Why can it not make a newspaper-style crossword?

A dense symmetric grid where every white square is in both an across and a down word has to be filled from a large dictionary by a search that can take an unbounded time or fail outright — and it still could not write the clues, which is the half that matters. This does the part that is actually hard to do by hand: interlocking your own answers, numbering them and laying them out.

Can it write clues for me?

No. Writing a good clue is the craft of setting a crossword, and it depends on what your solvers know. The tool tells you which answers have no clue attached so none is missed.

Will the grid ever contain a word I did not enter?

No. Placement enforces the standard contact rules — a word cannot run on from another, and a new cell cannot sit alongside an existing one — precisely so that no unintended word appears. Every run of two or more letters in the finished grid is one of your answers.

Why do some answers not get placed?

Usually because they share no letter with anything already in the grid, or because every position that would work would break a contact rule. The tool names each one and says which it was, so you can adjust the list rather than discovering the gap after printing.

How many answers should I use?

Twelve to twenty for a single page. More than about thirty produces a grid too large to print legibly, and the tool caps the list at forty.

Crossword Puzzle Generator

You supply the answers and the clues; this does the interlocking, the numbering and the layout. The result is a proper crossword — words crossing at shared letters, cells numbered in the conventional order, across and down clue lists, and a solution grid — built from your vocabulary rather than a dictionary's.

Answers and clues

One per line, as ANSWER = clue. Everything stays in this browser and is never uploaded.

8 answers · 8 with clues

Seed (optional)

A word makes the layout reproducible, so you can recover the exact puzzle you printed.

Your crossword will appear here.

What this generator does

Interlocks your answers into a single connected grid, crossing them at shared letters, then numbers the grid the way crosswords are conventionally numbered — a cell gets a number when it starts an across or a down word, counting left to right and top to bottom. It enforces the contact rules that separate a crossword from a pile of letters: no word may run on into another, and a newly placed word may not lie alongside an existing one, because two parallel adjacent words spell unintended two-letter words down every column between them.

How to use this tool

Enter each answer with its clue, one pair per line.
Press Build crossword.
Check the layout — regenerate if you want a different arrangement of the same answers.
Print the blank grid and clues for solvers, and keep the solution.

Understanding the controls

Answers and clues: One pair per line. Spaces and punctuation are removed from the answer for the grid — 'ICE CREAM' occupies eight cells — while the clue is printed exactly as you wrote it. A clue is optional, but a crossword without clues is a word list in a box.
Regenerate: The same answers interlock in many different ways. Regenerating tries a different arrangement, which is worth doing if the first is unusually tall, wide or sparse.
Seed: Makes a layout reproducible, so you can recover the exact puzzle you printed rather than a different arrangement of the same words.

Worked examples

Eight space terms: PLANET, COMET, ORBIT, ASTEROID, METEOR, GRAVITY, ECLIPSE, NEBULA interlock into roughly a 13×13 grid with every answer crossing at least one other.
An answer sharing no letters: 'ZZZ' alongside a science word list is reported as not interlocked, with the reason, rather than being placed off on its own.
A two-answer puzzle: CAT and COT cross at their shared C, producing the smallest possible crossword.

Common use cases

A vocabulary or terminology revision sheet built from a specific topic
A quiz-night or newsletter puzzle using in-jokes and local references
A language-learning exercise where the clues are in one language and the answers in another
An end-of-term activity built from what the class actually covered
A wedding, birthday or retirement puzzle about the person

How this generator works

The longest answer is placed first, across. Each remaining answer is then tried against every letter already in the grid: for each shared letter, the engine checks whether the answer can be written through that cell perpendicular to the word it crosses, and whether doing so would leave any new cell touching an existing one sideways or running on from another word end to end. Legal placements are ranked by how many words they cross — crossings are what make a crossword solvable, since an entry you cannot get can be worked out from the ones through it — and then by how compact the resulting grid is. Answers that fail on one pass are retried after later answers have opened new crossings. Several different orderings are tried and the arrangement that interlocks the most answers is kept.

Randomness and fairness

Where several placements are equally good — the same number of crossings and the same resulting grid size — the choice between them is made with the browser's cryptographic random number generator, and the orderings tried are shuffled. That is why the same answers produce different layouts each time. The contact rules and the numbering are not random at all: they are fixed by crossword convention. A seed switches to a reproducible generator so a printed puzzle can be recovered exactly.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Limitations and good to know

This is not a newspaper-style crossword. It does not fill every white square from a dictionary or produce a symmetric grid — it interlocks the answers you give it, which is the format that lets the clues be yours.
It cannot write clues. A puzzle with no clues is printable and not solvable, and the tool says so rather than pretending otherwise.
An answer that shares no letter with any other cannot be interlocked and is reported by name.
The grid shape follows from your words, so it will not be square or symmetric, and some arrangements are noticeably taller or wider than others. Regenerating is usually quicker than editing the word list.
Very short answers of two or three letters interlock well but make dull clues. Five to nine letters is the useful range.

Common mistakes

Entering answers with no shared letters: A crossword is made of crossings. If your answers have little in common — lots of short words, or an unusual alphabet spread — few will interlock. Adding a couple of longer, vowel-rich answers helps considerably.
Writing clues that give the letter count: The tool prints the length in brackets after every clue automatically, in the conventional way. You do not need to add it.
Printing before checking the layout: Regenerate two or three times and print the arrangement you like. The first is not usually the most compact.
Using very long answers only: Long answers have fewer legal positions and often end up isolated. A mixture of lengths interlocks much more densely.

Practical tips

Twelve to twenty answers makes a satisfying single-page puzzle; below about eight the grid looks sparse.
Write the clues before you generate — it is much easier than fitting clues to a layout afterwards.
Keep the seed with the printed puzzle if you might need to reprint it.

Privacy and your data

Your answers and clues stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored between visits and nothing is written into the page address, so the puzzle cannot be shared by sending the link — print or copy it. Analytics records how many answers were entered and never their content, which matters because clues are often personal.

Frequently asked questions

Why can it not make a newspaper-style crossword?: A dense symmetric grid where every white square is in both an across and a down word has to be filled from a large dictionary by a search that can take an unbounded time or fail outright — and it still could not write the clues, which is the half that matters. This does the part that is actually hard to do by hand: interlocking your own answers, numbering them and laying them out.
Can it write clues for me?: No. Writing a good clue is the craft of setting a crossword, and it depends on what your solvers know. The tool tells you which answers have no clue attached so none is missed.
Will the grid ever contain a word I did not enter?: No. Placement enforces the standard contact rules — a word cannot run on from another, and a new cell cannot sit alongside an existing one — precisely so that no unintended word appears. Every run of two or more letters in the finished grid is one of your answers.
Why do some answers not get placed?: Usually because they share no letter with anything already in the grid, or because every position that would work would break a contact rule. The tool names each one and says which it was, so you can adjust the list rather than discovering the gap after printing.
How many answers should I use?: Twelve to twenty for a single page. More than about thirty produces a grid too large to print legibly, and the tool caps the list at forty.