“Life in the Seven Kingdoms is never dull . . .”

–Jen McConnel, School Library Journal

How is a story is like a crossword puzzle?

half-timbered houses and ruined castle in charming village of Beilstein
A fairy tale village on the Mosel River in Germany, complete with half-timbered houses and ruined castle. ©LaurelDecher, 2021

While you wait for me to solve mine, here's a crossword puzzle for you

A crossword puzzle isn’t something you solve by working your way from top to bottom. Sometimes it works to “solve” a story backwards and sometimes it doesn’t.

Mostly, my strategy for building stories is the same as my strategy for solving crossword puzzles. “Easy” ones first.

That’s exactly what I’m did with the books in the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tale series.

When I made this crossword puzzle, Book 4 in the series didn’t yet have a title, but I knew the main character will be Vlad. His nickname is “the ultimate ruler” because he collects rules like other kids collect rocks.

So I could fill in the answer to hero’s name: “Vlad”. But the clues for the rest of the story were still a puzzle.

How will Vlad win the day?

Is the baby dragon called Crk going to show up in this story?

For answers to these and other questions, read Rule Trouble: The Case of the Illegal Dragon.

Seven Kingdoms Crossword Puzzle

Here’s a crossword puzzle for the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales. If you’ve read TROUBLE WITH PARSNIPS, LOST WITH LEEKS, and UNDER PRESSURE WITH A SQUASH, it should be a cinch. If you haven’t, it might take a bit more work. Hope you enjoy it! Directions: To print, or to clear your answers, click on the hamburger menu (three lines in right bottom corner of the crossword puzzle).

BONUS: I made this at CrosswordLabs.com Make your own crossword here.

The Puzzle Clues are from the first three books in the series

You might find some answers around the website.

Looking for something to read anyway? Click on the covers below for more about the rest of the books:

You can find more games, puzzles, (and downloadable quizzes in the Accelerated Reader format) on the Puzzles & Games page.

Update 🙂

How’s your puzzle coming along?

I solved mine:

“Book 4” became Rule Trouble: The Case of the Illegal Dragon.

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