Welcome to Crossword Designer

Player Navigation

The Crossword Designer draws a crossword grid on the screen and allows you to play or design the crossword interactively.

A mouse click on a crossword square moves the focus to the word that encompasses that square. A word is the answer to a crossword clue. It is shown with an index in the first letter. The entire word will be highlighted as well.

Initially, words are selected horizontally (or across). This mean that once you click on a square, a horizontal word will be selected.

You can change to vertical selection (or Down) by pressing on the spacebar. Repeated pressing on the spacebar will switch the direction of selection back and forth.

When you click on a square that square gets the keyboard focus. Any letters you type will go there.

You can use the cursor keys to move about in the crossword. The new square gets the keyboard focus. If the new square is part of a different word, that word is selected.

Each time a word is selected, the corresponding Across and Down clues are selected and displayed in their respective panels on the right. Furthermore, the clue for the current selection direction is also shown above the crossword puzzle.

Clicking on a clue will select the corresponding word. For example, if you click on an Across clue the corresponding horizontal word is selected.

While a word is selected, pressing the tab key will advance you to the next word in the same direction you are in. For example, if you are solving a Down word, the next word will also be a Down word.

Next word selection advances you to the next clue index. For Across words this is fairly easy to see. For Down words, the next word could be very far.

Pressing shift tab key performs the same operation as the tab key, but in reverse.