Gimme a Spring BREAK (March 11-19, 2006), or How to Make a FUN Comeback in Chemistry 2302

by Jeff Youngquist / Edited by George Barany

Chem 2302 is the second semester of a large introductory organic chemistry course that I am often assigned to teach. In spring 2006, I was approached by one of my students, Jeff Youngquist, who had created a puzzle that, in a truly ingenious fashion, re-emphasized some of the points I was making in lecture. We were able to polish the puzzle — which violates a few sacred cows (minimum number of letters per word; no unchecked squares) of the crossword biz — sufficiently to share it with the other students in time for Spring Break. Here is what was written at the bottom of the puzzle: Eagle-eyed purists will SPRING at the chance to point out that two of the squares can only be filled using an across-clue. To compensate for such a BREAK from standard puzzle etiquette, those squares are shaded gray. One of them is the letter grade most Chem 2302 students aspire to. Symmetrically disposed is the consolatory letter Chem 2302 students get for "effort."

Click here (two page) or here (one page, for those with good eyesight) to view or download this Thursday-ish puzzle in PDF format; here for the solution. For technical reasons, there is no way this particular puzzle can be solved on-line.

If you want to tell others about this particular page, refer them to http://tinyurl.com/springbreakpuz

More puzzles here (all) and here (science).

E-mail barany@umn.edu to be added to a bcc distribution list.