It's Puzzling

When I'm sitting in the cancer treatment center, I find it hard to concentrate enough to read a book. Each week when I go for treatment, I take a crossword puzzle book along as well as my iPod Touch, and that usually gives me enough to work on if I don't fall asleep in the recliner. However, my sister recently reminded me of fun word puzzle we have had a friendly competition over the past few winters.  (I should say that while I'm enduring real winter, my sister lives in the Virgin Islands.) We give ourselves a week to work on our lists and then get in touch and compare words. Invariably, we each come up with a few the other has missed. The puzzle is printed in the daily Halifax, Nova Scotia newspaper, The Chronicle-Herald, although I haven't ever found it on their web site.  I just have little clippings, which a friend was kind enough to collect for us several years ago. It's a great puzzle to do while on a flight, over breakfast, during a coffee break, or when waiting for an appointment -- anytime you have some moments to fill and want to challenge your mind.  All you need are a pen or pencil and a sheet of paper. 

This is the way the puzzle works:

You are given 9 letters in a 3x3 grid and are asked to see how many words of 4 letters or more you can make from the letters shown. There is at least one valid 9-letter word that can be formed using the letters given.

The rules are:

*In making a word, each letter may be used only once. 

*Each word must contain the center letter.  (CAUTION: it is easy to lose sight of this rule and get off track, only to discover that you stopped using the center letter 15 words ago!)

*There are no plurals or verb forms ending in s.

*No proper names are permitted.

*No words with a hyphen or apostrophe are permitted.

Depending on the word, the paper tells you what you're aiming for, or what the "word target" is. They note what they consider to be good, very good and excellent scores. You get 1 point for each valid word you come up with. 

Here's the one we're working on this week, in case you want to join in the friendly competition.  I'll start working on my list tomorrow at the hospital, and will compare my words with my sister's next weekend. I'll print the words we both came up with sometime next week.  This week the letters are:

Don't forget that each word must use the R.

Scoring:

You've done a good job if you come up with 14 words

Very good:  21 words

Excellent: 27 words or more

Good luck!