Welcome to National Park Week Quiz #7! If you can satisfactorily complete this word cube exercise before 12:00 midnight EST today you will be eligible for Traveler’s National Park Week prize drawing and a chance to win a National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map for the national park of your choice.
Setup
(1) Draw a 3 x 3 grid on a sheet of paper as though you were going to play a game of tic-tac-toe.
(2) Print the letters K, E, and C in the three cells of the top row, then print S, R, and Y in the middle row and G, O, and F in the bottom row.
(3) Circle the R in the middle cell of your grid. You will need to keep that R in mind.
Definition of Terms
National park. A national park is a National Park System unit. There are currently 397 national parks.
Stem. A stem is the portion of a national park name that is not a category or type designation. For example, the stem of Grand Canyon National Park is Grand Canyon, the stem of Lake Mead National Recreation Area is Lake Mead, and the stem of Blue Ridge Parkway is Blue Ridge.
National park stem word. A national park stem word is any word that appears in the stem of a national park name. In the three examples provided above, the stem words are Grand, Canyon, Lake, Mead, Blue, and Ridge. National, Park, Recreation, Area, and Parkway are not national park stem words because none is part of a stem in these examples.
Grid letter. A grid letter is a letter occupying a cell of the 3 x 3 grid. The nine grid letters are K, E, C, S, R, Y, G, O, and F.
Middle letter. The middle letter is the letter in the center cell of the grid. Make sure that the middle letter in your grid is R.
Assignment
Using just the grid letters, create 12 national park stem words.
Rules
(1) The middle letter (R) must be used at least once in every national park stem word that you create. A stem word that does not contain the letter R will be disqualified.
(2) Any grid letter, including the middle letter, may be used more than once when creating a stem word.
(3) A word you create from the grid must be an independent word in a national park stem. That is, the word cannot be part of a longer word.
Just 12 out of 15 is all you need
By following these rules it is possible to create 15 national park stem words drawn from the names of more than two dozen national parks (two of which have two qualifying stem words).
Answers and a list of readers who answered correctly will be posted in tomorrow's Traveler.
No cheating!
If we catch you Googling or engaged in other sneakery, we will make you write on the whiteboard 100 times:
The pencil-and-paper game known in the United States as tic-tac-toe, tick-tack-toe, tick-tat-toe, or tit-tat-toe, goes by other names in various parts of the world, such as naughts and crosses in Australia, X’s and O’s in Ireland, wick-wack-woe in China, and X-O in Mauritius.
Comments
Oh, I guess my elephant looks a little lot different, LOL. ROTFL! I knew I should have asked for clarification first! I thought we were playing some new version of tic tac toe, so after drawing my grid I thought we could only use letters in the combinations ERO, SRY, KRF, and GRC, with each combination being used either in that order or backwards. Yes, I have a bad tendency to overthink things. Having eventually come out with approximately the right number of words I thought was in the ballpark. I'm not sure I have enough brain cells (or time!) left to try such a monumental task again :)
C'mon, EEW. Enough about the labor pains. Let's see the baby.
Eric, I was already reaching for your Gold Star Pass when I encountered that awful word on your list. Surely you've discovered it for yourself by now?
Welcome to the winners circle, Ranger Dave. Pick up your Gold Star Pass at the Concierge Desk.
PS: That very last word among the extras you provided is not a stem word. Only the first two words in that park name you are thinking of are stem words. The words that follow constitute a (unique) category descriptor.
I wondered about that. Should have guessed you would have a "unique" category you didn't tell us about.
Oops. I really wish there were an 'A' in the grid. Back to continue contemplating Stems....
Ranger Dave, even though I would not put it past the Quizmeister, he did not invent any "unique" national park designations to use for his own nefarious purposes. Congress can take credit for that. Here's the deal. After you list the National Monuments, National Parks, National Seashores, etc. in their respective categories (designation types), you have 11 national parks left over. That is, you have 11 parks that don't fit neatly into any designation category. So, what do you do? You lump them together under the heading "Other Designations" (bureaucratese for "Miscellaneous"). It happens that the park you and I are talking about is in there with the National Mall, the White House, Constitution Gardens, and seven other oddballs. The Quizmeister will now accept your apology. :o)