Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Special People Crossword Puzzle (Grid 14x14)


Special People Vol. 2 No. 95, May 2, 1983
On the cover: (From top right counter-clockwise) Gregorio Cendaña,
Alexander and Zenaida Magnaye,
& Julio Iglesias and his children Chavelli, Julio and Enrique.


The earliest crossword puzzles that I made were unique and shall we say “out of grid.” It’s been my fascination in early childhood to make word puzzles. I was dyslexic, that is, having difficulty reading aloud the English words that I’m seeing, up until Grade 2. So, I asked my Mom to buy me a vocabulary/dictionary. During the two months school vacation, I started memorizing its contents – from A to Z. By Grade 3, I could already read even words like “bourgeois” (boor’zhwä’), “gendarme” (zhän’därm’), “rendezvous” (rän-dēvōō’), etc. In high school, I was already solving the crossword puzzles of different newspapers, and started making word puzzles myself. I noticed that all the crossword puzzles that I encountered were of odd number of grids, 13x13, 15x15, 21x21, etc. To be different I started making even-grid puzzles. I started out with 14x14 then 16x16 and 20x20. The one featured in this Special People May 2, 1983 issue is among the earliest I made. You’ll notice it’s quite crude and amateurish. Even the layout is manually drawn, and numbered and lettered using lettering guide. I blogged this for nostalgia’s sake.



“May my lips proclaim Your praise, since You teach me your statutes. May my tongue recite Your promise, since all Your Commandments are righteous.” – The Psalms 119:171-172, The Jerusalem Bible.

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