Words you already carry, clued by how they feel in the body rather than how the book defines them.
Tap a square and type. Tap it again to switch direction. The clues do not name the concepts, they describe them from the inside, so trust your practice more than your vocabulary. Four puzzles: pick your grid.
4 puzzles · 12 words each · giraffe level: fluent · free
The load-bearing words: observation to request, jackal to giraffe.
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Wrong letters fade so you can try again. Nothing is revealed.
Across
4 A door held open. You can tell it is one by how it welcomes a no. (7)
6 One of ten thousand possible ways to meet a need. We argue about these, never about what is underneath. (8)
9 What a video camera would have recorded. The one part of the story everyone can agree on. (11)
10 Being with someone’s world without rearranging the furniture. (7)
11 The living thing underneath every complaint ever spoken. (4)
Down
1 The inner voice that always knows exactly whose fault it is. (6)
2 The rare gift of arriving with empty hands: no advice, no fixes, nowhere else to be. (8)
3 A request wearing armor. Watch what happens to the room when someone says no. (6)
5 What grief becomes when it stops arguing with what happened. (8)
6 What happened just before the feeling. Never its cause, only its spark. (8)
7 Saying what is alive in you without making anyone wrong. (7)
8 The land animal with the largest heart, and the language named after it. (7)
Solved
Twelve words, one grammar
Observation, feeling, need, request. Jackal and giraffe, stimulus and strategy, mourning and honesty and presence. You did not just fill a grid, you walked the whole map of the practice. If one of these words felt different in the clue than in your habit, that word is inviting you somewhere.
The felt half of the vocabulary: grief to celebration, anger to trust.
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Wrong letters fade so you can try again. Nothing is revealed.
Across
3 What love does when the strategy it lived in is gone. (5)
5 The need that flares the instant anyone says you have to. (8)
8 The half of giving that almost nobody practices. (9)
9 What both people were thirsty for the whole time they argued about the dishes. (10)
11 The alarm that points at someone else while the fire is a need of yours. (5)
12 Mourning’s twin: the practice of letting a met need actually reach you. (11)
Down
1 Praise tells people what they are. This tells them what they gave. (9)
2 What is hiding inside every single I-have-to. (6)
4 A messenger that keeps knocking until you open the door. Never the message itself. (7)
6 A need wearing a costume that attacks people. (8)
7 In a conversation, either a wall or a room. The difference is who it is for. (7)
10 Built in drops, spent in buckets, never demanded into existence. (5)
Solved
The other half of the practice
Grief and celebration, anger and trust, judgment and choice. This half of the vocabulary is not about talking at all: it is about what you let yourself feel, receive, and mark. If receiving was the slowest word to fall, you are in excellent company.
Wrong letters fade so you can try again. Nothing is revealed.
Across
3 The silent work of turning you are so selfish into I am longing to matter. (11)
7 The question that turns advice from an ambush into a gift: may I? (7)
9 The smallest unit of nonviolence: the gap between trigger and answer. (5)
10 The solvent that dissolves a diagnosis: what did they wake up needing? (9)
11 Not a wall against them: a clear sentence about what you will do to care for you. (8)
12 Saying back what landed, not what you plan to answer. (10)
Down
1 What pain asks for before it asks for anything else. (7)
2 What people mean when they say just be there. Harder than advice by a factor of ten. (9)
4 The gift of not filling it. (5)
5 The only use of force NVC endorses: this kind, never the punishing kind. (10)
6 Going back to the crooked moment while it is still warm. (6)
8 Trusting the pace of a process you cannot push. Empathy’s slow cousin. (8)
Solved
The verbs of it
Pause, witness, repair, translate. None of these are theories: they are things a body does in a room, usually in under ten seconds and against every reflex. Pick the one you filled in last and give it one real rehearsal this week.
Know the old language well enough to hear yourself speak it.
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Wrong letters fade so you can try again. Nothing is revealed.
Across
1 The most violent word most of us say to ourselves before breakfast. (6)
5 A need announced backwards, addressed to the person least able to hear it that way. (9)
7 Punishment’s sweet twin: still a leash, just with a treat on the end. (6)
8 The jackal’s compass: it always points away. (5)
11 One of the two words that turn one Tuesday into a verdict. (6)
12 Making them suffer so they learn. They do learn: mostly to hide better. (10)
Down
2 The word that turns care into a wage system. (7)
3 The other one. (5)
4 What somebody has to be, in every argument that is going nowhere. (5)
6 The jackal’s measuring tape. Nobody has ever won a round with it, including you. (10)
9 A person, laminated. Handy, portable, and wrong by lunchtime. (5)
10 An image, not a person. The picture that makes hurting feel like housekeeping. (5)
Solved
You speak fluent jackal
Everyone does: it was most people’s first language. Naming its dictionary is not self-blame, it is cartography. Every word in this grid is a need that forgot there was a gentler way to ask.
