Crossword puzzles for kids

9x9 · 32 clues · Easy · free

A 9x9 crossword for readers of about eight to twelve. Every answer is a word a child that age already uses, and every clue says plainly what it wants.

Download the PDFThe PDF is two pages: the blank grid with every clue, then the answer key.

Across

Down

Across

Down

Crossword puzzle for kids

9x9, 32 clues, easy.

Across

1 Thing with four wheels that you ride in
4 Big cloth on a boat that catches the wind
8 Put something to work
9 Drink squeezed out of oranges
10 The pointy end of a pencil
11 Finished
12 Game where you throw small pointed arrows at a board
14 You see with it
15 You hear with it
18 Grab a ball out of the air
20 A thin beam of very bright light
23 The metal that cans are made of
25 A spy
26 The number before two
27 It floats and carries people across water
28 Go bad, the way old fruit does

Down

1 Slice with scissors or a knife
2 Out of the way: step ___
3 Pay back money you borrowed
4 The time in the evening when the sun goes down
5 Help, as in a first ___ kit
6 Frozen water
7 Went first and showed the way
9 A very fast plane
13 Happening not long ago
16 A person who plays a part in a film
17 Big grey animal with a horn on its nose
19 The class where you draw and paint
20 The room where scientists work
21 In the past: long ___
22 A large body of salt water
24 What a basketball drops through

Solving it with a child

Start with the three-letter answers. There are ten of them, they are the easiest to guess, and each one you fill hands over letters in the answers crossing it. That crossing is the idea worth saying out loud the first time: every square belongs to both an across answer and a down answer, so a letter you were unsure of is confirmed for free by the other word through it.

None of these clues is a pun, and none of them asks for general knowledge or a date or a capital city. A clue says what the answer means, and the number of squares tells you how long it is. If an answer will not come, leave it and fill the ones around it. Autocheck can be switched on when a wrong letter is discouraging, or left off so nothing is marked until the end.

The short version, for whoever is printing it

It is free and it stays free: no account, no email address, nothing to install and no page of adverts between you and the grid. It prints on one sheet of paper, with the answers on a second sheet you can keep to yourself.

Every answer is a word an eight to twelve year old already uses. That is worth saying because it is not true of most puzzles sold as children's crosswords, which are usually ordinary grids with easier clues bolted on and a stray Latin abbreviation still sitting in the corner. Here the grid was built around the vocabulary rather than the other way round, and every answer in it was read by hand afterwards.

Most children finish it in ten to fifteen minutes with somebody sitting beside them, and quicker once they have done one or two. Nine squares by nine is small enough to stay on one screen and short enough not to feel like homework. If your child stalls, Check confirms a single letter or a single word without giving away the rest of the grid.

Printing it for a classroom or a journey

The download is two pages: the blank numbered grid with all 32 clues on the first, the answers on the second, so a teacher or a parent can hand out page one and keep page two. Printing straight from this page gives you the blank grid without the key and without whatever letters have already been typed in, which is the version you want when you need a copy for everyone. On paper it needs a pencil and nothing else, which is most of why a crossword still travels well in a car.

How the printable version works · All crossword puzzles · Free crossword puzzle