How to Make Computerized Crossword Puzzles

Creating a crossword puzzle online is challenging but rewarding

Creating a crossword puzzle, either online or by hand, can be a challenging endeavor. It requires a large vocabulary, patience, and knowledge of the structure and rules of crossword puzzles. Considering the time it takes, often several hours, it is certainly rewarding to finally complete the creation of a crossword puzzle. While it can be done by hand, there are online tools that can be used to make the process a little bit smoother and easier to complete.

Things You'll Need

• Computer with Internet access
• Printer

Instructions

Making a Crossword Puzzle Online

1. Go to http://search.teach-nology.com/cgi-bin/crossword.cgi to begin. The page will prompt you to choose a size for your puzzle. A puzzle that has 15-square columns and 15-square rows is standard. Adjust the size settings to 15 and 15 in the drop down menus at the bottom of the page. Click "Create Puzzle Layout" to get started.

2. You will now see an empty crossword grid. Decide where your black squares will go. Remember, the placement of black squares on all authentic crosswords is symmetrical no matter which way you turn the puzzle. It is difficult to create a perfect black square pattern alone. To get help, go to Google, and do an image search on "crossword puzzle." Using one of the symmetrical patterns from the search results, fill in the black squares on your own blank grid. Type "XXXXX" in the boxes where you wish to put black squares.

3. Fill in the rest of the crossword grid with words. Using a puzzle that is 15 by 15, a novice crossword puzzle maker will take several hours to complete this step as finding words that fit perfectly can be difficult and time consuming.

4. Delete all of the "XXXXX" black squares, so that they are simply blank spaces.

5. Count the number of total across words and put that number in the space on the right side of the page. Do the same for the down words and enter that number in its designated blank space. Click "Go to Adding Clues" to move onto the next step.

6. You will now see your completed crossword puzzle on the left side of the page. On the right side there will be blank spaces to fill in the clues for your words. Write in a clue for every word in the puzzle. Click "Create Puzzle" to see the finished product.

7. Your completed crossword puzzle will now be on your screen. You can fill in the puzzle from this page, or print it and complete it by hand.

Tips & Warnings

• 1. If you are having trouble coming up with words to fill in your puzzle, go to www.oneacross.com. There you can fill in a pattern of letters that you need to make a word with and OneAcross will tell you all possible words using that pattern. For example, if you have a word that needs to start with F and end with S with three letters in between, you can type "F???S" into OneAcross, and all words fitting that pattern, like "forts" or "fines" will be suggested.

• 2. While designating black spaces as "XXXXX" is not required to make the puzzle, it is helpful. The "XXXXX" pattern serves as an obvious marker that the square will be black and not a letter. Without the "XXXXX" pattern, the square remains blank and indiscernible from the rest of the blank squares in the grid. It is essential to remember to perform step 4, deleting the "XXXXX" patterns, so that they do not appear in the final puzzle.

References

• Teach-nology: Create Puzzle Layout
• One Across: Crossword Puzzle Help