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Crosswords / Crucigramas/ Mots Croisés

  Tags: Games
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
IarllTroseddwr
Newbie
United States
Joined 3455 days ago

23 posts - 28 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 1 of 4
03 December 2014 at 10:59pm | IP Logged 
Hello,

I recently came across an archive of crossword puzzles at La Nacion (http://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/juegos/criptograma) . I thought it would be really cool to go through and see if I would be able to solve any of them with my current knowledge of Spanish. Wow... not surprisingly, the answer was a resounding NO.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of crosswords in English, but I do find them interesting if I have time, but I'm not used to completing them. I thought it would be fun and a good idea to try and get used to doing these as a way of improving my Spanish, and general knowledge at the same time. My thinking is that due to the wording of the clues, I'll learn an abundance of synonyms. Also, trying to solve them using Spanish will surely help me with thinking and staying in the language, rather than switching back to English to solve the clue and translating the answer.

I'm just curious if anyone has had any experience with this and if so, have you seen any results? Already, I learned two new words from one clue: amolador (the answer) and afilador (also afilar - to sharpen). This led me to a Wikipedia article about amoladores (If anyone is interested: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afilador) which I found pretty cool. I figure that by solving the clues and reading up on any answers that I'm not familiar with, I can increase my knowledge and vocabulary of many different topics at the same time. The puzzles at La Nacion all seem to reference book passages for popular authors (mostly Spanish is seems), so this could be another resource to give me ideas for reading materials.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Lemberg1963
Bilingual Diglot
Groupie
United States
zamishka.blogspot.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4035 days ago

41 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*, Ukrainian*
Studies: French, German, Spanish, Polish

 
 Message 2 of 4
05 December 2014 at 2:07am | IP Logged 
Crossroads may be a good tool for making the jump from B2 to C1, I'll have to try it out at
some point.
1 person has voted this message useful



muripic
Diglot
Newbie
Argentina
mardeideas.com.ar
Joined 3445 days ago

2 posts - 4 votes
Speaks: EnglishC2, Spanish*
Studies: French

 
 Message 3 of 4
06 December 2014 at 11:04pm | IP Logged 
I agree with Lemberg, crosswords can be a great way to learn if you already have a high
level. The thing with crosswords for natives (like the ones in lanacion.com.ar) is that
many times most of the words are not very productive, they are not very frequent and
can't be used in many contexts. Amolador, for example, is a word that lots of natives
don't know.
I always try to look for crosswords made specifically for learners (I'm currently
learning French) and that has worked very well for me, but the newspaper ones just were a
source of frustration.
1 person has voted this message useful



Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5661 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 4 of 4
07 December 2014 at 4:23pm | IP Logged 
I've done crosswords at various points in Spanish and i think it's a fun activity. The answers might not be the most common words, but you'll learn some trivia, culture, and a lot of other things while searching for the answers to words. It's also fun and more productive for your Spanish than watching TV at home!

Also, the reason they all seem to reference book passages may have something to do with them being called "criptogramas literarios" :)


1 person has voted this message useful



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