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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?
Simultaneous translation:
"Forget 3d, it would be too difficult to make and most people wouldn't be able to wrap their tiny little brains around how it works..."
Translation: I don't have the imagination or visualisation skills to see how this works.
"...Make a hexagon-based crossword instead. This gives you 3 directions (vertical, down/left, and up/left), gives you the added complication of 3 possible clues per intersection, and will easily fit on a single page of paper. You'll have to come up with a hexagonal grid, but that's not too difficult..."
Translation: I'm pulling this out of my ass. I don't have a clue whether it's difficult or not, but in order to appear knowledgable, I'll take a guess and say its easy.
"...There should be plenty of vector-based hex grids on the web..."
Translation: I really don't know what I'm talking about. Never mind, someone out there must have done the hard stuff that I don't understand."