My Little Crossword Project: Murals and Graffiti
So, the other day, I got this idea stuck in my head. I like doing crosswords, you know, the kind you find in newspapers or puzzle books. And I was thinking, wouldn’t it be neat to make one about something I find pretty cool? Street art – murals, graffiti, that kind of stuff.
First thing I did was grab a notebook and a pen. Just started writing down any word that popped into my head related to it. It wasn’t very organized, just a big list.
Stuff I brainstormed included things like:
- Spray can
- Stencil
- Mural
- Artist
- Tag
- Wall
- Paint
- Street
- Color
- Piece (like a big graffiti work)
- Crew
Getting the words was the easy part, I guess. The tricky bit was trying to make them fit together. You know, like a proper crossword grid where they all interlock. I tried sketching it out on graph paper first. Lots of erasing happened. Some words just wouldn’t fit nicely next to others. Had to swap some out, find shorter ones, or longer ones depending on the spot.
After I had a grid layout that kinda worked, I started writing the clues. Didn’t want to make them super hard, just enough to make you think for a second. For SPRAY CAN, I wrote something like “Aerosol tool for painters”. For TAG, maybe “Quick signature on a wall”. Just simple stuff. Had to make sure the across clues and down clues made sense for the letters they shared.
Once I had all the clues written down next to their numbers on the grid, I looked it over. Read through everything, tried to solve it myself quickly to catch any obvious mistakes. Like making sure the clue number matched the word number and the grid position.
Then I asked my partner to try it out. They found one clue a bit confusing, so I changed the wording slightly to make it clearer. It’s good to get a fresh pair of eyes on it.
And that was pretty much it! Took me an afternoon, fiddling around with words and squares. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a little personal project. Felt good to actually finish it, though. Just a simple crossword puzzle about murals and graffiti, made by me.
