Mostly nothing. So why no blog entries for four days? No reason. This is what I've been doing for the last hour or so, though:

Yep, more crossword making. This is how I do it.

1. Think of a theme. This can take a lot of thought and is one of the hardest steps. This one's theme is life, so I will call it "That's Life!"

2. Think of at least 4 or 5 words to fit the theme. Actually, steps 1 and 2 go together.

3. Lay out the crossword. I open Word and make a 21x21 table. Then I can black out the squares as I go along, as well as make them white again if I need to.

4. Write the clues.

5. While making the clues, check to see if I use a word twice in the grid. If so, fix the second word so it's different than the first one. I use a program I got online called Across Lite to make clues. All I do is type them, the grid (with periods indicating a black square) as well as author info and other stuff. It numbers the clues so I don't have to, which is cool.

6. Make sure there aren't any design flaws.

Repeat the process over and over again until I die.

What helps tremendously is the Scrabble Players Dictionary. It helps when I'm trying to think of words, or desperately trying to see if something is a word or how to spell it. For example, I couldn't think of a 6-letter word that begins with PARA. So I check the dictionary. PARADE, of course! Of course, I can use obscure words like ZARF, or something if I'm really stuck. Anyway, that's how I do it. Looking back, I think I did a blog entry that describes how I make a crossword a few years ago. But it changed with the advent of me discovering Across Lite and the Scrabble dictionary. Right now I'm making 21x21 crosswords because I hope to start up again weekly crosswords on Sundays and the Sunday ones in the paper are 21x21, so that's what I do. I'm going to start putting them on my crosswords website starting this Sunday the 9th, for at least a month or so. The part of crossword puzzle making I don't like is the long words that aren't theme words. Stuff like 9 or 10 letter words that I need to put in due to the crossword puzzle making rules. There are unwritten rules I like to follow, even though I don't submit them to the crossword publishers. So that's why I tend to use at the most 5-letter words since there are more short words than long words. And the Scrabble dictionary only goes up to 8-letter words since the most Scrabble tiles you can have is 7.