Crosswords and Crossword Tools
A while back, Quiara introduced the concept of a “Salomon number”. She explains it better than I could, but basically, how many collaborations do you need to go through to get from any given constructor to the greatest of all mentors, Nancy Salomon? Quiara says: As much as I wish there was an easy way…
There are many, many puzzle types out there which have clues decoupled from the entries. In a standard crossword, you know exactly where a word should go once you read the clue, but in these puzzles that detail is left for you to figure out. Nathan Curtis in particular has been making a lot of…
Have you ever had to clue a puzzle, and you get to a boring word like “felt” and wish you had some good way to clue it? Maybe options like these would work for you. These are the options spit out by our new tool, the “Onion Clue” generator. Just type in the word (or…
So you want to make a crossword blog but you don’t know what your options are for embedding crosswords into it? Or maybe you have a crossword blog and the embed method you’re using isn’t working for you? Follow along as we go through the various options so you can decide what’s best for you.
Did you enjoy our Snake Charmer puzzle last week? Did it inspire you to try to make your own? Well, you’re in luck, because we’ve released a tool to help you do just that. Check out the Snake Charmer Construction Tool, now available on our GitHub site. If you tried the Spiral tool the interface…
We’re big fans of the pattern-matcher Qat here but it’s got its limitations. For one, you can’t use your own word list when fetching results, so you have to rely on Qat’s lists. Secondly, the results aren’t ordered by “interest” in any way, so you have to deal with whatever comes out no matter how…
We posted a spiral puzzle a while back on the blog and today we’d like to introduce a tool to help burgeoning Spiral creators make their own. Check out the Spiral Construction Tool, a guided way to make spiral puzzles of your own. You’ll need to supply the first words, but after that the tool…
Are you familiar with Mechapuzzle? If you’re a fan of meta-crosswords, or “contest crosswords” like the kind you might find at the WSJ or MGWCC, then you might find its analysis useful to help you solve the meta-puzzle. Up until recently, though, it only accepted .puz files, which (1) ewwww and (2) they had to…
Most of you know about the Crossword Butler, and the butler is great, but he has only been serving up American-style crosswords. What can you do if you’re hankering for some cryptic-style snacks? Well, good news, because our butler made a friend. Introducing Cryptic Crossword Butler, serving up cryptics both American and British, despite his…
It’s been a while since we’ve had any updates about crossword tools here at Crossword Nexus, but that doesn’t mean nothing has been going on. While we don’t have any big announcements quite yet, there have been many improvements to our offerings: The Crossword Nexus Solver now has the “Notepad” available from the “File” dropdown,…