I can see what emmy says about 12 down パスポート and 19 across パーセント, but I don't have a problem with a ー actually representing two different sounds. It would be written as a dash in the crossword box anyway and just pronounced differently when read. However, ふぷぶ and others like it should be considered different letters in a crossword, I think. I think that ゃ ゅ ょ っ are different to や ゆ よ つ too. If I have two of these meet in the same square, which one should I write? The big one or the small one. Either way, one word would be misspelled.
Actually, those last three are diff in shiritori, as of right now ;)
Updated a new one with smaller changes; enlarged the numbers in the crossword, the clues are cleaner than before, and I have (it'll be optional on the options) an upside down answer thingy. Cool, no?
http://new.renshuu.org/dl/test2.pdf
[quote author=Javona link=topic_id=5411&post_id=26872#rmsg_26872 date=1346319312]I can see what emmy says about 12 down パスポート and 19 across パーセント, but I don't have a problem with a ー actually representing two different sounds. It would be written as a dash in the crossword box anyway and just pronounced differently when read. However, ふぷぶ and others like it should be considered different letters in a crossword, I think. I think that ゃ ゅ ょ っ are different to や ゆ よ つ too. If I have two of these meet in the same square, which one should I write? The big one or the small one. Either way, one word would be misspelled.[/quote]
But the problem with ー is that if you don't have it represent the same sound (ie. not the dash) then you end up with katakana only options. I think this is generally solved by not mixing katakana and hiragana in puzzles.
I looked into this and it seems in normal Japanese kana crosswords the small letters are written as big ones. Take a look at this example where じょうけん and よう cross at よ
[url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/6434900/Japanese-HiraganaKatakana-Crossword-Puzzles]http://www.scribd.com/doc/6434900/Japanese-HiraganaKatakana-Crossword-Puzzles[/url]
Wikipedia says: Any second Yōon character is treated as a full syllable and is rarely written with a smaller character.
制作や解答において、例外が許されないほどの厳格なルールは無いが、慣例がいくつかある。
マスに入る言葉は一般に知られているような名詞でなければならない。また、単語の一部だけを使用してはいけない（専門雑誌の場合その読者層における「一般」であればよい）。
単語の一部が別の単語として成立する場合はその限りではなく、「ク○○ワード」のようなカギのみで構成された問題が出題されることもある。
日本では基本的にカタカナを用いるため、決まりがある。 [color=red]「ッ」や「ョ」などの促音、拗音は大文字の「ツ」や「ヨ」として見なされる。また拗音は二文字で数えられる。たとえば「ショック」の場合、「シヨツク」となる。[/color]
濁音や半濁音は一文字として数えられる。
「ー」の長音はいずれかの向きに書けばよい。
かつて大修館書店が刊行していた月刊誌「しにか」では漢字を用いるクロスワードパズルが掲載されていた。
1つのパズル内に同じ単語が複数あってはならない（同音異義語を含む）。
黒マスによって白マスの領域が2つ以上に分断されてはならない。
黒マスは縦または横に連続しないほうが好ましい。
例外として、白マスが常に2つの単語によって交差させるようにするために外周の線から2つ垂直に連続して黒マスを配置する事がある。文字の種類が少ない英語圏では一般的である（世界のクロスワードの節も参照）。
特に英語など文字数の少ない言語の場合、黒マスの配置を対称形にすることが好ましい。
２文字の単語は両方を他の単語に絡ませることが好ましい（二重解防止のため）。
上のルールのうち、黒マスの配置に関するルールを黒マスルールという。このルールは、ナンバークロスワードパズルなどのクロスワードに類似した他のパズルの黒マスの配置においても適用されるが、必ずしも決まったものではない。
なお、カギの配置については横に振る方式と縦に振る方式がある。ヒントもそれに応じて前者はタテ、ヨコの順に、後者はヨコ、タテの順に並べてある。後者については、盤面を横に拡大させた場合に数えやすく、適している。
Awesome stuff, thanks for looking it up! I cannot look at it too carefully now, but I will look at it later! The rules in the crossword generation can be changed fairly easily, so implementing this stuff should not be a problem.
The crossword center is finished (more or less) being built!
http://www.renshuu.dev/index.php?page=misc/kami (Worksheets page under To-Go)
Try downloading some, play with the settings, etc. Let me know if you have any comments/problems1
Will start working on the kanji-answer quizzes next!
For the "free monthly puzzles," it might be good to have some distinction in the naming between the english/kana vs. kana/kanji puzzles ... right now they are the same (for each level), so it's kinda hard to tell them apart when you're looking for answers to the right puzzle. I think the filenames are the same too, so some people might end up replacing one with the other.
The list of 10 puzzles per JLPT level ... how does that section work? When I try clicking "Download" it just says "Making..." and nothing happens. Is that part not finished yet?
Oh, whoops. I clicked on the "Download" button too but it just kept saying "Making..." so I completely forgot about it and went wo work on my N1 模擬試験 :P
My plan is too complete these at work while looking extremely busy :D
Sorry, download button should be good now. Also, resent a message with the new url.
I also redid it (it will appear on the new ones) to have more descriptive titles so they are easier to distinguish.
Enjoying the puzzles ... just a couple thoughts.
1) It might be nice to have the puzzle # somewhere on the page. I printed out a bunch of them and then realized (after I dropped them and they got all mixed up) that they're hard to tell apart for when you want to check off the ones you've completed.
2) I've looked through the N1, N2 and N3 puzzles, and noticed one that for some reason has an answer grid that turned out a wee bit huge ;) It's the N3 #2 kanji puzzle (the answer grid overlaps the instructions). It seems like the answer grid varies a little in size from one puzzle to the next (like the N3 #3 English and N3 #5 kanji ones are little bigger) ... but I haven't come across any others that seem *too* big.
3) The last thing I was wondering about was the kanji used for the different JLPT levels ... for example, if you have a vocab term for a certain level, but it uses kanji from a higher level ... are you still supposed to be able to recognize the kanji for that term? Sorry if that's a dumb question, but I don't really know anything about the JLPT. I just noticed as I was doing one of the N2 kanji puzzles that there were several terms written in kanji that I didn't recognize (I'm only about 1/4 way through N1 kanji). I don't really mind having characters I don't know in the puzzles ... so far I've managed to figure them out (well, except for 遡る :-[), but I just thought I'd mention it ...
1. Yes, I can definitely add the puzzle number to the title. Should work now.
2. I was actually hoping this would happen, because I figured it would, and wanted to get it out of the way. Update put in place.
3. Good point. Right now, it is set to display all kanji, but ..hmm. I will adjust it to show the kanji you would expect to know at that level. Unfortunately, I cannot extend the site's per-user kanji history to the crossword puzzles. Will work on this as soon as I get a chance!
Not sure how many people are still reading this, but...a question!
Working on the kanji puzzles now. Due to the nature of kanji terms, traditional kanji puzzles are almost impossible to make for renshuu users. I am working on various style of shiritori-esque puzzles where terms link onto one another.
I would like to make various shapes of puzzles to keep things interesting. For example, a spiral. However, with many shapes, it requires that the user write in terms that are not left->right or top->bottom. Example
[code]abcde
f
opq g
n h
mlkji[/code]
Pretend the alphabet represented the flow of the words. Anything starting from i to o would be written in a direction that we don't typically see in writing.
Only doing top-down or left-right severely limits the number of puzzle designs that can be done. Do you think it will be difficult to read? Do you need concrete examples before you can make a judgement call?
Once the rest of the infrastructure is built, the actual design creation should (in my head, at least) be relatively simple. Right now, I am working on a design that is all top-bottom / left-right. Once that is done, I will try a few more interesting designs.
One way might be to try a spiral puzzle. I have done them in English. It is a bit like Shiritori because sometimes parts of a previous word are used in the next word.
Can't make them available through the website because I do not have the answer tool built in yet, but...tada! Kanji puzzles. A few varieties - they are all using the same set of word 'strips', so there is a lot of repeated vocab. I can make ..a rather wide range of puzzle designs. It's current at 10x10, but that could easily be increased. Of course, it will also have definition clues available.
http://new.renshuu.org/dl/snakey.pdf
http://new.renshuu.org/dl/spiral.pdf
http://new.renshuu.org/dl/uzu.pdf
Trying to think of the best way to display all the options for the kanji puzzles, as they are more numerous than the kana puzzles (namely, now you have shapes to choose from. Maybe the shapes should just be random on this side, and not offer it as an option to the user?
