Crossword
крестословица
A grid of cells filled with words from short clues, so that every crossing agrees on its letter.
Rules of the relay
Who plays
Two teams or more. A host prepares the grid and keeps the passing in order; the host does not solve.
Preparation
One grid is taken for everybody and divided into parts, one per team. The parts are cut so that they touch: words falling on a seam belong to two pieces at once, and it is those words that later bring the work together.
Each team receives its part and the clues for it.
The relay
Teams work at the same time, each on its own piece. At the end of a stage the pieces are passed on — round the table — and the next team carries on from whatever is already written.
What a previous team wrote is not erased. If an answer will not agree with a crossing, the disputed word is marked and left for the check.
Checking
When the pieces have gone round, the grid is assembled whole and the seams compared: the letter in a shared cell must be one. Disagreements are worked out together, going back to the clues for both words.
Time
A stage is limited by time or by a number of words filled — whichever is chosen is announced before the start. A limit for the whole relay may be set separately.
When it is done
When the grid is filled and every seam agrees.
Worth knowing
The format is assembled for the occasion. How many teams, how large a piece each gets, whether a stage is timed, whether the grid travels round the table or back to a host — all of it is agreed beforehand and fixed nowhere.
Glossary of terms
- A checked letter
- A letter standing on a crossing, confirmed by a second word. An unchecked letter belongs to one word only and nothing confirms it.
- The clue
- The short phrase by which a word is to be recognised. Not a dictionary entry but an indication precise enough, together with the crossings, to leave one answer.
- The crossing
- A cell belonging to two words at once, one across and one down. The letter in it serves both.
- The grid
- The field of a crossword: working cells that take letters, and blocked cells that keep words apart.
- The indicator
- A word in a cryptic clue telling you what to do with the letters: rearrange them, insert them, read them backwards, drop one.