Astronomy Crossword Puzzle - 24. Black Holes and Curved Spacetime

Astronomy Crossword Puzzle - 24. Black Holes and Curved Spacetime by The Lessons of Phyz © Dean Baird

This series of astronomy crossword puzzles is intended for first-course students. Topical terms constitute the core of the word list. They come from the OpenStax Astronomy 2e online textbook. Additional terms (to fill in the grid space) lean toward science, but sometimes wander into simple mathematics, general knowledge, technology, pop culture, or randomness.

1. GENERAL

I created this crossword puzzle for use in introductory astronomy courses. Because I was using crossword creator software, I chose to build as robust a crossword as possible. The more crosses, the better. The fewer blank spaces on the grid, the better. The astronomy topic vocabulary served as the core of the word list. I added “fair-game” words and abbreviations to fill the gaps. While competing crosswords might have 20-30 words with a few dozen crosses, this one has over 100 words with over 150 word crosses.

2. PRINTABLE PDFS

The “Print” documents are PDFs meant to be photocopied (2-sided) and distributed to students. “Word List” (PDF and .rtf) documents are included if you wish to post them or distribute them to students. Your students; your call.

• Spacetime Print 00 is a clean puzzle with no squares completed as hints.
• Spacetime Print 10 has 10% of the squares prefilled as hints. The squares selected for filling was a random selection made by the software.
• Spacetime Print 20 has 20% of the squares prefilled as hints. The squares selected for filling was a random selection made by the software.

I leave it to you to decide which version to use with which of your students.

3. UPLOADABLE HTML FILES (OPTIONAL)

If it suits your inclination, tech-savviness, resources, and use case, you may upload the included 24-Spacetime folder to an online webspace server. When you do so and provide the consequent URL to students, they can access and attempt to solve the puzzle online. The online version works best with a desktop or laptop screen. It is not optimized for phones. Here’s an online version of a different puzzle so you can experience what an online version plays like:

https://phyz.org/crosswords/02-Birth

Again, this high-tech option is available but not required. Many will opt to use only the print versions.

4. ANSWER KEY

The answer key document shows

• the completed grid,
• the answers corresponding to each of the Across and Down clues

5. WORD LIST [bold = topical terms and arbitrarily selected review terms from previous chapters]

ACCELERATE, ACCRETION, AK, ASCII, ASIA, AT, BIRD, BLACK, BLACKBODY, BLUE, BREVITY, CHANDRASEKHAR, CO, CPS, CYGNUS, DEGENERATE, DNA, DOPPLER, EINSTEIN, EQUIVALENCE, ESCAPE, EUROPA, EVEN, EXOPLANET, FDIC, FLASH, FTP, GALILEO, GENESIS, GIANT, GOMORRAH, GOODBYE, GPS, GRAVITY, HALFLIFE, HOA, HOMEPAGE, HORIZON, HOROSCOPE, HUBBLE, IAGO, INITIAL, INUIT, ISS, KAGRA, KFC, LAST, LIGO, LLM, MAGELLAN, MAGNET, MATTER, MAUNDER, MERCURY, MEXICO, MIKE, MINUTE, MOZART, MS, MT, NA, NBA, NEEDLE, NEON, NEUTRINO, NEWTON, NICU, NINJA, NOVA, NSF, NUCLEOSYNTHESIS, OK, OKAY, OP, ORBIT, OSCARS, PAGE, PAYNE, PERIHELION, PIE, PIERCE, PLEIADES, PLUTO, PPM, PROMINENCE, PROTOSTAR, REDSHIFT, RELATIVITY, SATURN, SCHWARZSCHILD, SCIENTIFIC, SE, SHIA, SHIP, SIA, SINGULARITY, SKU, SODOM, SPACETIME, STARLINK, SUN, TELESCOPE, TIKTOK, TURNOFF, TWO, UFO, UP, VIDEO, VIKING, VULCAN, WATT, WAVE, WHITE, WIND, XRAYS, YEAR, ZION