Pam Amick Klawitter has written nine books and created nine crosswords. Her books, which target young school students, include
Mapworks, Poetry Works, Critical Thinking Social Studies and
Wordwise: Creative Puzzles To Enrich Vocabulary. Her first crossword appeared in March 2008. Today's is only her ninth but, like her other puzzles, is very clever. It's titled "Haiku." A haiku, which means "opening stanza" in Japanese, is a three-line poem consisting of 17
on (loosely, "syllables"). The first and last lines each have five syllables and the middle line has seven. Examples of haiku can be seen at
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-haiku-poems.html"Feature of haiku, and of the answers to starred clues" is THREELINES. Each theme answer contains three words which can precede "line":
Sale indicator : REDPRICETAG
What it often is on a summer day: HOTOUTSIDE
One-to-one conversation: PRIVATEPHONECHAT
Scuba divers' bash: UNDERWATERPARTY
Highly sought-after charter captain: TOPFISHINGGUIDE
Iconic suburban symbol: WHITEPICKETFENCE
Awkward TV silence: DEADAIRTIME
Many crosswords have two-word phrases where each word can be combined with another word to form a new phrase. This is the first such crossword I've ever seen with
three-word phrases. However, TV silence is called simply "dead air." I have never heard the term "dead air time."
"French article" is UNE, which is not used in English. "Tampico trio" is TRES, which is not used in English. "José's half dozen" is SEIS, which is not used in English. "Slew" is SCAD, which I have never seen used as a singular. Large amounts are referred to as "scads," plural. The word dates from the 1860s and is possibly connected to the 17th-century Cornish word
scad, which was previously "shad" and referred to a spiky-scaled fish also known as a horse mackerel. "K-12, in brief" is ELHI (elementary school and high school), a word that appears far too frequently in crossword puzzles.....and
only in crossword puzzles. Today we also get the much-overused words ADO, ALPS, ERA, EPEE, OPIE, OLE and ALOE.
I close with this haiku:
A clever crossword
By Pam Amick Klawitter.
Please, Pam, make some more.
