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Quaker Crossword Puzzle (March 2012)

Quaker Crossword - May/June 2014

• Authored by:
• Solomon Smilack

Here's a challenge for serious crossword puzzlers.

On Production (May 2014)

A Much Larger Puzzle

• Authored by:
• Frank Granshaw

Dear Friends: In its last issue, Western Friend published a letter to grandchildren everywhere talking about the environmental conditions we are leaving to our grandchildren. While I am grateful to WF for publishing that letter, I am concerned about editorial changes that were made that I was not given the opportunity to review before it went to press. The issue I have with these changes is that they misrepresent what I was trying to say in two important ways. First, the final version gives the impression that all our environmental and social problems revolve around the use of fossil fuels. Our overuse of fossil fuels is just one piece of a much larger puzzle that involves how we manage resources, not just which resource we use. Second, the published letter was edited in ways that oversimplified what I was saying about hope and the factors driving us towards what may be an environmental cliff. In addition to being a grandfather, I am also a geologist and a college educator. This means that I often talk with people who feel that environmentalists are misinformed sentimentalists who are naive about science, economics, politics, and human nature. Because some of the people I eventually hope to reach are adults like my students and colleagues, as well as “just plain folks,” it is important to me that the hope and optimism expressed in it takes into account the complex and harsh realities of our situation. Otherwise we grandparents concerned about the world our grandchildren might inherit from us will be discounted as just another gaggle of naive idealists. We cannot afford to be regarded in this way if we are to have any hope of changing our present course.

On Pride (July 2014)

Western Friend Crossword (January 2015)

• Authored by:
• Solomon Smilack

Enjoy!

On Reconciliation (January 2015)

Western Friend Crossword Solution (January 2015)

• Authored by:
• Solomon Smilack

Don't peek until you're really done.

On Reconciliation (January 2015)

Puzzle and an Activity (Nov/Dec 2017)

• Authored by:
• Lisa Yagoda

On Garbage (November 2017)

Quaker Time – A Friendly Logic Puzzle

• Authored by:
• Sister Confianza del Señor

Plaintown Friends is a small monthly meeting that has spent several recent business meetings laboring over a concern about late arrivals to worship. The meeting struggled for unity. “Late arrivals disrupt the Silence.” “Tardiness is disrespectful to those who are already gathered.” “We should lock the doors after worship has begun.” “It’s all I can do to get my kids out the door in the morning. If we must be prompt, we can’t attend.”

On Puzzles (May 2019)

Ronald S. Steelman

On Puzzles

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

Organelles, cells, organs, organisms, families, cultures, planets – these bodies nest within each other in irregular concentricity, one within the next, each encased by its own semi-permeable boundary. In the jigsaw puzzle of incarnation, all the pieces slip and slide, expand and contract, ignite and extinguish, push, pull, infiltrate, and emerge. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Wondrous beings abound all around, in places where I am not.

On Puzzles (May 2019)

Delights and Downfalls with Words

• Authored by:
• Brian Smucker

I admit it, I’m a word nerd. I grew up with Scrabble and Boggle, then progressed to New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles. At one point, I even wrote my own twelve-page dictionary of invented, adapted, and deliberately mangled words and meanings.

On Words (November 2021)