The Crossword puzzle maker is used to make simple crossword puzzles. It turns out that good crossword puzzles of the type found in newspapers are fairly hard to generate, and require a pool of lots of words, not all of which are used. This program puts all of the words you specify (no more, no less) into a simple crossword puzzle.

If you are looking for pre-constructed crossword puzzles, you might want to take a look at http://thinks.com/webguide/crosswords.htm. Another puzzle site which allows you to make puzzles is http://www.puzzlemaker.com/. Another one that popped up is http://www.translationcrosswords.com/index.jsp.

The puzzle that is generated will remain on this server for about two months. If you want to ensure that you have a copy of the generated puzzle, make sure you save a copy.

The first part of this is for you to enter a list of words and clues.

Once that part is done, hit the Make Puzzle button for a puzzle which incorporates your words.

For puzzles with more than about 15 words, this takes a long time (measured in minutes). As the number of words increases, the wait increases exponentially.

Crossword puzzle title:
Author's Name:
Description of puzzle:
Computation time:		We try lots of combinations to get you a nice puzzle. This takes time; time for our computer to generate the puzzle, and time for you to wait. This lets you set the trade off. The time is in seconds.
Expansion:		Once we start finding a puzzle that has all of the words in the grid, we grow the puzzle up to this number of cells in both height and width attempting to get all of the words interconnected. Bigger numbers will take longer.
Minimum number of groups:		We try to connect all of the words into a single group. Sometimes that's not possible because the combination of letters doesn't line up, or because we run out of time (see above). This gives you the minimum number of groups that you're willing to accept (and that we'll stop at). Setting this to 1 will cause the program to run longer. Although we try our best, we may still not get you the puzzle you were looking for.
Size of square:		This allows you to play with the size of the puzzle. Bigger numbers make larger puzzles.
Color of square:	black grey	Grey squares use less ink when printing. Black is more traditional.
Change to upper case:	yes no	Change letters to all capital letters, or leave as they were entered.
Free Form (PDF only):	yes no	For the PDF version of the output, don't draw the black squares.
Text file name:	Plain text file on your computer to read with one answer:clue per line. How file loading works
HTML Font style:	Nothing special Arial Arial Bold Arial Italic Arial Bold Italic Arial Black Comic Sans MS Comic Sans MS Bold Courier New Courier New Bold Courier New Italic Courier New Bold Italic Impact Times New Roman Times New Roman Bold Times New Roman Italic Times New Roman Bold Italic Verdana Verdana Bold Verdana Italic Verdana Bold Italic Century Gothic	Font restrictions
PDF Font style:	Nothing special Amazone AmericanUnc Bandit Bold Italic Bank Gothic-Medium Braggadocio Chaucer Corsiva Courier Courier Bold Courier Oblique Courier Bold Oblique FetteFraktur Bold Fillmore Fujiyama Harpoon Helvetica Helvetica Bold Helvetica Oblique Helvetica Bold Oblique Jamai Jupiter Latin Wide LinoScript Pepita Serpentine Sans Stencil Bold Times Roman Times Bold Times Italic Times Bold Italic Georgia Georgia Bold Georgia Italic Georgia Bold Italic Umbra Verdana Verdana Bold Verdana Italic Verdana Bold Italic WoodType Demi Gallaudet (sign language)	PDF Fonts

Please enter your words and clues. Words without clues, and clues without words, are ignored. You need both for this program.

Word	Clue

It will take a number of seconds to generate your puzzle, please wait after hitting the Submit button.

Tip: If you see a puzzle you like in the archives, but would like to change the word list or font (for example to use the sign language font), save the puzzle with your browser's Save As... function. Then create a new puzzle. Use the Browse button to pull up that file you just saved and then create a puzzle. It will load all of the parameters from that saved file and you can now make all of the changes you like.

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There is a word search program at: http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordsearch/.
There is a word scramble program at: http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordscramble/.
There is a math program at: http://www.armoredpenguin.com/math/.