I did NOT like the concept of Kaidoku, it felt too much like Sudoku as far as reasoning. My mistake was I wanted to start with the QU relationship and where the GU was I thought that was the QU which made me lose lots of time.
*David* | 06.30.09 - 12:05 pm | #

I couldn't get into a kaidoku frame of mind yesterday. Wanted SOSO where LULU went, because who considers *U*U words? (Matt, of course. Could've been TUTU too.) And when you think of the commonest doubled letters, the Z is not in the forefront of one's mind. (Unless one is Matt Gaffney.) After I erased everything I had (all of it wrong! so I was right to erase), I decided to chuck it.

Begging your pardon: ASHLAR?? This is not such a common word.
Orange | Homepage | 06.30.09 - 12:35 pm | #

ASHLAR did indeed give me pause. the H was the last letter i put in the grid, and it had to be right because it was the only unused letter. i don't even know what ASHLAR means, but it does kind of look like a word.
joon | 06.30.09 - 12:46 pm | #

MILLIPEDE to MADCAP to CIRCULAR, for me. Ended with trying to figure out what letter I hadn't used yet for ASxLER. I pretty much resorted to cheating right away, and don't even feel too guilty about it.
SethG | 06.30.09 - 12:50 pm | #

David fell into the main trap Matt set -- Matt mentioned that he anticipated people might have QUARRYMEN / QUARK / QUOTA where GUESSWORK / GUEST / GUIDE should be.

Fortunately for me, I'm so bad at Kaidoku that I didn't know enough to fall into the trap.....
Eric Maddy | 06.30.09 - 1:32 pm | #

ASHLAR was nasty, and there is also only one O in the puzzle, so if you're going the cryptogram route and looking for common letters to spot vowels, things could get nasty. Words like SYLVAN throw off the expected letter patterns, to boot.
Had TUTU here at first also, which corrected itself (eventually).
Howard B | 06.30.09 - 2:52 pm | #

I did what I always did with Kaidokus -- played "Hunt the Q" and failed, falling into the Q=1 trap. It wasn't so bad, though, since the letter that followed really was a U. Then I found the E and was off to the races.

If anyone wishes there were more of these puzzles available, there will be soon. Matt and I are collaborating on a Kaidoku blog that will go live this Thursday. I know most of the people on this blog do enough puzzles already, but if you have room for one more, there it is. The Kaidokus will be available in applet format so you don't have to go using MS Paint to solve them.

Hope to see you there!
Alex | Homepage | 06.30.09 - 3:10 pm | #

Always feels good to see other people falling into the same traps! =) I had QUARRYMEN/QUARK/QUOTA for a while too...but I knew the 7 was an E, and once I finally(!) got MILLIPEDE, it was a breeze from there...I enjoyed this puzzle as something different, great job, Matt!!
jimmy d | 06.30.09 - 3:23 pm | #

I tried random things in the MILLIPEDE area for a while before noticing the place where LULU is. Not many words fit that pattern so that helped a lot. I had NONO in there for a while, and tried HENNA where VILLA is (the As in the rest of the grid reinforced my guess). That ended up being wrong, and I tried TUTU, which was closer... that got me BETTA instead of HENNA. The As up in ANIMAL kept reappearing there so I threw ANIMAL in there just to see what would happen, and it all fell into place.
Doing these puzzles without a couple of letters already in place, like you usually see, is way more satisfying.

I love a good code crossword/kaidoku, so I'm definitely looking forward to the blog!
Anna | 06.30.09 - 4:42 pm | #

hunt the Q, interesting. i did what i always do: look for the word with the most repeated letters and figure out what it could be. in this case, that was MILLIPEDE.

and i say "always," but i've only ever done this twice, and the first time, i naturally fell right into the PIZZAZZ trap. well, i did get it anyway, so maybe it's not such a bad strategy.

i'll be watching your kaidoku blog. is the plan to have the applet work like the NYT acrostic applet (i.e. as soon as you type something in, the applet auto-fills all like-numbered squares)?
joon | Homepage | 06.30.09 - 4:43 pm | #

Joon - Right now the applet doesn't do that. I'm torn on what to do with it -- certainly an applet that fills in every E when you type in an E (for example) would make things simpler for the solver, but I'm worried it would take some of the fun out of the solving experience. At some point we'll poll the audience to see what everyone thinks about that.

Anna - I totally agree with you re: everyday coded crosswords. It's no fun to have letters just given to you! Plus, I've found they often contain uninteresting words, so the solving experience isn't as fun. Glad you're on board with the blog!
Alex | Homepage | 06.30.09 - 5:15 pm | #

Could you let the solver turn auto-fill on or off in the applet....?
Anna | 06.30.09 - 5:21 pm | #

Anna - good thinking! I'll get to work on that.
Alex | Homepage | 06.30.09 - 6:45 pm | #

My experience was much like Joon's, down to having H as the last letter and having to verify that ASHLAR is a real word, but a lot slower, as I was "sure" that LULU was actually TUTU for a long time.

I vote for at least having an option to have the applet auto-fill all letters. I never did acrostics because I was always messing up transferring the letters back and forth, until the applet for acrostics appeared. That got me over the hump. I seriously considered making my own jury-rigged applet to attach the kaidoku.
tmccormick4 | 07.01.09 - 12:59 am | #

I fell for the QU trap hook, line, and sinker. QUARRYMEN was a gimme. Man, my eraser got a workout. Be honest now... does anybody actually do these things in ink?
JAZZ was the KEYWORD that finally broke this puzzle open for me.
wobbith | 07.01.09 - 4:54 am | #

My jpg printout left out the rightmost column, which I didn't catch. After much erasing, came up with the meta, and MILLIPED, allowed by unabridged, CACTU, CLIMA, and LUL which googled as acronyms which I guess would be allowed. Also no X in puzzle. What a workout!
peechy | 07.01.09 - 6:06 pm | #