Welcome to National Park Word Cube Puzzle 2. (Word Cube Puzzle 1 was titled National Park Week Quiz #7.) If you can satisfactorily complete this word cube exercise before 12:00 midnight EST today you will eligible for our monthly prize drawing and a chance to win a copy of David and Kay Scott's The Complete Guide To The National Park Lodges, 7th Edition.

Setup

(1) Draw a 3 x 3 grid on a sheet of paper as though you were going to play a game of tic-tac-toe.

(2) Print the letters E, M, and A in the three cells of the top row, then print R, H, and L in the middle row and O, S, and T in the bottom row.

(3) Make sure that the letter H is in the middle cell of your grid. Circle it. You will need to keep that H in mind.

Definition of Terms

National park. A national park is a National Park System unit. There are currently 397 national parks.

Stem. A stem is the portion of a national park name that is not a category or type designation. For example, the stem of Arches National Park is Arches, the stem of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is Indiana Dunes, and the stem of George Washington Memorial Parkway is George Washington Memorial.

National park stem word. A national park stem word is any word that appears in the stem of a national park name. In the three examples provided above, the stem words are Arches, Indiana, Dunes, George, Washington, and Memorial. The words National, Park, Lakeshore, and Parkway are not national park stem words because none is part of a stem in these examples.

Grid letter. A grid letter is a letter occupying a cell of the 3 x 3 grid. The nine grid letters are E, M, A, R, H, L, O, S, and T.

Middle letter. The middle letter is the letter in the center cell of the grid. Make sure that the middle letter in your grid is H.

Assignment

Using just the grid letters, create eight (8) national park stem words containing the letter H. **Just provide the stem words -- no park names needed or wanted.**

Rules

(1) The middle letter (H) must be used at least once in every national park stem word that you create. A stem word that does not contain the letter H will be disqualified.

(2) Any grid letter, including the middle letter, may be used more than once when creating a stem word.

(3) A stem word can be part of a hyphenated word combination. For example, in the case of Kalako-Honokohau National Historical Park, both Kalako and Honokohau are acceptable stem words.

(4) The article "the" does not count as a stem word.

(5) An initial does not count a stem word. In the case of James A. Garfield National Historic Site, for example, the “A.” does not count as a stem word.

You only need 8

By following these rules it is possible to create at least 11 national park stem words drawn from the names of more than a dozen national parks. You are required to create only 8.

Good luck! The answers and a list of readers who answered correctly will be posted in tomorrow's Traveler.

No cheating!

If we catch you Googling or engaged in other sneakery, we will make you write on the whiteboard 100 times:

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