A crossword is the Christmas puzzle that asks what a word means as well as how it is spelled. Each of the four ready-made sheets on this page has its clues already written, Across and Down, under an empty numbered grid, and the answer key is the last page of every PDF: plain, unframed, with the filled grid and the answers listed by number.
They are written for different readers. The easy sheet has ten short clues and a word bank of the answers at the foot of the page, for ages 7 to 9: STAR, ELF, BELLS and COOKIES among them, with STOCKING running down the grid and crossing four other answers. The kids sheet drops the word bank and has twelve clues for ages 8 to 11, among them GINGERBREAD, the longest answer at eleven letters, and NORTH POLE, which crosses five others.
The teens and adults sheet is trivia: sixteen clues on A Christmas Carol, The Nutcracker, carols and customs, from WASSAIL to BOXING Day. The large print sheet is for adults who want bigger type, with twelve clues set at 14 point on a page of their own and squares almost half an inch across. Both print on a plain page; the two sheets for children wear a Christmas border.
To use clues of your own, the maker above opens on the Christmas set and takes typed clues as well, one answer and one clue to a line. Whatever is typed stays in your browser.
Which Christmas crossword suits which age
The easy sheet assumes a reader who can manage a short sentence and knows the holiday. Every clue on it is eleven words or fewer, such as "Another word for a gift" for PRESENT, and the word bank turns the puzzle into matching each clue to one of ten words and fitting it into its squares, which is the right size of job for a first crossword.
The kids sheet takes the word bank away, so the answers have to come from the solver. Its clues use the words an eight to eleven year old meets around the holiday (antlered, evergreen, doorways), and where a clue is about Santa it says "said to", so it reads as true to a child who believes and to one who does not. SLEIGH, WORKSHOP and NORTH POLE are all clued that way.
The teens and adults sheet is the one for after dinner. Its clues assume someone who has read or watched A Christmas Carol, knows a few carols by title and could find Lapland on a map, and none of them is a pun or a trick. The large print sheet draws on the same trivia with gentler choices, FRUITCAKE, EVERGREEN, SPRUCE and HOLLY among them, alongside TINY TIM and Good King WENCESLAS.
Where to start a Christmas crossword when the grid stalls
Start with the answer that crosses the most others, because every letter in it is a letter given to another answer. On the kids sheet that is NORTH POLE, which runs down the grid and crosses REINDEER at its N, GINGERBREAD at its R, WORKSHOP at its H, EGGNOG at its O and MISTLETOE at its E. On the easy sheet it is STOCKING, crossed by PRESENT, SNOWMAN, COOKIES and CANDY CANE.
On the teens and adults sheet the same part is played by NUTCRACKER, which runs down through POINSETTIA, CRATCHIT, PARTRIDGE, PRANCER and YULETIDE, and on the large print sheet by FRUITCAKE, crossed by EVERGREEN, MISTLETOE, WENCESLAS and GINGERBREAD. Three answers on these sheets are two words run together, CANDY CANE on the easy sheet, NORTH POLE on the kids sheet and TINY TIM in large print, and each of their clues ends with (2 words).
The answer key lists every answer by number under Across and Down below the filled grid, so a room can check its grids out loud without the key going round. With the maker above, every version of a typed or themed crossword gets a key of its own in the same form.
