Crossword

A fresh one every time, made on your own machine

MediumEleven squares each way.

0:00

1 Across

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Across

Down

Crossword

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The puzzle

Size

Tell me straight awayA letter that isn't the answer is marked the moment you write it. Skip what is filled inTyping runs on to the next empty square rather than over your answers.

Play

Mode

How to play

Fill the white squares so that every numbered answer matches its clue. The number in brackets after each clue is how many letters it has.
Click a square and type. Click the same square again to turn from Across to Down. The clue you are on is always shown under the grid, and the arrows beside it step through them.
Where the squares cross, a letter belongs to two answers at once — getting one gives you a letter of the other. In a grid of this kind, about half the letters are crossed that way; the rest you take from the clue alone.
Check marks the letters that are wrong. Letter gives you the one square you are on and Word gives you the whole answer — both leave a green letter behind, so you can see afterwards what you worked out for yourself.
Keys: A–Z write, ⌫ rubs out, the arrows walk about and Tab takes the next clue. Letters are always letters, so the tools go with Alt held: Alt+C check, Alt+L letter, Alt+W word, Alt+N new puzzle, Alt+M sound.
Race a friend sends a link. You both get the very same puzzle and can watch each other fill it in; first one finished wins.

About the puzzles

Every crossword here is made on your device as you ask for it, from a book of a few thousand everyday words, each with a clue written for it. Nothing is fetched and nothing is stored anywhere else.
The grid shapes are the sort a newspaper uses: the same upside down, no answer shorter than three letters or longer than nine, and no square left out of an answer.
Filling one is a search. The answer with the fewest words still open to it is filled first, and the search backs up whenever it paints itself into a corner — so the grid comes out in a few thousandths of a second, and no word ever appears twice in the same puzzle.
The clues are quick clues, the kind in a daily paper's easy crossword: a short definition, sometimes with a second meaning to help you place it. Nothing cryptic, no anagrams to unpick.
Every run of letters in the finished grid is checked against the book before the puzzle is handed to you, so there is never a stray word without a clue hiding in the grid.