One of my duties for over 25 years as a has been to edit the weekly bulletin for my church. Our elders decided a few years ago to focus more attention on our youth. This prompted me to start including a weekly puzzle in the bulletin to educate, entertain, and make it more interesting to them.  As one of the teenagers put it, “old people news is boring.”  I started out using free puzzles found on the Internet, but those dried up rather quickly and I soon started doing my own puzzles. It occurred to me that other folks might be looking for a resource such as this, so Grampy’s Puzzle Pages were born. 

Most of the puzzles are based on the KJV version of the Bible, not that I have any problem with modern translations…it’s just a “universal” version that most folks are comfortable with.  I use both the Old and New Testaments, but I tend to draw more from the New than the Old.  The actual scriptures used are generally selected at random unless there is an upcoming U.S. holiday such as Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc..  On those occasions an appropriately related section of scripture is used.  Contact me if you require custom puzzles using a different translation or specific scriptures. 

Each week's mailing will include one each of the following puzzles:

• Wordsearch
  Scripture areas and words for the wordsearch puzzles are selected by Grampy, the grid is generated by computer.
  
• Letterdrop
  Verses are selected by Grampy and the puzzles are created by hand using Microsoft Excel to do the layout.
  
• Crossword
  Words and clues are selected by Grampy, the grid is generated by computer.
  
• Cryptogram
  Scripture quotes are selected by Grampy, the letter substitutions are generated by computer. Layout is done using Microsoft  Publisher.
  

Occasionally your mailing may also include:

• Maze
  The initial mazes are generated by computer, but I normally have to modify them to make them more challenging. The software I use tends to create a fairly simple path from beginning to end with very few alternate routes.  Also, it’s sometimes difficult for me to come up with original “themes” to use. For this reason, I don’t do a lot of mazes. When I do a maze,  it will be included as a “bonus” puzzle in addition to the other four puzzles that week.

About Grampy 

I’ve been a Christian for nearly 30 years and a deacon for about 25.  For those of you to whom it might matter, it’s a non-instrumental (acapella) Church of Christ, but I doubt that fact has any effect on the quality or Biblical soundness of my puzzles. I’m married with three grown children, two are married and on their own, the third is just starting college. The nickname “Grampy” was bestowed on me three years ago when my first granddaughter was born. 

I worked for a road construction company for 26 years in their quality control lab, but for the last 14 years I have been working mostly as a computer repair technician.  A recent downturn in the local economy has forced me to take a job as a clerk for an electronic service center at a rather low rate of pay…this enterprise is an attempt to keep my family’s head above the financial water line and get that last kid through college.