Hi,
I'm a rising N2, and I've been trying to get into some different activities like crossword puzzles, but I just find them so hard! Granted I'm still a learner but even the most basic crossword puzzles are difficult, like the ones for beginners and even when I know the meaning of each individual Kanji by themselves, as well as 3 to 7 Jukugo compounds for each kanji, I still can't do them – pretty much any row or column. I try something and I try something else and inevitably I get to being forced to make a compound that I don't think exists. Granted, I have problems with crossword puzzles as a native in English, but what usually happens is that, looking at the final complete solution in Japanese, I don't know the words anyway.
So I'm wondering – are crossword puzzles in Japanese something that every Japanese learner or native can do, and comes with fluency in the language? Or, is it a specialized skill that doesn't necessarily indicate anything about how good one is at the written language? Are you supposed to do them with or without a dictionary?
How common are the words in Kanji crossword puzzles? Are they obscure compounds, or super common compounds. It seems like there is a mix of 4 character idioms and some very, very uncommon compounds. I just don't have an intuition for any row or column. This is in contrast to how I can play long role playing games in Japanese and read some news in Japanese.
by BlueLensFlares