Criss-Cross Puzzle Maker

What you get

One sheet with an empty numbered grid and the word list underneath, and the filled grid on a separate page so the puzzle can be handed out without the answers.

Pick a theme and the words are chosen for you, or paste your own list. Nothing you type is uploaded; the grid is worked out in your browser and the words never leave it.

It takes exactly the same list a word search takes, which is the whole reason this tool exists in the shape it does. A real crossword needs a clue written for every word, and writing twenty clues is where most people give up on making one.

How a criss-cross differs from a crossword

A crossword gives you clues and hides the answers. A criss-cross gives you the answers and hides where they go. You are handed the whole word list and the puzzle is working out which word fits which run of squares, using the lengths and the letters that cross.

That makes it a different kind of thinking, and an easier one to start. There is no general knowledge involved and nothing to look up, so a child who cannot yet do a crossword can usually do a criss-cross of the same words. It also means a puzzle can be built from any list at all, including one that has nothing in common but the topic you are teaching this week.

Only across and down, never backwards or diagonal. That is not a difficulty setting, it is what a crossword grid is.

Choosing words that fit together

A criss-cross is built on shared letters, so the list matters more here than in a word search. Words that have letters in common interlock readily; a list where every word begins and ends differently and shares almost nothing will leave some words with nowhere to attach.

Vowel-heavy words are the reliable connectors. E, A and O turn up everywhere, and a long word carrying several of them gives everything else something to hang from. That is also why the longest word is placed first: it offers the most letters for the rest of the list to reach.

Short words are the ones most often left out, which surprises people who expect the opposite. A three-letter word has only three chances to share a letter and needs one of them to fall in exactly the right place, where a nine-letter word has nine chances and far more room to manoeuvre.

When a word genuinely cannot be linked to anything else, the tool says so and leaves it off the sheet rather than printing a puzzle quietly missing a word from its own list. Pressing New puzzle rearranges everything and often finds a home for it.

Using it after a word search

The same spelling list works in both tools, and the order is worth getting right. A word search lets you match letters you can already see on the page. A criss-cross does not: the squares are empty, so the word has to come from memory and then be tested against the letters where it crosses.

Running the search first and the criss-cross a few days later is a genuine step up rather than the same exercise twice. Nothing needs retyping between them.

For a class, the numbered grid gives you something a word search cannot: a way to talk about the puzzle out loud. "Seven down" names a square everyone can find, which makes it workable on a board with the whole room joining in.