American Holiday Association

Information about American Holiday Association puzzle contests

W	I	N
I		O
N	O	W

AMERICAN HOLIDAY
ASSOCIATION
Information provided by
The Contest Center
59 DeGarmo Hills Road
Wappingers Falls, NY 12590

W	I	N
I		O
N	O	W

Like this site?
Please tell a friend

Please sign our
Guestbook

       American Holiday Association or AHA was the largest of the national puzzle contest sponsors. At their peak American Holiday ran a new contest every week, getting hundreds of thousands of entries in each contest. They specialized in word-building contests, and they were famous for their BINGO puzzles.

       The first puzzle in each contest used a 5x5 grid. The left column of the grid was filled in with the word BINGO reading down the column. The other 20 boxes were blank. The player had to write 5 words from the given word list into the grid. The word list contained 2 words starting with B, 2 words starting with I, and so forth, so the task was simply to choose which of the 2 words had the highest scores.

       The second puzzle in the series also had a 5x5 grid, and had the word BINGO written along the diagonal. A brief list of words was supplied. The task was now slightly harder, since there could be words like BUNCH which had both a B and an N in the correct positions, so they could be placed on 2 different rows.

       The final puzzle used a grid of 10x10 or 12x12 empty squares. No word list was supplied. The player had to choose words from the dictionary and write them into the grid crossword fashion to get the highest possible score. There were no black squares, though. It was the player's task to decide where the black squares should be placed. These puzzles were so difficult that AHA never had a tie score.

       The Contest Center also runs word-building contests. Our Tournament of Riches and One on One contests are word-building contests of the same type as American Holiday. The main differences are that the Contest Center uses much smaller grids, 7x8 for Round 1, and supplies the word list, which contains only 100 short words.
       There are two more important differences. The Contest Center tournaments have more prizes, so that you have a much better chance of winning, and our top prize is much larger.

       Below are some links you may use to reach the Contest Center's puzzle contests.

CONTEST CENTER HOME PAGE

TOURNAMENT OF RICHES
Win up to $25,000 per player

ONE ON ONE
Win up to $66,500 per player

SPEED PUZZLES
Play online for cash prizes

SITE MAP
See all the features on this site

Got questions? Send us an email or write to us at the street address above.
Be sure to change the $ to an @ in our email address.

Quick Links

Tournament of Riches		One on One
<<< PREV	HOME	MAP	NEXT >>>