What are Drop Quote Puzzles?
A drop quote puzzle is a type of word puzzle that looks something like this:
There will usually be some sort of clue, in this case, “Benjamin Franklin talking about information.“
How to Solve Drop Quote Puzzles
The aim of drop quote puzzles is to drop the letters from the top half into the bottom half to form a quote.
As you can see, punctuation marks are visible and in the correct place and spaces are shows as a darker square. Words do not wrap around lines, so each line starts a new word.
The letters in the top half are arranged alphabetically and may or may not be in the correct order. The probabilities are not in your favour!
Tips and Tricks
I would suggest that you examine the letters in the top half and see if there are any obvious (and therefore easy) options.
For example, are there columns that contain only one letter due to spaces and punctuation? In that case, there is not much to think about and you can just add that one letter in the only space it can go.
Are there columns that contain the same letter? Again, there is not much to think about and you can simply write in that letter in the column below.
If we apply these two simple tips to the example above, we get this:
Are there any 1-letter words in the quote? If so, it’s extremely likely that it can really only be ‘A’ or ‘I’. If only one of those are in the upper half, you’re in luck. If both are there, then you were unlucky.
In this example, we were lucky and we can add two letter ‘I’s as single letter words and this then leaves only one unused letter in the columns where the ‘I’s were.
The drop quote puzzle now looks like this:
We can now start looking at short words that might have a letter in place due to previous strategies, leaving obvious choices.
In the example, we see that the word in the middle of the third line (_ND) can only be AND or DND. We would choose the ‘A’, leaving only the ‘D’ remaining, to be placed in the only remaining space.
Also, the second word in the middle row (_E) can only be completed with the ‘M’, making the word ME. That leaves only 2 ‘E’s left, which can also be easily placed.
The other short word (second word on the bottom row) could either be AN or ME. We’ll leave that alone for now, as we need more pieces in place before making a firm decision.
Similarly, looking at the letter options and combinations, the third word in the middle row could be ADD, AND, or END. We’ll come back to that later as well.
Applying these changes gives up this:
Carrying on, the second word in the first row can be either VE or ME – we’ll take ME and place the ‘V’ in the only space left.
We’ll need to start using our knowledge of vocabulary at some stage and this is the time for this example puzzle.
Looking at the first word on the bottom row, it ends in ‘VE’ and the only letters available are ‘H’ and ‘L’. How many words do you know that end in HVE? I can’t think of any right now but I can think of plenty that end in LVE. So we’ll take that and place the ‘H’ as well.
Using the same process on the first word in the middle row, there is a 5-letter word ending in ‘H’. Using the letters in the preceding column, we could have words ending in CH, LH, or OH. The only one that really makes sense is CH, so we’ll set the ‘C’ there.
Staying with that word and working backwards from the CH, our options are __ACH, __LCH, and __VCH. We can discount the ‘V’ as there are no words ending VCH.
What about __LCH? ‘Belch’ would work, ‘mulch’ too. However, we don’t have the letters for these – we only have ‘I’ or ‘T’ for the first letter, followed by ‘E’ or ‘N’ for the second. The possible words that we can make with __LCH would be ‘ielch’, ‘enlch’, ‘telch’, and ‘tnlch’. I don’t like any of those as English words, so we can eliminate ‘L’ as a candidate and thereby set the ‘A’ in position.
We now have __ACH and looking again at the possible combinations, we can choose from ‘ieach’, ‘inach’, ‘teach’, and ‘tnach’. I think we all agree that ‘teach’ is the only valid English word there.
Good news – we have our first significant word and the drop quote puzzle now looks like this:
Looking at the very first word, how many 4-letter words do we know ending in ‘O’? Echo, erm … I’m sure there are more but we can’t make ‘echo’ with the letters available. Also, even if that were possible, that would leave the first word on the last row as ending with CLVE, which is not promising. therefore, we can set the ‘L’ in the first row and the ‘O’ in the third.
The last word in the middle row also tells us that there are no words ending in NR, so we can set the ‘E’ and ‘N’ in that column.
The last word of the drop quote now ends in either BN or RN, making it possible to place these two letters. There are no words ending in BN.
We now have three out of the five letters for the last word, so we have a good chance of completing that word. It currently stands as _E_RN. We can place the ‘A’ as the third letter, as _EMRN and _ETRN are not valid options.
Looking at the options available to use for _EARN, it is easy to see that this word must be LEARN.
Our drop quote puzzle now looks like this:
Moving on, the very first word ends in ‘L’, with either ‘L’ or ‘V’ as options, giving words that are __LL or __VL. Only the ‘L’ makes sense, as there are no words ending in VL.
Looking closer at this word, it is clear that the only sensible combination that makes a valid word is TELL. When we set those letters, the only remaining letters for the first word in the bottom row give the word INVOLVE, which is a valid word.
The puzzle now looks like this:
We’re getting close to solving this now.
We said earlier that the second word on the bottom row could be either AN or ME. Looking at the rest of that line, it can only be ME.
We now have the bottom line complete, which is “Involve me and I learn.” A valid and meaningful sentence, which gives us confidence that we’re not making mistakes.
There seems to be a pattern in the three lines of the puzzle. It looks very much as if they all start with “{Verb} me and I {something}.”
Furthermore, the third word on the first line (starts with ‘A’) can only be one of AAD, AAN, AND, or ANN. AND fits the pattern very well, leaving the third word on the middle line as AND, which fits the pattern even better.
Our drop quote puzzle is almost complete and looks like this:
Looking at the last word on the second line, words ending in ETBER seem unlikely, whereas we can think of several words ending in EMBER, so we’ll take that, helping to place that column’s letters.
With a little bit of trial and error, we can place the remaining letters, revealing the completed drop quote puzzle to be:
Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
How to Solve Drop Quote Puzzles – Summary
In this somewhat lengthy post, we have seen the types of tips and tricks that were applicable in this example.
When you’re trying to solve a drop quote puzzle, you might not need all of these methods and not necessarily in this order. You might find yourself coming back and using a method again. Basically, whatever helps you to solve the puzzle is valid and should be used.
In addition to using the vocabulary and spelling techniques, you could also use grammar. For example, there are no sentences that have to words “had have” together in that order. If these sort of grammar points help to eliminate certain options, then go for it.
I really like these drop quote puzzles. The quote that you discover might give you something to think about. Also, if there are any new words that you don’t know, look them up in a dictionary and increase your vocabulary. Whether we’re language learners or not, increasing our vocabulary is a worthy goal.
If you want to try solving drop quote puzzles, check out the word puzzle books and see which ones contain them.
What do you think of these puzzles? Please use the comments below to let us know, or to ask your questions about drop quote puzzles.
