What are Squashed Sentence Puzzles?
A squashed sentence puzzle is a type of word puzzle that removes the spaces from a sentence and squashes it into a rectangle. The starting square is indicated and a clue is given concerning the solution.
The idea is to move around the puzzle, from one letter to the next, and reconstruct the sentence. All letters are used and they’re only used once. This means that the line doesn’t cross over on itself.
A typical squashed sentence puzzle looks like this:
For this puzzle, the clue could be “the answer is 1000”.
How to Solve Squashed Sentence Puzzles
The first thing to do is to check the clue or hint. In this case, the answer to the sentence is 1000. So it looks as if the sentence is a question that is likely to start with ‘what is’ or ‘how many’.
For example, sentences that could have the answer 1000 are “what is one hundred times ten?” or “how many legs on a millipede?”. There are, of course, many other possibilities.
As the initial letter (marked in the puzzle with a different colour) is an ‘H’, ‘how many’ looks promising. Let’s look into this option a bit further.
We can see that there is an ‘O’ above and below the ‘H’. Furthermore, the ‘O’ below the ‘H’ has an adjacent ‘W’, giving us ‘how’. If we do this, the puzzle now looks like this:
Again, we have a choice. Above and below the ‘W’ is the letter ‘M’. We’re thinking that ‘how many’ is a good option and that is possible, as shown here:
We’re in the corner and there is only one way to go, namely along the bottom line towards the left. Yes, words can also go backwards!
So far, we have ‘how many met’. If we look at the puzzle, the bottom left square is either the next square, or the very last. This has to be the case, otherwise we can’t get back to it and all of the squares have to be used.
If it’s the last square, then the path has to go upwards from the ‘T’ to the ‘S’ and then around the squares we’ve already used, back along the top and down the left side. This would put the letters into this order: ‘HOWMANYMETSILOMETERIKANRE’ which doesn’t look promising. Therefore, we conclude that we have to move from the ‘T’ to the ‘E’ and then to the ‘R’. Our puzzle now looks like this:
Again, using the same reasoning as above, the ‘S’ is either the next letter, or the very last letter. Try this for yourself and you will see that it has to be the next letter, as the solution makes no sense if we go up and around the top.
Our solution sentence now starts like this: “HOW MANY METERS”. The answer is 1000 so maybe we have an idea about this?.
For this particular puzzle, the same logic can be applied at many stages. Ultimately, we see that the path of the completed puzzle looks like this:
The order of the letters is: “HOWMANYMETERSINAKILOMETER”. Adding suitable spaces to separate the words gives us: “HOW MANY METERS IN A KILOMETER”. The answer to this question is 1000, which is the clue we saw at a the start.
You probably knew that there are 1000 meters in a kilometer. If not, now you do!
Either way, we successfully completed the puzzle – yay!
Not all squashed sentence puzzles will be answered like this – this is just an example. Some will have factual answers and you might need to look up something to find out the, for example, capital of Italy. If you didn’t know the answer before, you will have learned something new. This is always a good thing.
No matter what the solution sentence is, you will need to use your knowledge of English vocabulary and spelling and reject possible paths that lead to words that cannot exist in English. For example, in the above puzzle, there are no English words that start with ‘HM’, so we can immediately ignore that as an option.
How to Solve Squashed Sentence Puzzles – Summary
Do you like solving squashed sentence puzzles? Do you have a favourite type that you particularly enjoy?
Please use the comments below and tell us about it.
