Coming in just at the buzzer East Coast time… the tenth and final (for now) Wordstream puzzle. This puzzle is not only too big to fit in this space, it’s too big to fit on the same page with its word list. The wordstream for this puzzle is made up of all 50 states and is laid out in a 30X30 grid. This has been the trickiest puzzle yet when it came to making sure there was a single unique solution. You’ll notice that NorthCarolina and SouthCarolina would very often fit in the same spots. (There are a few others too.) Enjoy!

pdf solution

After a short break, I’m back to updating puzzlinks regularly. This week, puzzles will be posted on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday beginning with the regularly scheduled Wordstream puzzle.

This weeks puzzle is baseball themed. And the word list consists of all 30 teams. The puzzle is again too big to display here, so here’s a pdf and the solution.

My wordstream puzzles have gotten a little bit big to fit in this space. If you want to try this week’s you’ll have to use the pdf. This week’s puzzle features moons of Saturn. The solution is here.

Here’s this weeks wordstream puzzle.

pdf solution

Here’s the next Wordstream puzzle. Pretty soon, they will be too big to fit in this space.

pdf solution

This week… A Lord of the Rings themed puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

Today’s puzzle is the first one that I ever made up. Enjoy!

pdf solution

This weeks wordstream puzzle features the knights of the round table. Conviently timed to coincide with the Da Vinci Code Grail Quest.

pdf solution

After the warm-up last week, a slightly larger puzzle this week. I’d rate the difficulty about the same. Just to be clear, the “islands” in a Wordstream puzzle need not be rectangular as in the Mochikoro puzzles. Here’s the puzzle:

Again, I have a pdf available.

Next week, a more interesting puzzle theme. Here’s this week’s solution.

I’ve developed a new kind of puzzle that I’m calling wordstream. I got the inspiration for this puzzle while looking at the solution for a nurikabe or “islands in the stream” puzzle. It looked to me like a reverse crossword puzzle. So, I decided to combine a nurikabe puzzle and a crossword puzzle. The grid in the puzzle below resembles a nurikabe grid and all of the nurikabe rules apply:

• It’s a binary determination puzzle where each cell will either be a shaded “island” cell or an empty “stream” cell.
• The “stream” cells will all be orthogonally contiguous (they will make up a single polyomino) and they will form no 2X2 squares or pools.
• The numbers each sit on an “island” composed of that number of cells which are also orthogonally contiguous.
• Each “island” has exactly one number on it.

Given these rules only, the grid below would not provide a unique solution. But for wordstream, there is one more rule.

• Each word in the word list will fit into the “stream” creating the “wordstream.” Words will cross each other, but they may not be adjacent.

So, here’s the puzzle.

I also have a pdf version of the puzzle.

I’ve started out with an easier one. I’m currently planning for this to be a weekly feature for 10 weeks. As the weeks go on, the puzzles will get larger and more difficult.

If you’re really not sure how this puzzle plays out, it might be best to look at the solution. It should help you figure out what’s going on and there are more puzzles to come to test your mind.