Wordton

Crossword puzzles

Puzzles written here and checked by hand, free to solve in the browser or to print. If you are mid-grid and stuck on one clue, the answer pages are the faster route.

Solve a puzzle

How a crossword is built

A standard grid is fifteen squares by fifteen, with black squares arranged so the pattern is identical when you turn the page upside down. Every white square belongs to both an across answer and a down answer, which is the property that makes solving possible: a letter you are unsure of in one direction is confirmed by the word crossing it. The long entries running the width of the grid usually share a theme, and working out what links them tends to unlock the corners around them. Smaller grids exist for good reasons rather than as a compromise: our crossword puzzle for kids is nine by nine because a child needs the whole thing to stay in view and the answers to stay short, not because it was easier to build.

Where to start when you are stuck

Fill the short answers first. Three and four-letter entries draw on a small recurring vocabulary, and each one you place hands you letters in three or four crossing answers for free. Leave anything with a question mark until later: that punctuation marks a pun rather than a definition, and those clues are far easier once the crossings have narrowed the possibilities. If a single clue is genuinely blocking you, we answer 50 common clue phrases with every word in our dictionary that fits, grouped by slot length. If it is the puzzle as a whole giving you trouble rather than one clue, our easy crossword puzzle is the same 15x15 size with none of the wordplay: every clue is a plain definition.

What makes these ours

Nothing here is syndicated. Each grid is filled against a curated word list and then read entry by entry, because an automated fill will happily place words no solver has met, and a grid held together by three of those is not worth printing. Where an entry is weak, it is recorded rather than quietly shipped. The section grows slowly for that reason, and every puzzle states its size and difficulty before you open it.