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National Park Week Quiz #7: Word Cube Brain Twister

Welcome to National Park Week Quiz #7! If you can satisfactorily complete this word cube exercise before 12:00 midnight EST today you will be eligible for Traveler’s National Park Week prize drawing and a chance to win a National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map for the national park of your choice.

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 K, E, and C in the three cells of the top row, then print S, R, and Y in the middle row and G, O, and F in the bottom row.

(3) Circle the R in the middle cell of your grid. You will need to keep that R 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 Grand Canyon National Park is Grand Canyon, the stem of Lake Mead National Recreation Area is Lake Mead, and the stem of Blue Ridge Parkway is Blue Ridge.

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 Grand, Canyon, Lake, Mead, Blue, and Ridge. National, Park, Recreation, Area, 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 K, E, C, S, R, Y, G, O, and F.

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 R.


Assignment

Using just the grid letters, create 12 national park stem words.

Rules

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

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

(3) A word you create from the grid must be an independent word in a national park stem. That is, the word cannot be part of a longer word.

Just 12 out of 15 is all you need

By following these rules it is possible to create 15 national park stem words drawn from the names of more than two dozen national parks (two of which have two qualifying stem words).

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:

The pencil-and-paper game known in the United States as tic-tac-toe, tick-tack-toe, tick-tat-toe, or tit-tat-toe, goes by other names in various parts of the world, such as naughts and crosses in Australia, X’s and O’s in Ireland, wick-wack-woe in China, and X-O in Mauritius.

Comments

You're in, ILoveRoadTrips, but I'm afraid you were a bit hasty in taking credit for two extras. Do you see that illegal N there in "Oregon"? That cost you your turndown service and both chocolate nibblies.


It's a pleasure to welcome andcla03 and EEW to the winners circle. Gold Star Passes for both of you.


Kurt Repanshek:
Please don't encourage the professor, celbert, he's already fairly intolerable to work with...

He hinted that he's a "shower optional" guy a few weeks ago. However, I'm guessing he usually works with you remotely.


I'm disappointed, Kurt. I only grade out at fairly intolerable? Must be losing my touch.


Thanks for the kind words, celbert. Word cube or letter grid games of one sort or another have existed for a very long time. Though the content of this one is unique (as far as I know), I shamelessly borrowed the basic grid form and the mandatory middle letter rule. As you've probably surmised,the hardest part of the process is choosing the appropriate middle letter.


Folks, here's the intro for the list that RC recently sent us:

Hi, I have wanted to participate in these games all week but couldn’t find the time. Thank goodness I had a root canal this morning and found myself home from work with time on my hands until the novacaine wears off and the throbbing subsides. Here’s what I came up with, in order that I thought of them.

I'm not even going to read the list. RC is in! Anybody who can say "Thank goodness I had a root canal this morning" belongs in our winners circle. Gold Star pass, unlimited concierge floor amenities, and turndown service with a whole damn bag of chocolate nibbles.


Good job, Clara. I enjoyed the fun "extras" you included, too.


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