Crossword puzzles are fun a way to do a quick recap in class on terms and definition. It breaks the monotony of boring fill-in-blank quizzes and it can create a bit of positive competition in class.
Doing a crossword puzzle manually is never an option for me as it will drive you crazy. So I opted to use Hot Potatoes.
[su_quote cite=”www.halfbakedsoftware.com” url=”www.halfbakedsoftware.com“]The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. On September 1, 2009, Hot Potatoes was released as freeware.[/su_quote]
Before you start, it is good to have a set of keywords that you want to use in the puzzle. For the sake of simplicity, we will use the following as a example.
- computer security
- networks
- programming
- puzzle
- student
- hazinah
Step 1:
Download Hot Potatoes if you have not. You can find downloading sites from Mr. Google. Click HERE for one of the sites.
Step 2:
When you open Hot Potatoes you will see something like the image below. Click on JCross for Crossword puzzle.
Home Screen Hot Potatoes
Step 3:
You will now get the screen as shown. In the white box under Title, you can give your puzzle a name (or not). Click on the third icon on the toolbar, the one that looks like a magic wand (ref. The wizard). This will give you the screen to insert your keywords.
JCross Home Screen
The wizard
Add keywords
Insert all the keywords you want to use and click Make the grid. Please be aware that there is a maximum. If you add many keywords and the engine cannot make a good puzzle out of all of the keywords, some keywords may be left out in the final puzzle.
Go to File and save your work.
Step 4:
Now you have your puzzle. But you still need to add the clues.
Your puzzle, without the clues.
Click on Add Clues to… well, add the clues. Click on the keyword, and fill in the clue. It is a good practice to mention if the keyword has 2 words or more, although in the final puzzle the space is not shown. Click OK (red) to save each of the clues you entered, and click OK (green) to save everything and move on.
Adding the clue for each keyword
Step 5:
To publish the puzzle, there are many options provided. To print it, go to File and select Export for Printing.
You will be presented with the puzzle and the clues in your web browser. Simply safe this file as PDF or alternatively you can copy and paste it into a word file.
Here is a Sample of what I created.
[su_document url=”https://people.utm.my/hazinah/wp-content/uploads/sites/709/2016/10/test.pdf”]
