Wordplay Miniatures

In this article, we introduce Word Ways readers to the wordplay miniature -- a special form of the familiar crossword puzzle. In the title, the term miniature refers to its size; all puzzles presented below are square arrays consisting of five horizontal five-letter words intersected by five vertical five-letter words. (Because of the simplicity of this array, we have deemed it unnecessary to supply the puzzler with a grid of squares to be filled in for each puzzle; a blank sheet of paper should be adequate.