don't stop too soon. Always opt for the longest version of a word: INTROSPECTIVE > INTROSPECTIVELY.
Behind the Scenes
This website is a personal project, one which is as much a learning opportunity for me as it may be a resource for others. I do not chase web development trends, but I do try to make improvements from time to time.These puzzles are an enjoyable part of my creative time during a given week. In addition to doing the puzzles themselves, there is the web page updating to do. I have been updating separate index and archive pages for each puzzle. In an attempt to reduce that effort, for each kind of puzzle, I've rolled the archive page into the index page for each puzzle, cutting that work in half. In an effort to make visitors' access easier for all the puzzles, this page now serves as a better gateway. It also shows the current puzzles each week instead of a fixed sample of each. I hope you will find this a better experience. I hope it is going to reduce my weekly update workload, too.
All the puzzles here are made using the vector graphic program, Inkscape, which is Free Software.
The puzzles are Creative Commons Attribution licensed which means you can use each of them as you wish, as long as you credit me as the author of the puzzle. Links back to the site are appreciated, but not needed.