Vocabs of Steel

Crunch up those vocabs! This article provides suggestions for those who want to solidify and expand their word power. Make use of dictionaries (definitions, etymology, synonyms), thesauruses, Google lookups, crossword puzzles (printable, online), and other types of word puzzles. …

Read the entire article at http://whilldtkwriter.blogspot.com/2010/07/vocabs-of-steel.html and comment there, please.

Cross Words Over Crosswords

I'm a casual crossword-puzzle doer. I work on the LA Times one that my newspaper carries on Sundays, the one in the weekly Onion, and the monthly National Geographic's. I'm not a fanatic over solving entire puzzles. I'm somewhat proud if I complete somewhere between 80% and 100%, but don't fret too much if I'm able to complete only 10 words. High and total completions don't occur often.
In working crossword puzzles, I don't do web lookups, I don't use a thesaurus, and only occasionally look in a dictionary. As another indication of my casual methodology, I use a pen. Oh, sure, I letter in answers that turn out incorrect, then do a somewhat messy job of …


[Read entire article at http://whilldtkwriter.blogspot.com/2009/10/cross-words-over-crosswords.html.]