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Crossword puzzle maker

Give it your words and clues and it interlocks them into a numbered criss-cross crossword with a matching answer key — the vocabulary-list shape, not a newspaper grid. Built in your browser at true page size, with no watermark, no account, and nothing sent anywhere.

Sheet— Grid— Entries— Pages— Seed—
A tab or a spaced hyphen works instead of the colon, for spreadsheet pastes.

How this generator works

Interlocking an arbitrary list of words is a search problem, and this page searches rather than guesses. The longest entry is laid down first, and every entry after it is offered every position where one of its letters lands on a matching letter already on the grid. Each offer is checked against the two rules that keep a criss-cross honest — a newly filled square may not have a filled neighbor alongside the word's axis, and the squares immediately before and after the word must be empty — so no unintended second word can form beside one of yours. Surviving offers are then scored: crossings are worth a great deal, and growth of the bounding box counts against, which is what pulls the shape into a compact island instead of a sprawling cross.

The whole layout is then rebuilt fourteen times from different orderings of your list, and the densest, squarest result is the one printed — a word that had nowhere to go in one arrangement usually finds a home in another. Numbering happens last and is read back off the finished grid by the standard rule: a square gets the next number when it opens an across entry, a down entry, or both. Deriving numbers from the grid rather than tracking them during placement is exactly why the numbers on the puzzle sheet and the numbers on the answer key cannot disagree. Both pages are SVG in real millimeters, and your browser's own print dialog turns them into paper or a single two-page PDF.

The honest limits. This makes freeform criss-cross puzzles, not symmetric newspaper grids with black squares — that shape requires every run of squares in both directions to be a real word, which is only achievable when the puzzle is built from a dictionary rather than from your eighteen vocabulary terms. An entry that shares no letters with any other entry cannot be placed at all, and the page names it rather than dropping it silently. Clues are fitted into two columns beneath the grid at a font size chosen to fit; a very long clue set will run out of room, and the page tells you that too instead of clipping in silence. Print at 100% or "Actual size" — "Fit to page" rescales the sheet.

Frequently asked questions

What format does the word and clue list use?
One entry per line, as WORD: clue. A tab or a spaced hyphen works instead of the colon, so a two-column paste out of a spreadsheet drops straight in. A line with no separator is treated as a word with no clue yet — it is still placed in the grid, and the page lists which entries are still waiting for their clue.
Why did some of my words not get placed?
Every entry in a criss-cross has to cross a letter of an entry already on the grid, and a word sharing no letters with any of the others has nowhere legal to go. Press "New layout" first — a different arrangement often finds room. If a word keeps failing, adding one that bridges it to the rest, or dropping it, is the fix.
Can I get a symmetric newspaper-style grid with black squares?
No, and that is deliberate. A symmetric grid demands that every run of squares in both directions be a real word, which is only possible when the puzzle is built from a large dictionary rather than from your list. This makes the freeform criss-cross shape instead — the irregular island of interlocked words that classroom and vocabulary crosswords have always used, where every entry is one of yours.
Where is the answer key?
It is the second page of the printout: the same grid, same numbering, every square filled in. The numbers on the key come from the finished grid rather than from the order you typed, which is what guarantees they match the numbers on the puzzle sheet. Untick "Include an answer key" to print class copies without it.
Is anything uploaded or stored?
No. Your words and clues are read by this page, laid out as vector geometry here, and printed through your browser's own dialog. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account or watermark, and no settings are saved — close the tab and it is gone.

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