Reply To: Getting a crossword puzzle into a newspaper layout

Robert,

I do an occasional crossword puzzle for out paper and we are the same dimensions and… I get a PDF from a third party. Actually, we subscribe to a service that builds one for $10/mo and I’d really rather build one based on vocabulary in our current edition. That’s another story. Here is what I do:

1) CMD + D and place the PDF on the page
2) Scale the puzzle (forget the clues for now) to however many columns you think works.
I’m a 4 column paper and span the puzzle across 2 columns.
3) Crop it down so you only see the puzzle and position it.
4) Now…. grab your clues as text and place them as text and format them they way you want them.

My crossword guy provides me with a PDF _AND_ a text document with the clues, but you could probably grab then with Acrobat.

Hope this helps.