Word puzzles
Midword puzzles[edit | edit source]
There is an eight-letter word whose third to sixth letters are DUST. What is that word?
The answer is “industry”. Easy? Let’s try another.
There is an eight-letter word whose third to sixth letters are ACHE. What is it?
The answer is teachers. This one is very difficult because the sound of “ache” in the answer word is radically different from the sound of “ache” as an independent word.
What if the middle is LINE? The answer is ugliness.
Also, there is a nine-letter word: ___ICU___. That word is ridicules or ridiculed.
Occasionally, the question may provide unusual letter combinations at the middle.
- _ _ _ W W _ _ _ : glowworm
- _ _ _ H H _ _ _ : withhold
- _ _ _ P F _ _ _ : campfire
- _ _ _ T F _ _ _ : platform
- _ _ _ H T _ _ _ : rightful
- _ _ Q Q _ _ : niqqud
Tricky puzzles[edit | edit source]
Many tricky puzzles make you think in the wrong way from the beginning. For example, consider the following puzzle:
“What is the most common word whose third letter is H?”
You would think that H is used as an individual consonant. Such words do exist, like "coherent" and "dehydrate", but they are not used very often. If you realize that H is more commonly used in letter combinations like TH, SH and CH, you might come up with "ache". But the correct answer is "other".
If you got the first one right, you might want to try another.
“Think of 25 words that begin in "par".”
You know these words: part, park, party, parties, parts, parks, pare, pared, parked, parking, participate, participated, participates, participation, participating, participant, participants, partial, partly and partially. That's 20. The key is to think of the prefix para-. Then it would become very easy.
The third puzzle is even more difficult.
“Think of a word that contains "YI".”
Here the letters Y and I must be adjacent and in the right order, meaning that words like "cynical" are not accepted. An answer is dying. Other answers include defying and justifying. All of them have the suffix -ing.
The fourth puzzle is similar to the third.
“Think of a word that contains "TC".”
"TC" is found in the letter combination TCH. Example words include bitch and scratch.
The fifth one is similar to the fourth.
“Think of a word that contains double W.”
The extremely rare double W is only found in Compound words. One of the answers is glowworm.
For additional challenge, there is a sixth puzzle that is radically different from the five above.
“Dwarf mobs quiz lynx.___, kvetch!”
The answer choices are GIF, JPG and PNG. The correct answer is JPG. Because if you fill it in, the sentence would be a perfect pangram.
“Find an eight-letter word that ends in -demic other than epidemic and pandemic.”
Answer: academic.
Crossword puzzles[edit | edit source]
"Crossword" is a misspelling of "crissword". Crossword puzzles are popular. Back in the good old days, crossword puzzles were very easy, mostly because they were one-dimensional. But modern crosswords are insanely difficult. There is a HUGE crossword puzzle that needs you to fill in more than 1000 words, but it takes forever to load. In the meantime, you may practice your meager crossword-solving skills on this one:
ACROSS | DOWN |
---|---|
1 Animal allergic to french fries |
1 Popular dance style with a 17/5 beat |
- * 23 x 23 grid purchased separately.
A miscellaneous puzzle[edit | edit source]
- You lost half of your body, but now you are all right. What happened to you? Answer: your left side left your body.