[sonofagun]

There has been some discussion about whether the States puzzles should be 15x or 21x. If they are to be strictly 21x that poses a problem, perhaps a big one, for certain states. I volunteered for North Dakota and if accepted I'll gladly do a puzzle for that state... a 15x. Someone doing California, for example, has an enormous amount of theme possibilities... North Dakota, not so many. Is it realistic to think one could make a 21x puzzle with 8 theme blocks about North Dakota and hold a solvers interest?

I believe we need to determine puzzle size soon. Some folks would like to get a jump on constructing in the hopes that the project keeps moving forward.

Jerome

[Todd G]

I believe we need to determine puzzle size soon. Some folks would like to get a jump on constructing in the hopes that the project keeps moving forward.

Someone already did get a jump on constructing...me! (See the Sample Puzzle thread).  For that very reason.

I told Mike I thought 15x15 was the best approach.  The only thing is, some states have rather long names (though fortunately 13 letters is as long as they get -- and 2 of the 3 of that length are two words that can be entered separately).  I had two reasons for preferring a 15x15 puzzle:

1. Less work for us constructors
2. Don't have to cram the grid and text onto the printed page

If you think we're ready, we could set up a poll here and let people vote on it.

---Todd

[Garison Piatt]

My state, thankfully, has only six letters, but I think we can get around the name-length issue by permitting the use of abbreviations and nicknames.

OLEMISS, SDAK, PENN, CALI, MINN, and MASS should be fine.


-garison