Everyone’s Favorite Crossword Puzzle
You’ve probably come across a crossword puzzle at some point in your life. Perhaps while your grandparents were reading the newspaper, maybe when you were flipping through a magazine, or nowadays while you were cruising through all the top-rated games for your android or iOS device. Perhaps you’ve heard the term ‘crossword’ but have been wondering what the definition of a crossword puzzle might be, or how one plays this single person game?
How to Identify a Crossword Puzzle
A crossword is a word puzzle game that you will find on a rectangular or square grid. On the grid, you’ll notice black and white boxes. On your standard crossword puzzle game, you will find mostly white boxes with a few black shaded boxes spread sporadically across the board, but it is really as random as that? Not at all!
How to Play the Game
Well, it’s quite simple to break down the rules, but playing the game is where the real challenges and tests come in. The objective is to fill in all the white cells with letters, both vertically and horizontally. Naturally, the letters should form real words in the language that you’re playing in. But it doesn’t end there. The trick is, you’re given numbered clues which align with the boxes within the grid. The clues are meant to lead you to the letters and words intended for each box. The more clues you can answer correctly, the more hints you will have along the way to complete the whole board. Though this sounds easy, once you begin playing, you’ll quickly notice how sometimes the clues can be quite vague with a plethora of answers. But don’t you worry, crossword help is on its way! We'll get more into that later, first let’s take a little tour of the history of the crossword puzzle.
The History of the Crossword
As you’ll soon discover after playing this game, history and facts often come in handy when it comes to unscrambling the clues in crossword games.
The first crossword puzzle ever made was in the early 1900s in England as a game for children, which was later transformed into an entertaining pastime for adults, first in the United States and then across the world!
New York Times Era
The first newspaper to print the crossword was a newspaper called the New York World, though it’s structure was first designed in a diamond shape with only white cells on the printed page. Though the Crossword puzzle is almost synonymous with the New York Times, at first, the publication wasn’t so attracted to the game. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, newspapers across the country, like the Washington Post, agreed that printing the crossword could help take one’s mind off of the fearful and troubling times. Margaret Farrar was known as the crossword pioneer, and finally, the New York times included the puzzle in their Sunday print. Later, the New York Times crossword puzzle becomes the most well-renowned crossword puzzle within the United States.
Crossword Types
In contemporary times, the crossword hasn’t lost a hint of its momentum, but it has lost its rectangular or square-shaped grids! New types of crossword puzzles include, Cryptic Puzzle, Blocked Grid, Barred Grid, Word Sudoku, Abstract Symbols Sudoku, Word Puzzles, Diagramless Crosswords, Codeword Crosswords, plus a whole lot more! Plus, there are even themed games to help you stay focused on the target. The good news is, you’ll still be provided with increasingly challenging boards and clues while relying on your vocabulary and fact skills to win the game! All vowels, consonants, and syllables welcome!
Before we jump into the Crossword solver, there are some important facts you should know before you hit that ‘Play’ button. Clues for any crossword game, whether it’s a themed game or a variety type, are not exactly straight forward, but they may result in anagram and abbreviation hints for your final answer. Cryptic crosswords always have a couple of these anagram clues which the player has to solve.
Anagram Clues
Curious about some anagram samples? Here’s one to wet the palate:
Badly pare the fruit (4)
Wondering how to solve the anagram riddle? We’re looking for a 4 letter word, where the word badly hints at what? The fruit. And what fruit is written ‘badly’ in this clue, yup, you got it, pare, meaning pear!
Abbreviation Clues
Now let’s have a look at the abbreviation clues, and what they could possibly look like so you know exactly what you’re dealing with when you get caught up in a crossword brain teaser. For example,
An often-used device is SS for steamship and hence aboard, for example, Looks able to get aboard (5)
The words get aboard tell you that the answer will begin and end with S; another word for able to is CAN, and combining the two gives you SCANS which is another word for "looks.”
or,
CCTV, Perhaps, Almost Always Effective Conceal Weapon
First, you need to find out what CCTV is and how it works (here is an informative article). Then, maybe you'll think about SURVEILLANCE. If not, using a crossword solver, you'll see this is the most probable answer.
Now you’re getting an idea of how intensely complicated and challenging a crossword puzzle can be. That’s exactly why we have designed a specialized website to help you during your most challenging moments. Everyone needs a hand every once in a while, why not use online resources when needed? That’s what they’re there for!
Crossword Clues Solver - New York Times and more
Maybe you’re playing the New York Times crossword puzzle, it is the most notorious crossword puzzle out there after all. This game certainly isn’t designed for rookies, but luckily there are NYT Crossword Answers out there so you can solve all the pressing mysteries, whether online, in a book, or on your smartphone. Since the crossword puzzle is so popular, naturally there are daily crossword puzzles with each day’s answers available online.
The Guardian Crossword is also a very popular crossword puzzle with several dedicated sites in England and abroad. Even though the Guardian is streaming all the way from Britain, you can also find all the Guardian Crossword Answers online, at your fingertips!
Crossword Missing Letters Solver
At first, when you open your crossword puzzle, you may feel entirely perplexed as to where to begin. Sometimes the clues seem to lead nowhere in your mind and you just can’t seem to make the connections needed to fill in those cells. That’s where Crossword quick solver comes in. If you are eager for a crossword puzzle solver to help you out then we’ve got exactly what you need, no questions asked. We first recommend that you go through all of the clues and try to see if you can at least unravel one clue. This way the crossword quick solve solver will have letters to work with and you will find the exact answer you need. If you don’t have any letters on the board then the crossword missing letter solver can only give you possible solutions. The best way to use these possibilities is to jot them all down and see if any of them work with crossing vertical and horizontal answers. Then you’re sure to find many more answers on your own!
Greek Letter Clue
Let’s say for instance you have a crossword clue that is a five letter greek letter. There are several possible answers like KAPPA, SIGMA, GAMMA, ALPHA, OMEGA, and the list truly goes on. That’s why it’s important to also have a pattern to work with to guess which answer is the right answer for your crossword clue. The crossword clue solver is here for you!
How to use Crossword Solver
Crossword puzzles are a one-player game, but that doesn’t mean you need to uncover all the answers to the clues all on your own. If you’re stuck on a clue that you can’t unravel, here’s how to use our Crossword Solver designed exactly for those moments when you need us most!
COMPLETE Clue
- First, you need to do enter the word ‘complete’ into the clue toolbar then hit ‘search.’
- Then you will get a rich list of words ordered in the highest rank, so you can start with the best answers first. In this example, you will see options like ONE, OUTANDOUT, HEADTOTOE, FINISH, INTACT, REAL, WHOLE, END, ENTIRE, and many more words! Those are just a few possibilities ranked in the 95% and 94% word list.
- Since there are so many possibilities, it is best to also plug in how many letters you need for your answer to reduce the possibilities, so you can solve that puzzle even faster!
Trivia about Crossword Clues
- Many American crossword puzzles have a ‘theme.’ Like a quote theme, anniversary or tribute themes, or synonym themes, where for example, all the answers correspond to one specific word.
- Manny Nosowsky holds the record for the most crossword puzzles published in the New York Times. She has published 241 puzzles with the NYT alone.
- In American-style crossword puzzles, the theme is created before anything else. There are high standards for American-style themes, where it is necessary for the theme to be witty, interesting and internally consistent.
- The earliest crossword software was dependent on people inputting a list of words and clues, which then automatically mapped answers onto the necessary grid.
- According to Wikipedia, “The program Dr.Fill was written in the 2000s to solve crossword puzzles using a similar database of past clues and answers, plus the full contents of a dictionary and Wikipedia.”
- There are numerous amounts of crossword solver apps out there for almost every type of crossword puzzle. New words are regularly accepted into the online database to expand the possibilities!
