The box was there ready to be solved. Who was going to solve the box?
Silence, nobody knew. Then Timmy stepped forward and opened the box.
To his surprise he found a 3×5 grid of letters and a piece of paper.

AKT
BHZ
KOE
NLX
OWS

“Start at a letter then from that create a chain of letters representing a word, the chain has to be piecewise linear in a line or diagonally. Your answer is three words.”

After getting the answer, Timmy knew there was more left and then the box shifted. A crossword puzzle it revealed.

Text format:

1 down – A granular material which appears in beaches.
2 across – The part of the surface that isn’t just water.
2 down – The natural thing that makes us able to see.
3 down – An informal way to say peaceful and calm.
4 across – Take two slices and put anything in between, ready to eat!
4 down – The celestial thing that provides us warmth.
5 down – You didn’t like an action so you are now erasing it from history.
6 down – Literally everything.
7 down – The rules of communication.
8 across – That’s a great distance from end to end.
9 down – The head of the USA government.
10 across – Animals with black and white striped coats.
11 down – A million thousand years.
12 across – From which that yellow ball appears.
13 across – At what time did that happen?
14 across – A machine used for transportation.
15 down – When you don’t want to work or do anything productive.
16 across – A mutual association between two entities.
17 down – I don’t feel good…

Timmy had found the answers and put them together to form the final answer, Timmy immediately went to his friends to tell them the news. What was the final answer?