Crossword puzzle maker

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Crossword puzzle maker

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.

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.

If you want help with international characters, you can call up an Alphabet chart to use for cutting and pasting letters that are hard to type. This chart will come up in a separate window.

I had a disk drive that died on me. I took the opportunity to update the OS as well. Let me know if you see anything that doesn't work the way it used to.

Paolo Guanciarossa has updated the "Solve Online" to be much easier to use. Use the Tab key to change between across and down. You can type in the answer to the puzzle in an obvious fashion, and the cursor moves to the next appropriate cell in the puzzle.

Dave Regan
crossword@armoredpenguin.com

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.

As the number of words you put in the puzzle, increases, the wait increases exponentially. However, if you want a puzzle that is larger than what fits with this form, go to the Large Puzzle page.

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:		Grey squares use less ink when printing. Black is more traditional.
Change to upper case:		Change letters to all capital letters, or leave as they were entered.
Remove spaces in words:		How "Remove spaces in words" works
Free Form (PDF only):		For the PDF version of the output, don't draw the black squares.
Omit answer keys:		Don't give buttons for the answer keys. How "No Answer Keys" works
Language:		Language for Across/Down/etc. How "Language" works
Text file name:	Plain text file on your computer to read with one answer:clue per line. How file loading works
HTML Font style:		Font restrictions
PDF Page size:		PDF Page Size
PDF Font style:		PDF Fonts
Two page PDF output:		Put the puzzle and the clues on two separate pages in the PDF file.
Information gap puzzle:		How to use Information gap puzzles
Create word bank:		How a word bank works
Quiz mode		How Quiz Mode works
Background image		How background images works
Lighten image		How lighten image works

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.