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book-blender's Introduction

Book Blender

Solve a puzzle, read a book

Each puzzle is made from a short story that you can read as you solve it. Download the puzzle's PDF and print it out.

New blended books are announced in the blog and its RSS feed, and usually on mastodon.

Here are the blended books you can solve:

  • The Fox and the Grapes, by Aesop - The classic fable of unfulfilled desire. (130 words)
  • Christmas Presents, 1914, from Punch Magazine - a humorous look at some less serious impacts of World War I on British families. This is from the same period when A. A. Milne was writing for Punch, but I don't know who wrote this. (630 words)
  • The Five Boons of Life, by Mark Twain - a rueful look at what drives us. (770 words)
  • The Failure of Hope & Wandel, by Ambrose Bierce - An ambitious business plan goes bust. This probably didn't win him any fans in the south. (810 words)
  • The Talking-Out of Tarrington, by Saki - Clovis avoids making a new friend. (980 words)
  • The Beggars, by Lord Dunsany - A story about joy, from one of the early masters of fantasy. (1,100 words)
  • The Feast of Nemesis, by Saki - How to counteract the peace and goodwill of the holidays. (1,500 words)
  • Luck, by Mark Twain - How a military "genius" made a name for himself. (1,700 words)
  • Nyarlathotep, by H. P. Lovecraft - An ancient god returns for the end of the world. Solve some of the easier stories before this one, or the challenging vocabulary will fill you with aeehinnopprs. (1,100 words)

As an example, here's the first section of The Fox and The Grapes, by Aesop:

fox-start

Start unscrambling the letters in each word that you can. Some of the longer words might be hard to unscramble, so skip them at first. Some words could be unscrambled more than one way, like "was" or "saw", so skip them too.

fox-easy

Once you've unscrambled the easy words in a section, look below the * * * divider. Each column shows all the letters at that position in the words above. Of course, each column is scrambled, so you don't know which row each letter came from. Cross out the letters in that column in the words you've already unscrambled, and the ones that are left can help you solve the last few words.

In the example, the second letter of the third word is the only thing missing in that column, so cross out all the letters below it. That leaves you with the letter u. Similarly, the seventh word is either "saw" or "was", so look to see which column has a w in it. Since only the first column under that word has a w, the word must be "was". The gray bands should help you trace the columns down the page.

fox-column

Continue using the clues at the bottom to work out letters until you can solve each word. You might also get hints from the surrounding story. If a column has more than one missing word, check to see if any of the letters appear in only one of the missing words. In the example, the second column has an r and a t left. The second missing word doesn't contain t, so it must have the r. That means that the first missing word has the t.

fox-deduction

Once you unscramble all the words in a section, move on to the next section to keep reading the story. If you need help or want to check your answer, see the solutions page.

If you enjoy these puzzles, you might like my Four-Letter Blocks that combine crossword puzzles with jigsaw puzzles. You can also find a complete list of my other projects.

Story and image sources are listed on the sources page.

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book-blender's Issues

Even out row counts

One version of the Fox and Grapes ended up with a single line on the last block, so it was trivial to solve. Distribute lines across blocks, so they are as close as possible to an even distribution.

Headings

Get titles and chapter names from markdown headings, then leave room for them by reducing lines in the next block.

Justify text

Avoids having so few letters in the last column.

Squeeze Title

I tried to convert "The Failure of Hope & Wandel" by Ambrose Bierce, and the title was too long to fit across the first page. Also, the p in "Hope" collided with the B in "Bierce". Try a slightly smaller font for the title, or some way to wrap the title.

Larger font

Half scale 30x8 letters is workable, but very small. Try something slightly bigger.

Add RSS

Add an RSS feed to announce new stories.

Example

Add the first section of The Fox and the Grapes to the main page. Fill it out, and show how the cross reference works. Use SVG images?

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