I’m buried in game translation work right now, so this’ll be a short post.
First off, I’d like to thank you again for your input about ふりがな display. I’ve decided to do it in the mouse hover style from now on- that way you can more easily think about what the reading is before you cheat and look it up. 
I also took Tae’s advice and made it so that ふりがなの付いた言葉 are highlighted when you put your cursor over them. Highlight 言葉 in that last sentence to see what I mean.
Now, for the good stuff! I made you a crossword to do! Print it out (or open it in Paint/Photoshop/other image utility of choice) and have fun! This crossword tests your knowledge of uncommon 漢字 for common words which are usually written in ひらがな. Okay, some of the entries are gimmes, but some of them should be real head-scratchers. Amuse yourselves with this while I pull another all-nighter to finish this translation project. Urgh…
I’ll post the answers in a couple of days, but feel free to post the final answer in <spoiler>spoiler tags</spoiler> in the comments, if you get it.
注意: 縦の３は、もともと間違いでしたが、そのところに「こなた」という、あまり見かけない読みを入れると、大丈夫なはずです。これだけはおまけにしましょう。
12 responses so far ↓
1 PickledRadish // Jan 4, 2008 at 5:11 am
Thankyou, but it’s so fuzzy that I can’t read it.
2 Nat // Jan 4, 2008 at 6:01 am
Are you looking at the full-size picture (the one that’s linked to)? It shouldn’t look fuzzy at all. Maybe your browser is shrinking it to fit the size of your window?
Alternatively, you could just right-click and “Save Link As.”
3 snk // Jan 4, 2008 at 10:52 am
looks like fun! so i did it
トマトの図鑑?
and is yoko 2 and tate 3 wrong? because tate 3 doesnt match yoko 8… ら and た..
4 snk // Jan 4, 2008 at 10:53 am
hey.. i put in the tag for spoiler but why didnt it show up O_O?
5 Nat // Jan 4, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I fixed it… it looks like some strange way of how Wordpress breaks up the span tags with p tags, making the spoiler plug-in not quite work. If you only put spoiler tags on one paragraph at a time, I think it should work.
And yeah, I think I goofed on the crossword! Man, I suck. I’m fixing it right now.
6 Nat // Jan 4, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Ha, thank goodness for Japanese’s ludicrous amounts of alternative readings. “Fix” noted above in post.
And good job, snk! You got it! Hehe.
7 Rana // Jan 5, 2008 at 12:57 am
I played around with this earlier this morning and managed to solve it (at least, I had the same answer as snk)… with the help of a dictionary for a couple of the words. I’m surprised at the number of those that I managed to get without looking them up, though. ^_^
Oddly enough, I think I’ve actually seen almost all of those words in actual use before (many of them while reading this one manga set in… the Taisho era, I think… that had all sorts of funky kanji… but furigana for everything ^_^).
8 S. // Jan 5, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I did the puzzle (with the help of a dictionary, but I did get some on my own), and got the same answer as snk. It was fun! I’m looking forward to the next entry.
9 Celeste // Jan 6, 2008 at 2:15 am
This is a great idea, thank you! I love little puzzles and games like this and look forward to seeing more in the future.
10 Nat // Jan 6, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Great job solving the puzzle, guys, and thanks so much for your comments. I’ve always been interested by kanji, especially obscure ones, so you can expect kanji-learning puzzles and games like this to pop up again from time to time. :o)
And Rana, what was the name of that manga?
11 Rana // Jan 6, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Sakura Gari, by Watase Yuu. It’s really new (only a few chapters out in magazines so far), and is bl/yaoi, though (just as a warning, since I know that’s not everyone’s thing ^_^).
12 PickledRadish // Jan 7, 2008 at 12:05 am
Nothing like feeling stupid…it was just shrinking it to fit in the browser. (And to add salt to the wound, I didn’t know as many as I was expecting to. ) ばかばかばかごめんなさいねえー。
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