Crossword, scramble cell size question

[Bad_Wolf]

Hi all,

Please, can you give me advice about the size of individual cells in crossword, scramble, wordsearch, and other type of puzzles?

Let us take the word search puzzle for example. I have two sizes in mind:
15 by 15 cells and 23 by 23 cells, both sizes in the same book.

To place the 23 by 23 puzzle on the page, I have to reduce its size, so the individual cells will be smaller. So when on one page there is a 15 by 15 puzzle and on the other there is a 23 by 23 puzzle, the reader will notice a difference in individual cell dimensions.

My question is, is this difference acceptable considering layout?

I will appreciate your advice very much.

I wish you all a nice day.

Chris

[thomaso]

9 minutes ago, Bad_Wolf said:

advice about the size of individual cells in crossword, scramble, wordsearch, and other type of puzzles?

I have two sizes in mind: 15 by 15 cells and 23 by 23 cells, both sizes in the same book.

My question is, is this difference acceptable considering layout?

15 and 23 aren't sizes but numbers only. Without mentioning any physical unit the acceptance may be even larger, e.g. 50 or 100 cells for a crossword puzzle, actually it could have an unlimited number of cells to work with, for instance as an online 'book' (e.g. editable PDF form) where the screen view allows scrolling/panning and zooming.

[Bad_Wolf]

Hi Thomaso,

Thank you for your reply.

For example for a square puzzle, which has 15 by 15 cells, the individual cell will be a square of 9 mm. But for the square puzzle consisting of 23 by 23 cells, the individual cell will be 7 mm to put the puzzle onto the page. These puzzle books are physical books, not ebooks because it is almost impossible to create. In an ebook reader you cannot fill in the individual cells.

This is kind of aesthetical question. I do appreciate your input.

Chris

 

[thomaso]

Still I'd say a cell size of e.g. 7 or 9 mm isn't sufficient to answer your question … if we don't know whether this cells include the questions/descriptions, their text lengths and font size.

For crossword puzzles you might generally consider the age of your target group, e.g. a possibly preferred use by older people with possibly reduced eye sight. The acceptance also will vary with the individual size of handwriting which can be quite different. I'd recommend a little research of existing crossword books to get an idea of an acceptable min/max cell size. Or print out sample layouts / cells and let a few people fill the form – or let them write some words in capitals without any visible cell or line grid to get an idea of their 'native' handwriting size (although this is often larger than common crossword cells or in the limited space on a postcard for instance where the handwriting size may get 'automatically' smaller to the end/edge to add more text).

Note that a common cell size on school material / chequered exercise book is 5 mm. (while I don't know whether there is a global standard).

Another clue could be the common text size on product packaging in their ingredient tables. (Personally, I wonder why their tiny sizes are legal given the legal requirement for this information.)

[walt.farrell]

Have you looked at other physical examples of puzzle books to see how they deal with this, Chris? Or even if they do it? All the crossword books I have seem to use a consistent size.

In any case, I think your question may get better answers from a crossword design forum, rather than this one. Sounds like a fun project, though.

[thomaso]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

All the crossword books I have seem to use a consistent size.

Same editor? This makes me wonder whether the OP's question concerns consistency (maintained cell sizes) within one book or rather a minimal size.

Consistency: Interestingly the cells in number square puzzles are often larger than those of crossword puzzles – although they could be read in a smaller size easier than multi-celled crossword puzzles.

[GarryP]

I’ve just looked at a variety of puzzle books and each seems to have selected a cell size which consistently accommodates pretty much all the puzzles in the book, except for a few outliers if any.

In other words, they seem to have looked at all of the puzzles, found the one with the largest grid (they don't differ too much), sized the cells of that puzzle to nicely fit the page, and then used that cell size for (pretty much) all the other puzzles.

This seems reasonable to me as the reader can get used to having the cell sizes of a certain size and can, when they first pick the book up, quickly see if they are comfortable using cells of that size (will their writing fit in the cells?).

If there is sometimes too much space around a puzzle you can always quickly add a ‘fancy flourish graphic’, or something to fill the gaps.

Having said that, from what I remember, puzzle books for kids use different sizes of grid and other things to keep the layout ‘fresh’ across different pages, so what’s best will probably depend on the intended audience.

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, Bad_Wolf said:

This is kind of aesthetical question.

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

you can always quickly add a ‘fancy flourish graphic’, or something to fill the gaps.

As a just aesthetical question (= taste) you may get tons of opinions without detecting what the readers of your product would want or possibly appreciate as a new invention or surprising development.

Personally I prefer to avoid using any 'decorative filler' object and prefer white space instead (or larger cells in case of a crossword grid with less cells). To me one of the worst design decision are books with a coloured bar on every page (maybe with the idea 'colour is friendly' or 'page numbers are too naked without a background').

[firstdefence]

The page size and margins would be the limiting factor and pretty much dictate the grid size, so I'd work it out from there, what could you comfortably fit within the margins of a given page size.

[Bad_Wolf]

Hi Thomaso, Walt Farrell, GarryP, and Firstdefence,

Thank you all for your opinions and advice. You all gave me more than I expected, of which I am very gratefull. The main reason  for my questions was indeed, do I break the consistency and have different cell sizes between smaller and greater puzzles or not.

I indeed do agree with filler objects and colour. If used, it needs to be sparingly and thoughtfully. Readers of puzzle books are interested in the puzzles and not in filler objects. I was not intending to use colour in my puzzle book. When used correctly, you can say a lot with black/white and grey shades.

So I already decided that all individual cells will have the same dimensions unesteemed the size of the puzzle. I will make each individual cell 9 mm by 9 mm. The font size for the main letters (in the solution) Arial regular 18 pt and the index numbers (if any) Calibri regular 9 pt. This makes everything readable, also for people with reduced eye sight.

Thank you all again for the time spent and sharing your knowledge. This is truly appreciated. I wish you all a nice day and all the best!

Chris

[R C-R]

FWIW, my local newspaper publishes a separate newsprint puzzle book delivered once a month to subscribers like me. Among the 90+ puzzles in it are crossword puzzles in several sizes. The larger "Sunday" ones with their clues fill a page & typically vary from 22 x 22 to 24 x 24 cells. The smaller ones are published two to a page & are all (usually?) 15 x 15. They come from different sources so there is a slight difference in cell size but you would have to look very closely to notice that.

Slightly more noticeable, a few of them sometimes have slightly rectangular cells, a bit wider than tall or visa versa, I guess to maintain the same margins or gutters.

None of this bothers me because I am just interesting in solving as many of the clues as possible.

[Bad_Wolf]

Hello R C-R,

Thank you for your reply. Indeed, readers of puzzle books prefer solving the puzzle rather than a cool layout but contains errors.

Many people create puzzle books because of fast income. However, creating a good puzzle book takes time of which the error checking takes more than half the efforts.

That is what many newspapers do. In the weekend they publish bigger puzzles than during the week. 15x15 is indeed the standard size for a puzzle.

I wish you all the best and much puzzle fun.

Chris

[firstdefence]

Re errors, I downloaded a crossword puzzle app and on puzzle 1 of the app I noticed an error in the clue based on the answer. I requested they change it...

“Derogatory term for a non-country dweller” answer : Townie

To… 

“Derogatory term for a non-countryside dweller” 

Answer: Townie

Reply from app dev was "That first puzzle has been played by many tens of thousands of people, and nobody has brought it our notice before.
Sometimes you see what you want to see, and not what's actually written." Amazing how we fill in detail based on past knowledge and logic.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, Bad_Wolf said:

That is what many newspapers do. In the weekend they publish bigger puzzles than during the week. 15x15 is indeed the standard size for a puzzle.

FWIW, the local newspaper publishes a daily "Comics & Puzzles" section with comics, the NYT daily crossword edited by Will Shortz, a much easier 'commuter' crossword from a different source, a Sudoku puzzle, & several other non-crossword puzzles. The NYT & Sudoku puzzles get harder each day of the week; the commuter one does not, except for the Sunday edition where like the NYT puzzle it is much larger than 15x15 & has harder clues.

The monthly puzzle book is in addition to that, with different crosswords & more types of puzzles from a variety of other sources.

I think all this is in large part an attempt to keep subscribers from abandoning newspapers for online sources -- as you noted, physical printed puzzles are still preferred by many people compared to the electronic versions.

[Bad_Wolf]

Hello Firstdefence and R C-R,

Thank you for your replies. Error checking can be a difficult process and you already gave the reason. As authors, we see what we want to see. We can read 3, 4, 5 times or more and still overlook an error. That is the reason that it is good practice to let a masterpiece read by someone else.

Despite the fact, I do not read the New York Times, I knew you were mentioning that newspaper, just because of the different weekend editions of the puzzle.

It is possible to create all kind of puzzles in Construct C3 (a game development engine), but it is not the same as solving puzzles on physical media. For me there is one exception: Escape Rooms. This is better done in such game development environments than in a physical book.

Have a nice day.

Chris

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Bad_Wolf said:

Despite the fact, I do not read the New York Times, I knew you were mentioning that newspaper, just because of the different weekend editions of the puzzle.

Just to be clear, I don't read or subscribe to the New York Times either. It is just that the NYT crossword is available to other newspapers via syndication, & as several other newspapers do, my local paper publishes it in its own editions. Will Shortz is the longtime (in)famous editor of the NYT puzzles, but the puzzles themselves are submitted by other people. The commuter puzzles come from the Tribune Content Agency.

AFAIK, the separate monthly puzzle book does not include crossword puzzles from either of those sources but since there is no info about where they come from in the book I'm not sure where they do come from.

[Bad_Wolf]

Hi R C-R,

Thank you for this interesting information. I didn't know that other newspapers can use the NYT crossword puzzles.

I thought that the NYT had their own people to make those puzzles. You can learn every day something new.

Have a great day!

Chris

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Bad_Wolf said:

I thought that the NYT had their own people to make those puzzles.

A variety of people submit the puzzles to the NYT for consideration. If accepted, they get credit for that, but it is always Shortz that edits them. I don't know who provides the clues but I assume it is Shortz that at least has the final say so on that.

[Bad_Wolf]

Hello R C-R,

Thank you for your reply. We are a startup company, so maybe it is a good idea to submit puzzles to the NYT. Despite the chance of being accepted will be very small, if it succeed, this can be good publicity for us. The one who's not trying will not win!

I wish you all the best!

Chris

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, Bad_Wolf said:

We are a startup company, so maybe it is a good idea to submit puzzles to the NYT. Despite the chance of being accepted will be very small, if it succeed, this can be good publicity for us.

AFAIK, only people, not companies, get credit for puzzles the NYT accepts. Also, each day of the week the puzzles get harder, with Monday's being the easiest & Sunday's being both larger & much harder.

Edited January 13 by R C-R
fixed typo