Do you like word puzzles? I never give them much thought until I run across them and get lulled into trying one or two. Then I can find it very soothing to work on them. The mind relaxes and opens up, ready to make new connections. The puzzles themselves have to attain just the right balance: too hard and I'll get impatient and move on. The best for me are medium-hard to slightly easy. Best of all are computer-generated puzzles, which offer endless variety.
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Recently I've noticed that our very own BellaOnline.com site allows us to generate site-specific puzzles for our visitors. So I can now offer you three different types of computer-generated word puzzles all on the theme of jewelry making. These puzzles are all vocabulary-based. If you are familiar with basic crafts terms (and a few unusual ones) that a person runs across in jewelry making, then you already have all you need to excel in these puzzles. I tried all three myself, and the descriptions are as follows.
Hangman. Remember playing this with pencils and paper in study hall back in grade school? Hangman starts off with several blank dashes that hold places for the letters you will need to guess to spell whatever word you've been given. In our version, you see the letters of the alphabet, and you click a button to choose them.
If you guess correctly, you fill in one or more of the dashes and you can see your word start to form, which makes it easier to guess what it is. If you guess incorrectly, our software fills in part of the little stick-figure on the L-shaped gallows. Just for fun, I tried to play as ineptly as possible to see how many guesses our software gives you. The software is very forgiving: you have ten tries to guess the letters. Hint: A good strategy is to start off by guessing vowels.
Word Scramble. This one gives you a term that has been scrambled into gibberish, and you must type your guess as to the correct word into the blank box. For example, you get "aldypiar" and you guess "lapidary". Just for fun, I guessed wrong on my first word to see what would happen. Our software served the same word up to me again, mixed up in a different way! So that's also pretty forgiving.
Word Search. You might remember seeing this one in newspapers near the crossword puzzle. It is a grid of what looks to be randomly generated letters of the alphabet, one letter in each square of the grid. Hidden within all the letters are combinations that form jewelry making terms if you can spot them spelling the word in different directions: up, down, diagonally. You circle the words that you spot. Our version gives you a grid that you need to print out and work on as a hard-copy.
So there you go. Dust off your jewelry making vocabulary, get yourself a cup of coffee (or whatever your favorite beverage might be), clear fifteen minutes out of your schedule, and try out some of these games!
Jewelry Making Hangman Game
Jewelry Making Word Scramble Game
Jewelry Making Word Search Game
If you just can't get enough, have a look at this on Amazon.com:
The Everything Giant Book of Word Searches: Over 300 puzzles for big word search fans! (Everything Series)
