She loves crosswords.

So for Christmas, I made her a crossword puzzle. I tried dozens of arrangements using Microsoft Excel, because its cells made rearranging the letters easy.

Well, to be honest, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. To make a crossword, you have to make sure all of the words intersect in a sensible fashion. Much respect have I for crossword puzzle creators now. Its a lot harder to make them than to solve them.

I used instructional phrases like "under bed" and "behind TV" for the puzzle. Finding clues to fit these were a little tricky. Using a cinema theme, I employed the web to find movie and actor references. For instance, the clue for "behind" was "JLo has a big ______." Obviously.

Wait, scratch that. This part wasn't so tricky. It was actually kind of fun.

These phrases instructed her towards the locations of her Christmas presents. One item was under the bed. Another was behind the TV. And so forth.

I held the scavenger hunt at her place. In order to hide all the presents, I asked her to wait in the bathroom until I was done. Then I tried to play dumb and pretend that I only had a Christmas card for her (with the crossword puzzle folded neatly inside).

She just smirked because knew something was going on. I suppose standing in the bathroom for ten minutes kind of tipped her off.

I'm not sure where the idea for this came from. It occurred while I was driving home from work one day. That commute time is the genesis of many ideas (including ramble topics on occasion). Some coworkers had done a scavenger hunt as part of a team-building event several weeks back, and I think that helped spawn this idea.

After I created the puzzle, I agonized over it for a few days. I kept worrying about the clues (where they descriptive enough? would this puzzle be too hard? or too stupid?).

It seemed to go off rather well though. Her great big smile afterwards was all the reward I needed. I hope she enjoyed the crossword puzzle & scavenger hunt as much as I enjoyed creating it.

. . .

Do you like crossword puzzles?