By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Charlotte Wong's "Crossword of the Pacific" begins today.
Charlotte Wong only found out her friends' favorite pastimes include filling out the Star-Bulletin puzzle when she started making up her own puzzles.
"I had no idea they did puzzles, but I told them I had made up a few and would they try it, and they said, 'Really?' They thought it was really cool."
Beginning today, Wong's "Crossword of the Pacific" puzzles -- with clues and answers using Hawaiian, English and pidgin words -- will run every Monday on Mo' Stuffs, page 3 of Local Moco.
Wong particularly likes the versatility of double vowels in Hawaiian words such as a'a and ali'i. And she's not particularly fond of acronyms, alternative spellings or words such as "eft," which she considers a "typical crossword puzzle word" that has no real use in everyday conversation.
Although Wong said the puzzles were created for medium difficulty, she said most of the trouble comes in figuring out whether an English, Hawaiian or pidgin solution is called for.
"There's a lot of variation as to what can go into a blank, and sometimes if you're thinking local it's hard to switch to English."
With a clue like "grind," for instance, are you thinking of the action of grinding a pepper mill or the local expression for chowing down?
Wong is a class of '86 Punahou and University of Hawaii graduate with a dual bachelor's degree in economics and American studies. She works as a research statistician for the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.
Although she's been dabbling in figuring out crossword puzzles since graduating from high school, she made the leap into creating them on a lark.
"I thought, 'Wouldn't it be fun if?' I started out using common words, then discovered, hey, I can fit 'Dave Shoji' here, or 'wahine.' "
Sometimes a puzzle will be inspired by a word she wants to use, but "I can't be too stubborn about it. I can spend an awful long time trying to make it fit and I get disappointed when a word in my mind doesn't fit into the puzzle."
Wong decided to go public to give people more opportunity to play with words, saying, "Newspaper puzzles tend to be on the harder side. It gets a little discouraging and I thought maybe if there were an easier puzzle more people would do them."
But already, she's gotten a glimpse into demanding psyche of the crossword puzzle addict.
"Usually I can finish one in a day or two, but now I have to be more careful. I sent one to my sister and boy did I get blasted! There's a lot of disappointment when a puzzle doesn't work out."
Monday, March 17, 1997
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