Multidimensional Crosswords?

Aaron asks: "I write the crossword for the student newspaper at my university (McGill, in Montreal). For the last issue of the year I like to go all-out and do something special. Usually I just make a super-big one, but I had a brainstorm - a crossword is essentially a 2-dimensional matrix where set intersections are judged as valid if they test positive as real words out of a dictionary. Of course, the decision to limit the matrix to 2 dimensions is just pragmatic so if you wanted you could make crosswords of 3 or more dimensions (though a 4-dimension crossword might have to be done in pencil first). Any ideas on how to actually do this?" This would be interesting on a computer, but would be fairly hard to do in print. If you were of a mind to make a 3D crossword puzzle on paper, how would you do it?

Comments

Multiple pages?

[jrc313]

You could always span the z-axis across multiple pages. Of course it would be a bit of a mindfuck to have to flick between pages, but it would be interesting at least.

To make 3D work...

[Ibn al-Hazardous]

...I would publish the crossword on multiple pages. It would have to have a rather small side (like 10x10 or maybe 12x12), and have one layer on every page. This kinda assumes that there are 10-12 pages in the paper to begin with (and that you can have the same placement on every page, eg upper-right on odd-numbered pages), or you could have a centerfold with a DIY 3D X-word.

Wouldn't it be hard to construct though? I imagine having software to help with the construction would be nice.