Okay, let me walk you through how I put together this crossword puzzle about the Swiss founder of analytical psychology. It wasn’t some grand plan, just something I decided to try out.
Getting Started – The Idea
So, I was doing some reading, you know, delving into psychology topics just for my own interest. Got stuck on Carl Jung for a bit, the guy behind analytical psychology. Reading about archetypes, the collective unconscious, all that jazz. Then it hit me – maybe I could make a little crossword puzzle about him and his ideas. Seemed like a decent way to organize some thoughts and maybe challenge myself a bit.
Gathering the Pieces – Words and Clues
First thing I did was grab a piece of paper and just started brainstorming words. Anything that popped into my head related to Jung. Keywords, basically. I jotted down things like:
- JUNG
- SWISS
- PSYCHOLOGY
- ANALYTICAL
- ARCHETYPE
- SHADOW
- ANIMA
- ANIMUS
- PERSONA
- UNCONSCIOUS (maybe Collective Unconscious)
- SYNCHRONICITY
- INTROVERT
- EXTRAVERT
Just dumped them all onto the page. Didn’t worry too much about whether they’d fit yet. Once I had a decent list, I started thinking about simple clues for each one. For ‘JUNG’, the clue was obvious: ‘Surname of the founder’. For ‘ARCHETYPE’, maybe something like ‘Universal pattern or image’. Kept it pretty straightforward.
Putting It Together – The Grid
This was the fiddly bit. Making the words actually intersect on a grid. I didn’t use any fancy software at first. Just sketched out some squares on graph paper. I tried putting ‘ANALYTICAL’ down the middle, then seeing what could cross it. ‘JUNG’ fit nicely crossing the ‘A’. Then I tried fitting ‘ARCHETYPE’ and ‘SHADOW’.
It took a fair bit of erasing and rearranging. Sometimes a word just wouldn’t fit, or it would mess up another word. Had to swap some words out from my initial list, find shorter ones, or ones with letters that worked better in certain spots. Like, maybe ‘EGO’ was easier to fit in than ‘SYNCHRONICITY’. You have to be flexible. It’s like a little jigsaw puzzle, really. Took me a couple of tries to get a layout where most of my key terms fit in without looking too forced.
Refining the Clues
With the grid more or less sorted, I went back to the clues. Read them out loud to see if they made sense. Tried to make sure they weren’t too easy or too obscure. For ‘SWISS’, the clue ‘Nationality of the founder’ seemed okay. For ‘ANIMA’, maybe ‘Feminine aspect in male psyche’. Just aiming for clarity. I tweaked the wording here and there until I felt they were decent enough for a casual puzzle.
Final Check
Once I had the grid filled and the clues written down, I basically solved it myself, pretending I didn’t know the answers. Just to double-check everything lined up, the numbers matched the clues, and there weren’t any glaring errors. Made sure all the tags like Across and Down were clear.
And that was pretty much it. Ended up with a finished crossword. It wasn’t perfect, probably, but it was a fun little exercise. A good way to spend an afternoon and engage with the topic differently than just reading. Pretty satisfied with the result, just a simple practical thing I managed to put together.
