Crossword solver

How the crossword solver works

When a crossword answer is half filled in, the letters from the words that cross it tell you a lot. The solver takes those letters and their positions, and checks every word of the right length in a dictionary of 273,766 words. Everyday words come first, because most crossword answers are familiar, followed by rarer words and variants that setters sometimes need to make a corner work.

It doesn't read clues and has no list of past answers. It is a pattern tool: you bring the meaning, it brings the spellings, which is often all you need to see the answer.

Worked example: how each letter narrows it down

A five-letter answer, filled in one crossing letter at a time:

Three known letters take 12,549 five-letter words down to 24. If the clue is about birds, you would already be looking at CROWS, and telling the solver the answer must contain a W leaves 3: CHOWS, CLOWS, CROWS.

More patterns to try

When you don't know the length: the *

Most of the time the grid tells you the length, but a * is handy for themed answers, for checking a word family, or for a clue you only half remember. A * matches any run of letters, including none. *OLOGY finds 506 words, such as APOLOGY, BIOLOGY, ECOLOGY, and UN*ABLE finds 419, such as UNABLE, UNACCEPTABLE, UNACCOUNTABLE. Set the answer length as well and a * pattern keeps only words of that size.

Answer lengths

Most American-style daily crosswords use a 15 by 15 grid in which every answer has at least three letters and every square belongs to two answers, one across and one down. That's why crossing letters help so much. Here is how many words of each length the solver knows, and how many of them are everyday words:

Tips when you are stuck

• Fill in the crossings first. Solve the easier words that cross a hard one; every letter you add cuts the list down sharply, as the table shows.
• Check the tense and number. A clue in the past tense often wants an -ED ending, and a plural clue usually wants a final S.
• Doubt a letter? Turn it back into a ? and see if a better answer appears. One wrong crossing letter is the most common reason nothing fits.
• Watch for abbreviations in the clue, such as "abbr." or a shortened word: the answer is usually short too.

Unscrambling a jumble instead? Use the word unscrambler or the anagram solver. For tile games, the word finder ranks words by score, and for five-letter guessing games, try the 5-letter word finder. When you'd like a different kind of puzzle, there is sudoku, a word search maker and solitaire.