The Complete Crossword Solver

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On Dec. 21, 1913, in a Sunday edition of The New York World, the first-ever “word-cross” puzzle appeared. The first-ever cruciverbalist, or person skilled in the creation or solving of crossword puzzles, was a journalist named Arthur Wynne from Liverpool, who’d immigrated to the states. A few weeks after the first word puzzle of its kind appeared, a typesetting error changed the name “word-cross” to “cross-word,” and it’s been called a crossword puzzle since.

There are over 10,000 unique clues to solve as well as dozens of quests to complete and trophies to collect! The book Two Across by Jeff Bartsch tells the story of a romance in which two brainy people communicate their love via clever crosswords. The world’s largest published crossword, according to Guinness World Records, is published in Japan. It has 66,666 clues and measures 12 square miles. Start at the #1 square box, across, down, and proceed with the following box. Do this with every easy answer in the down and across boxes. Make sure that the answer words fill in the correct boxes.WSJ Crossword: The Wall Street Journal’s puzzles are, in their words, “America’s most elegant, adventurous, and addictive crosswords.” They’re frequently themed and can be quite difficult to figure out crossword solutions for. Wordscapes: Another app that’s not completely simple crosswords but more of a mix, Wordscapes is a lot of fun and great for people who aren’t great spellers. Deletions involve deleting one or two letters to get a different answer. For instance, “mend” minus a letter could be “end” or “men.”

Enter the known letters in their locations.You need to know at least one of the letters to make a word that might fit. Consider abbreviations carefully. If a clue is abbreviated, the answer will likely be, too. Memorize popular abbreviations, including names of events like WWI, military abbreviations like NCO, and titles like Mr. and Ms. Also memorize common suffixes, as they’re quite popular among crossword writers.

Our Crossword Helper solving your clues, crosswords with missing letters and anagrams

How do you get better at crosswords? If you’re an avid crossword player and fan, but you’re not as good or as fast as you want to be, there are several ways to learn how to best solve a crossword puzzle. So long as you apply one or more of these strategies to your daily crossword-solving, you can turn into a pro in no time. Also known as skeleton crosswords in the U.K., diagramless crosswords have clue numbers and unspecified shaded squares. The grid offers the overall dimensions, but players have to answer both the answers to individual clues and how to fit partially built-up clumps of answers into larger ones and thus deduce the shaded squares. The symmetry rules are also abstract and left to the player’s decipherment. How to play a crossword puzzle Consider the all-important theme. Crossword writers frequently use themes or even tell stories with their clever puzzles. For instance, if the theme is ballet, an easy answer to “point of pain for dancers” might be “toe.” Question marks often imply wordplay or puns. Usually, crossword clues are written with no punctuation at all, so if you see a question mark, it implies that the answer won’t be as straightforward as you’d think. Think of puns, wordplay, homonyms, and less-obvious answers.

Washington Post Crossword: Their daily crosswords are free and fun to play. They also have a “Monthly Meta Crossword” that’s themed. Cryptic crosswords are like normal crosswords, but the clues tend to involve wordplay and also have very convoluted, intentionally confusing hints. If you’re doing a cryptic crossword, know that the definition is typically hiding in plain sight, and don’t lose heart!Word Crossy: Cheats for Word Crossy can be found with our crossword-solver tool. Imagine crosswords but with coin collection and competition. In 1890, another type of crossword puzzle was developed by an Italian, Giuseppe Airoldi. The crossword puzzle included both horizontal and vertical clues, while the puzzle was a simple four-by-four grid with no shaded squares. Make a first pass in the other direction, usually starting with 1 Down, solving for the most obvious clues first and making sure there aren’t discrepancies. Find some obvious clues, and make sure they fit together when written out. If you really want to get fancy with your crosswords, you can also create a crossword puzzle with a program like Crossword Compiler for Windows or CrossFire by Beekeeper Labs.

You can find answers to your crossword in a couple of different ways. If you have a couple of letters from the answer, you can use a pattern, replacing any unknown letters with a question mark (?).

The 30 Most Common Crossword Answers Every Word Puzzle Fan Should Know [Infographic]

The prolific Margaret Farrar is succeeded at The New York Times by Will Weng, who is later succeeded by Eugene T. Maleska. For the love of your sanity, use a pencil. If you’re using physical paper instead of an online crossword app, use a pencil and eraser. Mistakes, misinterpretations, and confusion are likely to arise, even if you’re a seasoned pro.