Excel and Crossword Puzzles
Crossword puzzles offer an engaging way for learners to review classroom concepts and information. Interactive puzzles let students know immediately whether they’ve interpreted a clue correctly or incorrectly.
Instructions for a
sample interactive crossword puzzle:
Open Microsoft Excel
In cells A3 through J3 type the word
In cells B3 through B7 type the word
In cells D2 through D11 type the words WHITEHOUSE.
Save your work.
Highlight all the cells from A1 through J12.
Right click inside the highlighted area and then left click format cells.
Choose the border tab and click outline. Choose the alignment tab and select center in the pull down menu beneath horizontal. Click OK.
Click outside the highlighted area to remove the highlighting.
Hold down the control button and highlight one of the words you typed. Right click inside the highlighted area and then left click format cells.
Choose the border tab and click outline and then click inside to make a box for that puzzle clue. Click OK.
Click outside the highlighted area to remove the highlighting.
Repeat the last three steps for each word in the puzzle.
Save your work.
Let’s make it look
like a crossword puzzle:
Highlight a cell or a group of cells in the puzzle that do not have letters in them.
Right click inside the highlighted area and then left click format cells.
Choose patterns and choose a color for your background.
Repeat the steps above to color all the empty cells. Do not color cells with letters in them.
You also can adjust the width and height of the cells. Highlight all cells A1 through J12.
Click format in the menu bar.
Select row>height, and change the number to the desired size. Click OK.
Click format in the menu bar, select column>width, and change the width of the puzzle. Click OK.
Save your work.
Clues:
Click cell A3, click insert in the menu bar and select comment.
In the sticky note that appears type the clue, “Who was the first U.S. President?”
Hit enter.
Click cell D2, go to insert>comment and type “What is the official residence of the U.S. President?”
Click cell B3, go to the insert>comment and type “Who was the second U.S. President?”
Save your work.
Interactive:
Next you need to set the conditions that will let students know whether their answers are right or wrong. In excel, a condition tells the program that if a certain value is typed in a cell, the formatting for that cell should change.
To let students know whether an answer in the crossword puzzle is right or wrong, we want each correctly typed letter to appear green and each incorrectly typed letter to appear red. To set those conditions:
Click cell A3.
Click format in the menu bar and select conditional formatting.
Click add. You will see two menus. Condition 1 and condition 2.
For condition 1, in the drop down menu that says “between”, select equal to instead, and type the letter “W” in the empty box next to it. Click format, change the color to green and click OK.
For condition 2, in the drop down menu that says “between”, select NOT equal to instead, and type the letter “W” in the empty box. Click format, change the color to red and click OK.
The W in cell A3 should now be green. Delete the W from A3 and type in another letter. The letter should appear Red. If so, you formatted the conditions correctly.
You will need to do this for every letter. When you are finished with the conditional formatting, erase all the text from your puzzle. The puzzle should now be blank, except for the colored background and the red triangles in the corner of the clue cells.
Save your puzzle as a template so students can open the file and complete the puzzle without damaging the original file.
If your students are up to the challenge, invite them to follow the directions above and use Excel to create their own interactive puzzles.