Comments on: Make a Word Find Puzzle With Excel or OpenOffice Calc

Comment on Make a Word Find Puzzle With Excel or OpenOffice Calc by: David Millar

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:03:05 +0000

I use spreadsheet applications to design a lot of the puzzles on my website, www.thegriddle.net. I actually found this site while doing homework for my MS Excel class and had an idea. If you are using the puzzle for multiple children, there is a way to make the puzzle appear randomly generated when in fact it has the same positioning as the other puzzles. With this method there is a chance that the random letters could actually form one of the target words, but it’s unlikely with longer words. All you need to do is fill the grid with the function:

=CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(65;90))

Which will generate random letters (all caps) in the grid. Then replace the squares with ‘hard-coded’ letters where you want your answers to be, and voila, seemingly random grids! I hope this is helpful to someone, somewhere

Dave

PS: I did this in OpenOffice, but if you change the semicolon to a comma it will probably work in MS Excel as well. And did you know that Google has a spreadhseet application too? http://docs.google.com

Comment on Make a Word Find Puzzle With Excel or OpenOffice Calc by: OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:03:07 +0000

Times Tables Quiz Sheet in OpenOffice.org Calc: The File, and How to Do It

For one of the exercises in my training materials, I put together an exercise using the random number function. It’s a times table document that regenerates itself every time you open it. Click this image to see a larger version.

Comment on Make a Word Find Puzzle With Excel or OpenOffice Calc by: Barbara

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 11:42:46 +0000

One more note - do check out The Tech Savvy Educator. It’s a neat forum with lots of ideas for using technology in teaching.

Comment on Make a Word Find Puzzle With Excel or OpenOffice Calc by: Barbara

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 02:30:17 +0000

Thanks! I forgot one step, though. You might want to select all and change the font and size after getting the letters all in on step 9.

Comment on Make a Word Find Puzzle With Excel or OpenOffice Calc by: The Tech Savvy Educator » Blog Archive » Spreadsheet Word Searches

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 16:29:43 +0000

[…] While reading Barbara’s blog, I found this terrific tutorial for using Excel or OpenOffice to create a word search from scratch. By following Barbara’s directions (which were very simple and thorough) I managed to create my own word search quickly and easily. If you have a few minutes click on over to Plugged In HomeSchool and give her tutorial a try. Feel free to post your examples in the forum. […]

Comment on Make a Word Find Puzzle With Excel or OpenOffice Calc by: Ben

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 15:29:07 +0000

That’s not a bad idea! I made up an example of my own following your directions and it turned out looking pretty good. Although it was a bit time consuming, this is a great way to help students slow down and think about the process of creation. If they go too fast they’re going to have to redo words and/or the puzzle to fit everything in.