First, some navigation hints. You’re looking (right) at a grid of nine crosses by nine.
We’re going to define any point by the so-called CAT/DOG method.
CAT (in this context) means ‘Count Along Top’; DOG is ‘Distance Over Ground’.
In this example, find [5,3].
To do this you Count Along Top to the 5th column, and in that column you count 3 crosses up from the bottom (your Distance Over Ground is 3).
And you find that the particular cross has been replaced by the letter ‘S’.
So that’s how we define the position of any cross, using its CAT/DOG coordinates.
Now, how to define the location not of a single cross but of a whole word?
It’s pretty easy ...
Just add an airt (non-Scots might use the less compact term ‘compass-point’) after the CAT/DOG reference.
The airts you’ll need are North (N), South (S), East (E), West (W), North-East (NE), South-East (SE), South-West (SW) and North-West (NW). Use them to indicate the direction in which the word you have found travels..
So in the second diagram (right) if we look at [5,3,NW] we find the word ‘START’. In addition, at [1,8,S] is the word ‘STOP’ (notice how a letter may be part of more than one word).And at [9,5,W] you find ‘HANDCLASP’, as when you shake someone by the paw to say, ‘Yes, thanks, I’ve got the hang of this now.’
So now for a proper example of what Procol fans will be contemplating during Christmas, in all corners of the world:
To the right, a fully-filled nine-by-nine grid. Its challenge, to find the interrelated words. Bear in mind that they could read upwards, downwards, left, right, or slantiwise ... but they'll always be in a straight line ... no kinks.
To make this a LOT easier we’ll vouchsafe that the words are all heard in one Procol Harum song.
Contemplating the grid, letting the eye rove on all eight airts, you immediately notice such words as ARK, ANGER, RAVE, PAPS, LITHE and TON. But how useful is this? If the Procols do have a song containing all those words, it’s one they haven’t yet chosen to air outside the confines of the rehearsal dungeon.
Look again, though, and you may note that these are fragments of longer words (DARKNESS, STRANGER, GRAVEYARD, NEWSPAPER, SLITHERED and TOMBSTONE) which do recognisably come from The Dead Man’s Dream, a song on Procol’s finest album to date, HOME.
If you spot a word in the grid, but can't think what song it belongs to, type it in to this Google search field
Still, you may feel a bit at sea. And here at ‘Beyond the Pale’ we don’t want you feeling kinda seasick. So each WordSearch puzzle is furnished with additional clues, such as:
Today you’re looking for TEN words, and their letter-lengths are 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9. (This means there's one word that's five letters long, one with seven letters, two with eight, and six with nine letters.)
Knowing the lengths of the hidden words in question makes everything much easier, and you now approach your task with fortitude and pluck, speedily finding everything you're looking for.
But what if you find other words – such as WORM – that don’t feature in the song implied by the other answers? Well, common sense says, make a note of them … in case they come in handy later on, you'll know where to find them.
Common sense also suggests you might find it worthwhile to keep a note of the locations [CAT, DOG, airt] of each relevant song-word in case you need to check anything on the final evening, when you’ve solved twelve puzzles similar to this example, and when you have the famous Thirteenth Question to answer, which might involve glancing back over previous working.
Seasoned contenders will know to watch for patterns and anomalies and so on, so as to be primed for the final evening’s entertainment.
They’ll also be on the lookout for clues and
misdirections in the daily wording and, indeed, in these very
instructions.
That example (right) uses only two airts, East and West. Yet when the real puzzles start, watch out for North, South and the slanty hybrid airts (NE, SE, SW and NW) as well, as shewn in the additional example (below):
BUGLES [3,4,NE]
CORRIDORS [1,1,NE]
FEATHERS [8,2,N]
GHOST [9,5,NW]
MALICE [6,9,SW]
WAGING [2,8,SE]
WEAPONS [9,8,SW]
Fires (Which Burnt Brightly)
Track 8 from Grand Hotel (1973)
Easy-peasy innit.
COMPANION [1,1,E]
CORPSES [8,9,W]
DARKNESS [9,4,W]
DIRTY [5,5,E]
GRAVEYARD [1,3,E]
NEWSPAPER [9,2,W]
PAVEMENTS [4,1,N]
SLITHERED [9,6,W]
STRANGER [8,7,W]
TOMBSTONE [9,8,W]
The Dead Man’s Dream
Track 2 from Home (1970).
Anomalous word, WORM
Note that these solutions contain crosses that aren't in the puzzles themselves. These are just to show the locations (in the puzzles themselves) of letters not used in the song-words that you set out to detect.