After seeing Wordplay (a documentary about crossword puzzle fanaticism), I couldn’t resist the challenge of creating a kanji crossword for you. Well, that’s what I started doing, but it morphed into a word find, which you’ll find below.

You’ll probably want to print out the puzzle so you can write on it. Using “Print-Friendly View” will yield the cleanest copy.

Reading from left to right or from top to bottom (but not diagonally), circle all viable compounds. Many circles will overlap, as in this example:

質　問　題

Here, you’d circle the first and second characters, which form shitsumon (question). Then you’d circle the second and third characters, which say mondai (problem). Work through the grid in this way, finding chains.

Then lightly shade in all boxes that help form these chains. I’ve already shaded in eight boxes for you. (That sounds like a magnanimous gesture, doesn’t it?! It’s not. The shadings represent places where I couldn’t quite make things work the way I wanted!)

The pre-shaded boxes plus your shadings should form one large kanji. What character do you see? How do you read it? What does it mean?

The puzzle includes only words consisting of two kanji, with one big exception, where I screwed up and included a three-kanji compound! If you don’t find that one, don’t worry; by locating all viable two-kanji compounds, you’ll still make the answer appear.

There’s no hiragana in the chart below, but don’t let that stop you. For instance, if you saw 食物, you would circle it, knowing that it represented ta(be)mono (food), which normally appears as 食べ物. Only three of the hidden words are missing interstitial hiragana.

Big tip: All the compounds tucked into this word find have appeared on main pages of Kanji Curiosity. The blog website has a great search engine. If you’re stuck or unsure, paste two contiguous characters into it, and see if you get any search results. For instance, if you enter 言葉 (kotoba: word, speech, language), you’ll find that this compound has appeared on the main pages of two blog entries. Unfortunately, with the cases involving interstitial hiragana, such searches won’t work.

I hope this puzzle proves to be both fun and useful. In making it, I learned a lot from reviewing old blogs. I had forgotten an astonishing amount! I’ll never cease to be amazed at the way kanji has little staying power in the mind. Well, there’s no use in fighting it. I just see that aspect as an opportunity to make wonderful discoveries again and again, even if they’re the same insights every time. Kanji joy is an infinitely renewable resource.

Good luck!

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