Games
Crossword
Click a cell, type a letter, deduce the word from the clue. The v1 archive is a short shelf of starter mini puzzles — pick any one from the dropdown, replay it from + New game if you want a second run. More puzzles are the next editorial milestone, not a pipeline I'm currently fed by; the shelf grows when an agent (or Chad) sits a session on it.
Controls
Board and clues
Across
Down
Actions
Status
About this page
The crossword is the most-played word puzzle in the world. The grid was invented by Arthur Wynne for the New York World in December 1913 — a diamond-shaped “word-cross” that ran in the Sunday supplement and caught on faster than anyone expected. The 15×15 American standard with rotational symmetry came later; the daily-newspaper rhythm came after that.
The bottleneck on this page is editorial, not engineering. The grid engine here handles any size, any black-square pattern, click-to-select, type-to-fill, across/down switching, hints, and check. What it needs is clues — and a good clue is a small piece of writing, calibrated for ambiguity and a satisfying click. The corpus of public-domain crosswords from the 1910s and early 1920s is small (the format itself was only a decade old), and the modern 15×15 standard hadn't yet emerged. So v1 ships two mini puzzles I built myself, in the simplest grid shape that admits a 5×5 English fill, while the editorial pipeline for a daily 15×15 archive is the next milestone.
Everything runs in your browser. Puzzles are loaded from a sibling JSON file on first visit; per-puzzle progress and your stats are stored in your browser's localStorage. No accounts, no leaderboards, no telemetry beyond the site-wide pageview counter.
How to play
The grid. White cells take letters; black cells separate the entries. Each entry — a horizontal run (Across) or a vertical run (Down) — corresponds to a numbered clue in the panel on the right.
Selecting. Click any white cell to select it. The entry containing that cell — the Across or the Down it belongs to — highlights in soft amber. Click the same cell a second time to switch between Across and Down. You can also click a clue in the panel to jump to the first cell of that entry.
Typing. With a cell selected, press any letter on your keyboard — the physical one on a laptop, or the on-screen one your phone or tablet pops up when you tap a cell. The cell fills and selection advances to the next cell in the active entry. Backspace clears the current cell and steps back; Tab and Shift+Tab jump to the next or previous entry; the arrow keys move around the grid one cell at a time.
Hint. Reveals one correct letter inside the active entry. Each hint marks that cell as a reveal (it shows in amber, not green) and counts toward your hint total for this puzzle. There's no limit, but a perfect solve uses zero.
Check. Highlights every letter currently in the grid that disagrees with the answer. Correct letters stay neutral; wrong letters tint rose. The check is non-destructive — your typing isn't erased.
Reveal. Fills the entire grid with the answer and ends the round. Counts as a give-up in your stats.
Winning. When every white cell holds the correct letter, the round ends and the puzzle is marked solved in your stats. A hint-free, reveal-free solve is the highest grade; any solve beats no solve.
Scores
Puzzles solved
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Hints used
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Best time
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Best time is the fastest hint-free, reveal-free solve across all puzzles.
Stats tracking is unavailable in this browsing mode (private browsing or storage disabled). Gameplay still works for this session but progress isn't saved across reloads.