I do the NYT crossword every Thursday through Saturday and love it, but let’s face it - it isn’t making my Japanese any better.
I study quite a bit and am currently roughly N3 level, but probably with some obscure N2 and N1 vocabulary thrown in. I thought I’d try dipping a toe into Japanese crosswords, but so far it has been difficult finding interesting quality puzzles near my difficulty level.
I’ve found an app on the Apple App Store that has what seem to be quality puzzles, but they seem to be at least at N1 level, and require knowledge of specific Japanese actors and events. Something to aspire to, but I am not ready.
I also have a couple of books I picked up in Japan. One seems N2+, and the other has easier crosswords, but there are not too many crosses, so they’re poorly constructed. This particular book also has puzzles that use the same words repeatedly in the same puzzle. Ugh!
I do have one book, purchased in Japan, that has a few decent puzzles. It is one of those general game magazines, that has a couple of word finds and those puzzles where you need to find the differences between two images that look the same. There are some good visual crosswords in there. What I mean by visual crosswords, is that it will show a picture of an otter, for example, and the answer will be らっこ.
I’m going to continue to look, but has anyone else searched and had any success? (Or interesting failures?)
Thanks in advance for any replies.
