Wordoku

Pete is brilliant: “packingthread,” “pickthank” and “puckish.” Wow! I bow to Peter, the Platers’ master. Whether he invented the game or not, he’s good! More from me on Pete’s great words later (and the new one that finally came to me on today’s walk, the much more ordinary “pinkish”), but first, I’m anxious to post a Thanksgiving game.

Not only do I like to play word games, but I like to play Sudoku. Last summer, Somer gave me a book called “Wordoku,” which contains Sudoku puzzles for word lovers. It is a paperback written by Frank Longo and printed by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. of NY, NY in 2006. I love it!

Many people, including Pete, think that Sudoku is a numbers’ game, but it isn’t. It’s all logic and can be played with letters instead of numbers. Wordoku is exactly the same as Sudoku except that all the numbers have been replaced by letters. It also has an extra fun component for word lovers in that somewhere in the grid, either in one of the horizontal or vertical rows, or diagonally from the upper left to the lower right, appears a 9-letter word. I have made up a Wordoku of my own, in which a Thanksgiving word will appear. Here are the letters:

O W L Y F R A M E

Each of the nine letters above must appear in each row, across and down, as well as in each of nine 3 letter by 3 letter grids. The grids are formed by dividing the puzzle into three equal parts horizontally and vertically, nine grids in all. It is not necessary that all nine letters appear diagonally. I have used _ to represent an open space in the grid.

E F W O _ M A Y _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

R _ _ _ A _ E _ _

_ E F L _ _ _ _ _

O _ _ E _ W _ _ A

_ _ _ _ _ F R M _

_ _ Y _ L _ _ _ R

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ W R M _ A O F Y


Have fun! Happy Thanksgiving!