A few months ago I was wrestling with getting my 16×2 parallel LCD to work with an Arduino for a few hours, until I decided it had to be broken. All I was getting was garbled characters and solid blocks. A few months later, I picked it back up and did some more playing, and eventually got it working. Now to learn how to print custom characters to it…I learn by doing, so I decided to make a hangman program. Below are pictures of the perf-board rendition of a shield for connecting the LCD, a few potentiometers, a tactile switch and a speaker for noise-making fun. At this point the code works well, but I’ve got some ideas for improvement and a box is in the making. Perhaps I’ll even submit it to Brico Geek “Let Arduino Play” contest : )