Crosswords and Crossword Tools
For years now we’ve been hosting the collaborative word list at my personal web site, and it’s been fine, but there are a few disadvantages. First, the list is completely reliant on my website, and if it goes down or changes something the list is down. Second, the updater program is a packaged perl script…
PuzzleMe is the standard for embedding crosswords these days, and why not? It’s got a slick interface, plenty of customization options, and analytics. That said, there are some things it can’t handle. If you want to embed a Marching Bands puzzle, or a Spiral, or any number of other variety puzzles, the PuzzleMe solver won’t…
Over on CrossCord, user NoahF had a fantastic idea for crossword construction: what if there were a Tinder-like interface for editing entries in your wordlist? An interface shows you a random word for your list and you edit its score by swiping, tapping, etc. User JayLow came up with the “Griddr” name for such a…
PUZ | PDF | Online Solver Yes, this is yet another blog posting the occasional crossword puzzle. This despite there being no shortage of great independent crossword puzzles out there. So what do we bring to the table that other places don’t? Well, open up this puzzle and you’ll see a few things immediately: This…
I’m on record as not being a huge fan of the Across Lite binary format, otherwise known by its three-letter file extension .puz. Its limitations are one of the main reasons crosswords were stuck in their conventions for years. It’s limiting and it’s annoying, so why is it still so popular? Well, despite the file…
I like easy crosswords, personally. Part of that is because they’re simply the ones I can do, but I just don’t get the rush from banging my head against a really hard crossword for too long. Still, even I think some crosswords are too easy, and could use from some toughening up. Plus, some easy…
Hello and welcome to our long-overdue crossword blog. We’ll be discussing crossword solving and crossword construction, looking at some tools available on this site and elsewhere for those purposes, and even posting the occasional puzzle. We have also, shamefully, never had an outlet on this site for people to comment, say hi, or whatever. So…