Frequently Asked Questions
What is a crossword?
Crossword puzzles have been published in newspapers and other publications since 1873. They consist of a grid of squares where the player aims to write words both horizontally and vertically.
Next to the crossword will be a series of questions or clues, which relate to the various rows or lines of boxes in the crossword. The player reads the question or clue, and tries to find a word that answers the question in the same amount of letters as there are boxes in the related crossword row or line.
Some of the words will share letters, so will need to match up with each other. The words can vary in length and complexity, as can the clues.
Who is a crossword suitable for?
The fantastic thing about crosswords is, they are completely flexible for whatever age or reading level you need. You can use many words to create a complex crossword for adults, or just a couple of words for younger children.
Crosswords can use any word you like, big or small, so there are literally countless combinations that you can create for templates. It is easy to customise the template to the age or learning level of your students.
How do I create a crossword template?
For the easiest crossword templates, WordMint is the way to go!
Pre-made templates
For a quick and easy pre-made template, simply search through WordMint’s existing 500,000+ templates. With so many to choose from, you’re bound to find the right one for you!
Create your own from scratch
- Log in to your account (it’s free to join!)
- Head to ‘My Puzzles’
- Click ‘Create New Puzzle’ and select ‘Crossword’
- Select your layout, enter your title and your chosen clues and answers
- That’s it! The template builder will create your crossword template for you and you can save it to your account, export as a word document or pdf and print!
How do I choose the clues for my crossword?
Once you’ve picked a theme, choose clues that match your students current difficulty level. For younger children, this may be as simple as a question of “What color is the sky?” with an answer of “blue”.
Are crosswords good for students?
Crosswords are a great exercise for students’ problem solving and cognitive abilities. Not only do they need to solve a clue and think of the correct answer, but they also have to consider all of the other words in the crossword to make sure the words fit together.
If this is your first time using a crossword with your students, you could create a crossword FAQ template for them to give them the basic instructions.
Can I print my crossword template?
All of our templates can be exported into Microsoft Word to easily print, or you can save your work as a PDF to print for the entire class. Your puzzles get saved into your account for easy access and printing in the future, so you don’t need to worry about saving them at work or at home!
Can I create crosswords in other languages?
Crosswords are a fantastic resource for students learning a foreign language as they test their reading, comprehension and writing all at the same time. When learning a new language, this type of test using multiple different skills is great to solidify students’ learning.
We have full support for crossword templates in languages such as Spanish, French and Japanese with diacritics including over 100,000 images, so you can create an entire crossword in your target language including all of the titles, and clues.
Solving crossword puzzles requires a lot of layers to be deciphered. Sure, it doesn’t involve any rocket science but, it isn’t that easy too. At times, the clues come up with a lot of hidden words or telescopic clues, making the puzzle a lot more complex to crack. Be it any paperback puzzle or the contemporary online crossword puzzle, it surely needs a lot of intense brainstorming sessions to solve. However, with certain easy tips and tricks, you can do that effortlessly. Eager to get a sneak peek? Take a look then.
- Pay attention to the design of telescopic clues: In such clues, the answer is included within the text of the clue itself. Either the solution will be in a firm of a single word or a series of a set of words. The telescopic clues are basically designed in a 3 layer structure:
a. Definition.
b. Indicator with hidden words: It contains words, sentences or phrases signaling towards hidden words.
c. The third layer consists of the words and phrases with the exact hidden words. - Analyse the big words: The probability of deciphering the answers through a long word is really high. So, if you stumble upon a really long word in the clue accompanied with other words like ‘has’, ‘in’, ‘some’, you might be able to crack the puzzle with answer lying in the subset of words.
- Check for proper nouns: If by any means, a clue contains a proper noun, there are chances of it being an anagram. If this is the case, you would be able to decipher the puzzle seamlessly.
- Keep a check on the wrapped texts: Crossword puzzles in a regular form come in the format of the multi-column. Here, if the clue texts is a little long, it gets wrapped to the adjacent line. So, pay attention to words hiding behind these wrapped texts to get the puzzles right.
So, you see, how following the aforementioned tips can make you a crossword pro in no time? Isn’t that amazing? However, you know what’s more amazing? It’s the fact that you can use this tricks to play free online crossword games like Wealth Words and win huge cash prizes out of it.
Yes, it’s true. Wealth Words is an online crossword puzzle that can shower you with cash prizes as high as a whopping $1000. Wondering how can you win it all? Well, just register at its website, purchase tokens ($2 each) for playing and answer the puzzles right as you dive into its world of words. Additionally, a pro tip here is to submit the answers in an active time frame of an hour to be in the ultimate race of winning lots and lots of money. Pretty easy, isn’t it?
So, what are you waiting for? Go, win real money, show your word power with these online crossword puzzles and unleash the crossword aficionado within you like never before. After all, laughing all the way to bank never hurt anyone, right? All the best.
Carol Lee
Carol Lee is a content writer at Wealth Words. She has been in the digital marketing industry for the past five years.
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The crossword puzzle maker
To create a crossword puzzle, you need to have at least two words since the words need to be ‘crossed’. From that point on you can create more intersections between words and expand your puzzle grid. Luckily, the crossword algorithm does all that hard thinking for us! 
Adding words revolved around a theme is a very logical and a nice choice to make sure your words cross in context as well as visually
Adding a hidden solution
A nice way to give your crossword puzzle another dimension is to add a ‘hidden solution’
The hidden solution can be anything you like and is marked in the field as cells with a specific background color. The characters of the hidden solution need to be collected by the user by filling in correct answers across the crossword puzzle field.
This can be used for competitions like selecting prize winners, but of course just having another small puzzle within a puzzle and enjoying the fun is reason enough :).
Answer control is automated
Checking answers is no longer required! The system does this automatically for you and shows the crossword puzzle player whenever their given answer is correct.
If you do not like this feature, there is the Premium option to ‘Disable answer control’ as well.
And lastly, Premium allows you to ‘Reload given answers’ automatically. This way puzzle players can finish their puzzle in multiple sessions if needed.
Creating an answer key
To give yourself an easy way to help other puzzle players, you can enable the ‘Answer key’ mode on your puzzle owner panel.
This is only available to you and can be turned on/off via the ‘Eye’-icon at the top-right of your puzzle preview.
Both the blank version and the answer key version are available for printing as well.
Crossword maker with pictures
Besides adding pure text crosswords, you can use your media files as well to make different kinds of crossword puzzles.
Images are a nice way to give hints/descriptions as well and allows different kinds of questions since you now have an image to hint the puzzle player towards the answer.
This can activated via the Premium ‘Type of crossword’ option, and choose ‘Image’ there.
Adding a word bank
To make the puzzles a bit easier, you can now also add in the Premium ‘Word Bank’ option. This allows the crossword puzzle player to select an answer from all of the answers within the puzzle.
The word bank pops up once a player select a cell within the crossword puzzle grid, since at that point the puzzle understands where the user would like to insert the selected answer.
Creating your own look
The crossword puzzle maker allows all kinds of cool Premium custom styling options which give the puzzle any look you like. You can hide all of the black squares for example, which looks more clean and when printing, saves quite a bit of ink!
Adding background images
Or you can go even wilder, and change the background of the black squares of your crossword puzzle to create a brand, theme or other look that you prefer.
Play your crossword puzzle in teams
To create even more fun interactions with your crossword puzzle, try out the ‘Play in teams’ feature on the Premium-tab. It sets up team registrations and once you start the team battle, it will connect all of the team members.
Every time a team member enters a correct answer in the crossword puzzle, it will synchronise this given answer with the rest of the team so that you can finish the puzzle together.
Extra cool is the team dashboard that you have as the crossword puzzle owner, via the Premium > ‘Open Control room’. There you can see the progress of each team and monitor who finishes first!
Changing the questions layout
If your website or the player does not have a lot of horizontal space on their screen, then it might be a good fit to change the layout of the crossword puzzle. This can be done via the ‘Questions position’ option on the Premium-tab.
This can be switched to either ‘Right’ (default), ‘Bottom’ and even ‘Hidden’. When you hide the question list, the active question will still pop up when you select a crossword puzzle cell, so this can be real efficient way to embed your puzzle!
The manual crossword builder
The manual crossword builder allows you to surpass the automated capabilities of the crossword generator.
Instead of generating the words in a random grid, you can pick the locations and intersections yourself, creating tight, extra professional looking crossword puzzles.
You can enter the manual crossword maker via the black and white human head icon (and switch back to the crossword generator in the same way)
Cryptic crossword generator
The cryptic crossword clues are not generated for you automatically, but of course you can create your own cryptic crossword puzzle with the ‘regular’ crossword puzzle generator
Add hints that can be interpreted in multiple ways, think of small word jokes or find words which contain the exact same letters as other words and create an anagram clue.
Cryptic crossword puzzles are super cool and fun to solve. They are the origin of why I created Puzzel.org in the first place!
Check out the sample puzzle
Discover how this puzzle type looks in practice by viewing and playing the sample puzzle (opens in a new tab)
In this Article
- Why Are Crossword Puzzles Good For Your Child?
- Easy Crossword Puzzles for Preschoolers (Age Group 4-6 Years)
- Interesting Crossword Puzzles for Children (Age Group 7 to 8 Years)
While it is important for children to learn new spellings and brush up on their vocabulary, they rarely look at reading as a fun activity. This is where crosswords come in. They are not only an interesting way of keeping your child busy while doing something productive but also fun as they are more like riddles that your child will love to solve.
Why Are Crossword Puzzles Good For Your Child?
From being a healthy distraction for your child to helping him improve important life skills, here are some reasons as to why crossword puzzles are good for your child:
- Help improve your child’s reading skills
- Improve spellings
- Helps gain general knowledge on different topics
- Improves your child’s thinking and processing time
- Helps build problem-solving skills in your child
- Helps develop memory
- Enable your child to focus
- Help improve observation skills
- Prepares your child for taking tests
- Serves as a way to bond with your child
- Sparks interest in reading and writing
Easy Crossword Puzzles for Preschoolers (Age Group 4-6 Years)
It is always best to start off with the development of important life skills early in life and as already mentioned; crossword puzzles are a great tool for many parents and teachers to help their child develop an interest in reading. Here are some easy preschool crossword puzzles that are best suited for your child:
1. Shape Names
There is more to shapes than squares, circles and triangles; something your child will soon learn with this fun crossword. It includes pictures of shapes, which your child will have to look at and complete the puzzle where a few letters from each shape are given as clues for your kids.
2. Food Names
This crossword will introduce your child to the world of food and it comes with pictures that are numbered. Your child needs to simply look at the picture and fill in the name of the food and drink in the corresponding boxes. You can discuss the benefits of each food item with your child, their tastes and whether they are dessert foods or main meals.
3. Animal Name Puzzles
We have different classes of animals like birds, reptiles, primates and mammals. Use animal crosswords to teach your child about the different animal species in the world. You can discuss the sounds they make, the food they eat and whether they are domestic animals or wild animals.
4. Guess The Colour
Our world is full of colours, and your child will need to learn how to identify different colours. Crossword puzzles that will help your child learn colours by associating them with objects that are commonly found in certain colours will make learning colours a lot of fun for your child.
5. Fruit Puzzles
Fruits are colourful, delicious and healthy and make some amazing desserts. Your child can learn the names of fruits, and you can tell him which of his favourite treats are made from them and what they are good for. The puzzle will give your child the first letter of each fruit as a clue so that your child will have something to go on other than just an image.
Interesting Crossword Puzzles for Children (Age Group 7 to 8 Years)
Based on different themes and different levels of difficulty, crossword puzzles can benefit children of all ages. Here are some crossword puzzles that you must consider getting for your child.
1. Mysterious Word Puzzles
This fun puzzle will require your child to find hidden words in a jumble of alphabets. The words to find will be given on the side of the puzzle. This is one of the crossword puzzles for kids with answers, which are given in the bottom corner of the page. However, try not to allow your child to see the answers before attempting to solve the word puzzle on his own.
2. Sport Puzzles
From common sports such as basketball, golf and tennis to sports that are unheard of, such as polo and fencing, sports puzzles are a great way to introduce your child to the world of sports. You can also explain to your child how each sport is different and requires different skills. Your child can learn that there is a sport suited for everyone.
3. Music Puzzles
This crossword with musical instruments will make an expert out of your child. Not only will he be able to identify the different types of instruments, but you can also aid his knowledge by giving him some extra information and explaining to him how the instruments are played and what genre of music each of the instruments features in.
4. Hospital Puzzles
There are many more things related to the hospital than just doctors and nurses. With this puzzle, your child will know all about the different things that take place in a hospital and the terms used to describe them. He can learn all about tests, roles of hospital staff and their importance. This crossword will require your child to find the words hidden in a jumble of alphabets.
5. Christmas Puzzles
Children love Christmas, but they still have a lot to learn about it. Use a crossword puzzle to help familiarize your child about the different terms associated with Christmas and explain why and how the traditions have become so important to many people around the world.
6. Kitchenware Puzzles
This puzzle has illustrations about all the things one can find in the kitchen. Crosswords that are based on things found in the kitchen can improve your child’s vocabulary when it comes to the basic things in life. You can further enrich his GK by explaining the functions of these objects.
7. Guess The Months
The months of a year are important, but learning them and how to spell them can be boring for your child. With this crossword, you need only unscramble the letters to improve your child’s spellings & help him remember the months of the year.
8. Space Word Puzzles
Teach your child all about space with crossword puzzles based on the subject. Your child will learn the names of numerous things related to space such as rockets, the solar system and anything else that can be found in outer space.
9. Math Crosswords
Improve your child’s skills in math with simple and fun math problems in a crossword format. He will learn to add and subtract like a pro after solving these puzzles.
10. Transport Puzzles
Today we have many means of transportation and it is worth educating your child about all the modes available. Other than the commonly seen cars, buses and bikes, your child will learn about others such as submarines, rockets and excavators.
The entire family can have fun trying to solve a crossword puzzle so it is also an activity that can be used to promote family bonding. If you have children of similar ages, or your child has friends over, you can play some crossword puzzle games by giving them the same puzzle and a time limit to see who finishes first.
Also Read: Interesting Maths Puzzle for Child
What is a Word Search Puzzle?
A word search puzzle is basically find a combination of words placed in a grid. Those set of words can be placed horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Purpose of this puzzle is to find words that are hidden in the jargon of other words.
Most of the times the words that need to be searched are written at the bottom of the puzzle.
Benefits of playing Word Search Puzzles
Hard to believe but games and puzzles play an important part in keeping up our mental health. Such puzzles stimulate the brain activities, this helping us stay focused and increased concentration.
They are helpful for kids and adults to learn and memorize new vocabulary words, historical events, popular destinations, interesting characters and so much more.
Word Search Generator Tool
You can create your own custom word search puzzles with this Word Search Puzzle Generator. You can use variety of options to create such puzzles. Follow these steps to create your custom words search puzzles:
- Input the Title of the puzzle
- Create and input your Words List
- Select the Grid Size, like 10×10, 15×15, 20×20 etc
- Select the Font Style.
- Select the Difficulty Level of Easy or Normal
- Select the theme of your choice, if you wish.
- If you wish, you select to show cell borders or not.
- Lastly, select the color of Title, Grid and Words.
- Once all the options are set, click on “Generate New”.
- Select “Show Answers” button to see the answers.
- Once generated, download the puzzles as PDF or JPG formats.
- You can also Download Preview before actually downloading the puzzles.
- To see the existing word search puzzles, click on the “Brose Gallery” button.
- Print the puzzles and start playing.
What Kind of Word Search Puzzles Should I Make?
When you are customizing a word search puzzle, it is entirely up to you to include the type of words you want to use in your word search puzzle.
To keep the players interested, make sure to use the words that are not too long in length. Try to avoid phrases that can get mixed up easily with other words.
Avoid words that require special characters, punctuation marks or numbers.
PLEASE NOTE: After you create your puzzle, proofread carefully to make sure that offensive or unintended words are not used. If you happen to come across any, you can generate another puzzle by following the steps above.