CREATING AN ARABIAN SQUARE
Feeling inspired to try your hand at creating some Arabian Squares yourself? For that purpose, below I have posted two PDFs, one blank template for an eight-answer Arabian Square, the other for a ten-answer Arabian Square. At the bottom of each template, I have left blank spaces before and after the words ‘Arabian Square’ in case you want to writes something like ‘Love and Marriage Arabian Square’ or ‘Arabian Square of the Going Places.’
Having done it myself, here’s the procedure:
- Decide what topic your Arabian Square is going to address. Who You’re Going to Marry? Children? Divorce? Investing? Sports? Hobbies? Travel? Promotion at work? Your fortune in the coming year? Centered around a particular holiday? Friendly advice from the Beyond? What Am I Not Seeing in This Situation? The mind boggles at the possibilities.
- Start brainstorming potential answers relevant to the topic you chose and write them down. Don’t worry about length yet, just brainstorm potential answers. You may want to come up with far more than eight or ten potential answers, because not all of your ideas for answers will be workable.
- Now comes the hard part. For both squares, each potential answer you devise must be exactly 32 letters long. This is all-important, or your Arabian Square will not function properly. There can be no deviation from this, unless you cut the number of potential answers for that square in half, and increase the answer-length to 64 letters each. Look at the possible answers you wrote down for your square and count the number of letters in each one. Over 32 letters long? Then you’ll need to start playing around with various ways of re-phrasing those answers so that they fit. Have plenty of paper on hand for this, and be prepared to do a lot of letter-counting and re-writing. This step is the most time-consuming, most labor-intensive, and most challenging.
- When you have the proper number of answers for your Arabian Square, and you’re certain they’re all exactly 32 letters long, write them out clearly and legibly on a separate sheet of paper, because you’re going to use this sheet for transcribing your answers onto a blank template.
- Take the first answer, and find a spot somewhere in to middle of the Arabian Square you’re using to write the first letter down. If you’re going with the eight-answer Arabian Square, which is the 16 by 16 box square, you’re going to count another eight boxes after that, then in the eighth box, write the second letter. You continue in this manner down the square, entering a letter in each eighth box, until you reach the bottom. Then circle back around to the top, each time counting out eight more boxes after the previous letter you wrote and writing the next letter in the message.
- If you’re going with the ten-answer Arabian Square, you’re going to want to count out ten additional boxes and write a letter in each tenth square. As you can see from the picture at the beginning of this section, I used colored pencils for this step, because when you’re double-checking your Arabian Square to make sure you’ve written it out properly, it really helps when each answer is written in a different color; it makes the double-checking a lot easier.
- If you have taken the proper care to space the letters of the first answer you entered in your Arabian Square, writing in the succeeding answers is easier, because you’ll just be entering the letters for the succeeding answers immediately behind the previous answer’s letters.
- Finally, double-check your square to make sure the answers are cohesive, that they are properly spaced, and that somewhere in your count, you don’t veer-off into another answer. When you’re sure it all flows correctly, take another blank template sheet and transcribe the letters in order onto the new sheet, this time writing all the letters in the same color ink. Your Arabian Square is finished and ready to use!