Crossword Puzzles

Hi! I am Ollie. Welcome to Crossword Corner!

Tap a square, read the clue, and type the answer with your keyboard. Fill every square across and down to clear the grid, earn stars, and grow the Corner. Have fun!

Sixteen small crosswords, one for each theme, played straight in the page, with no install and no sign-in. Every answer carries a written clue, and answers that cross share the letter in the square where they meet, so a word you are sure of hands you letters in a word you are not. The grids are deliberately small. Every one of them is five squares wide, the longest answer anywhere is five letters, and the smallest grids have ten squares to fill.

How a grid is played

Press PLAY on this page to enter Crossword Corner, press PLAY again in the lobby to bring up the road, and tap the level you are up to. The levels ahead of that one are locked until you reach them.
A themed grid opens inside the card. Its own header row carries the theme and its emoji on the left and a count pill on the right, reading how many squares hold a letter over how many there are.
Tap a square. The answer that square belongs to lights up in pale blue, the square you touched turns amber, and the yellow bar above the grid shows that answer's number, whether it runs across or down, and its clue.
Type. Each letter lands in the amber square and the amber moves one square along inside that answer. At the last square of the answer the amber stops where it is.
Fill every square with the right letter and every white square turns green at once, a sound plays, and the solve is credited through the same path every other game here uses.
The card then offers Next. When that solve finished a level the button reads Build landmark instead, and when it finished the Corner's tenth and last level it reads Finish this location.

No clock runs on the board. The heart counter in the strip along the top belongs to the shell around the game, and nothing done on a crossword grid can move it: a heart is taken when a whole answer is submitted for grading and graded wrong, this board submits nothing until the grid is right, and the card's typed guess box stays hidden while the grid is up. A wrong letter therefore costs no heart, which is not the same as costing nothing: what it moves is the count pill on the board's own header row.

There is no shuffle, no rotate and no button that shows you the solution. Exactly one power-up is offered on this board and all it does is reveal a single square.

Where a clue number comes from

A puzzle is stored as one line of text. A capital letter is a square you fill and it is also the letter that belongs in it, a dot is a black square, and a slash ends the row. So a row written CAT.. is five squares wide with the last two blacked out, and a grid five rows deep is five of those strings with slashes between them.

When the board opens, the game reads that text left to right and top to bottom, and hands a number to every square that begins a run of two or more white squares going across, or a run going down. A square can begin both runs at once, and that is what the top left square does on fourteen of the sixteen grids here.

The number printed in the corner of a square and the number beside the clue in the Across or Down list come out of that one reading, so the two cannot drift apart. The lists under the board are those runs, written out.

Nothing is rolled for. The grid travels with the card, so a level deals the same squares and the same clues every time it is opened. A grid holding a white square that no answer covers, or a clue with no run to sit in, raises an error instead of drawing itself half right, and a checker walks all sixteen grids with that same reading before the site is deployed.

The sixteen themed grids

One grid for each theme. Every one is five squares wide; twelve are five squares tall and four are four squares tall. Between them they hold a hundred and eighty white squares and sixty six answers, thirty five running across and thirty one running down.

Animals
Food
Colors
Kitchen
Ocean
Space
Sports
Winter
Music
Weather
Body
Travel
School
Garden
Birds
Fruit

Forty two of those hundred and eighty squares carry an across answer and a down answer at once, which leaves a hundred and thirty eight squares belonging to one answer only. Those meetings are not spread evenly. Nine of the grids hold two of them, six hold three, and the Space grid holds six, more than any other board here.

The answers are short. Forty seven of the sixty six are three letters, fourteen are four letters and five are five letters, and nothing runs longer than that. Five answers turn up in two different grids each, every time under a clue of its own, so sixty one different words fill the sixteen boards.

The clues are written in plain English rather than in the cryptic style, where a clue is a coded instruction rather than a description. Sixty six of them ship with the grids and no two are the same sentence. The shortest is two words, Frozen water. None runs past seven words, and twelve of them reach it.

The trail and the Daily Crossword

The Crossword Corner trail

The trail is the way through. Ten numbered levels sit along a winding road, and what a level asks for is read off the size of the Corner rather than fixed in advance: sixteen grids shared out over ten levels gives one grid to each of the first four and two to each of the six above them.

Finishing a level pays a chest of stars and raises a landmark beside the road, which is the Corner growing. The first three are the Crossword Tower, the Letter-Tile Arch, and the Across and Down Signpost.

The order the grids are dealt in is fixed, and it is neither random nor the order they sit in the file. The shell sorts a location's cards into groups by what kind of artwork each one carries, so that one trick never runs twice over. It orders each group so the easiest card in it comes first, then spaces the groups through one another so no group bunches up. All sixteen crosswords are the same kind of card, a drawn grid with text on it, so they land in a single group and the spacing step has nothing to weave. What decides the run is therefore that one ordering, which reads the rating from 1 to 5 that every grid carries, with the letter count of a grid's own answer phrase settling ties inside a rating. Three further passes run over the result and none of them has anything to act on here: the globally easiest card is pulled to the front and on this pool it is already there, a card can claim second place by tagging its artwork and none of these grids carries the tag, and repeated painted objects are pushed apart while a grid of letters paints none. So the road climbs: no grid rated 2 is dealt before a grid rated 1, and none rated 5 before one rated 4. Two grids are rated 1, four are rated 2, four are rated 3, three are rated 4 and three are rated 5.

Where you are on the trail is kept in this browser against this page's own address, so the level you are on and the grids you have cleared belong to the Corner and to nothing else on the site. The star balance is the exception, because the arcade keeps one balance across every game: stars earned on a grid here will pay for a hint in the Mahjong Garden.

A worked opening on the Space grid

The Space grid is five squares by five with seventeen white squares and six answers, and six of those squares carry two answers at once, which is more than any of the other fifteen grids manage. Say you have tapped a square in the middle row, the row that is white the whole way across.

The clue bar reads 3 Across, Path a planet takes around the sun, and the blue band covers all five squares of that row. Type the five letters. Three down answers each pick up one letter from that row: one gets its third letter, another gets its third, and the third gets its first.
Tap the first square of that row twice, once to select it and once more to swap to the down answer through it. The bar now reads 1 Down, Earth's natural satellite. Four squares, the third of them already standing. One of the three still empty sits in the top row, which is 1 Across.
Fill 1 Down, then read 1 Across along the top: Red planet, fourth from the sun, four squares. Typing that one puts a letter into the first square of 1 Down, which was already right, and into the first square of 2 Down, which was not yet touched.

Three answers typed and three still open, and two of those three already hold a letter the middle row put there. That is the exchange a crossword runs on. A long answer laid along a row pays a letter into every down answer it passes, and on this grid that row passes three of them.

Daily Crossword

The lobby's tile grid holds seven buttons and one of them is labelled Daily Crossword. It deals a single grid, picked by today's date rather than by where you have got to on the trail, and it pays twice over: the reward that grid carries anyway, plus a bonus of the same size credited on top of it.

The date is hashed and the result picks from the grids you have not cleared, so the tile always hands you a board you have not met. Two players at different points on the trail are therefore not always given the same grid on the same day, which is worth knowing before anyone compares notes.

Solving it records a day in a streak and the tile shows a flame with the count. After that the tile is done for the rest of the day and shows a countdown in place of its subtitle.

The changeover happens at midnight in UTC and not at midnight where you are, because one shared date is the only thing that makes a daily the same day for two people in different places.

A daily solve pays stars and feeds the streak, and it does not move the level counter or raise a landmark. The grid it used is off the trail afterwards, because a cleared grid is cleared.

A worked first move on a daily

Say the date hands you the Animals grid: five squares by five, ten white squares, four answers, and two squares where an across answer meets a down answer.

The bar already reads 1 Across, Whiskered pet that purrs, the three white squares of the top row are already pale blue and the corner one is already amber, because that is the answer the board opens on. Only the keys are homeless, so tap that clue where it sits in the Across list: that lands you on the same corner square still facing across, and hands the input its focus. Now type the three letters. The first of them is also the top square of 1 Down, Farm animal that gives milk, so that answer is a third filled before you have read its clue properly.

What the move does not do is help the other two answers on that grid. They meet each other on a square of their own lower down, and the two halves of the Animals grid share nothing at all. Ten squares with two of them pulling double duty is the shape of the smaller boards here, and nine of the sixteen are built that way.

Every control on the board

The keyboard is read by a one pixel input tucked under the grid, and that input takes focus when you tap or click a square. On a phone that tap is what raises the keyboard. On a desktop it means the first move is to click a square: until you have, the keys have nothing listening for them. The board does not sit blank while it waits, though. It selects its first across answer as it opens, so an amber square and a clue are already in front of you, and the tap you still owe it is only the one that gives the keys somewhere to land.

What each control does
What you do	What the board does
Tap or click a square	Selects it, lights that answer in pale blue and the square itself in amber, and puts the clue in the bar above the grid.
Tap the same square again	Swaps the selection to the other answer running through it, which is also what a first tap does on the square the board opened on. That swap works on the forty two squares where an across word crosses a down word, and on the other hundred and thirty eight the selection stays where it was.
Space bar	The same swap, on the same squares.
A letter key	Writes that letter into the amber square and moves the amber one square along the answer. Past the last square it stays put, so the next key overwrites that letter rather than moving on.
Backspace	Clears the square you are on. When that square is already empty it steps back one square and clears that one instead.
Arrow keys	Move to the next white square in that direction, stepping over black squares and stopping at the edge. The selection turns to face the way you travelled when an answer runs that way.
Tap a clue in either list	Jumps to the first square of that answer and sets the direction to match it.
The Hint button	Writes the correct letter into the square you are on, rings that square, flashes the clue bar and moves you along one square.

The count pill reads letters placed over squares in the grid. It counts letters, not correct letters, so it can read ten of ten while two of them are wrong. A letter that does not match the answer for its square turns red where it stands and is left alone, which makes it a free check rather than a penalty: the board is telling you that square is not that letter, before you have finished anything. The grid going green is the only thing that means finished.

Ratings, stars and the one power-up

Each grid carries a rating from 1 to 5, and that number is never printed while you play. The card the overlay borrows has a row of rating dots and a reward chip built into it, and a stylesheet rule hides both the moment the card is mounted on the campaign stage: that strip is the browse catalogue's chrome, and the shell around the game carries its own. What the rating settles instead is two things you can see. It fixes which grid the road hands you when, and it sets the payout, which is the rating times a hundred: a grid rated 1 pays a hundred stars and a grid rated 5 pays five hundred. The shell's own star counter is redrawn as the solve lands, so the amount it jumps by is the rating read out loud.

The power-up bar carries one button, labelled Hint, and it buys a single square rather than an answer or a shortcut past the grid. Where you are standing when you press it decides how much you get for the money. A revealed letter on a square shared by two answers is working inside both of them at once, so the tap it takes to move onto a crossing first is usually the cheapest tap on the board.

A booster token is spent before any stars are. A press with nothing to do costs nothing either: when the square you are on already holds the right letter, the button hands back exactly what it took. No fifty fifty and no skip are offered, because neither means anything on a board filled one letter at a time.

Buying squares does not shrink what a grid pays. The one thing in the shell that turns a solve into nothing is the Show answer button, and that button is hidden on a card for as long as it is being played in the overlay; in the browse view it waits for three answers to be graded wrong, which is something this board never does. So the counter climbs by the grid's full reward whether you reached the last letter on your own or bought four of them. A revealed square costs you its price at the moment you press, and nothing after that.

How to get through a grid faster

Start with the longest answer in the list

Read both clue lists before you type anything and find the answer with the most squares. A long answer lying across a row passes more down answers than a short one, so filling it pays letters into more of the grid. On the Space grid the middle row is the whole width and it crosses three down answers; on a grid whose longest answer is three squares there is less to gain and less to lose.

Answer the clue you know, not the clue you are on

Tapping a clue in either list jumps straight to its first square, so moving about costs nothing. The board has no opinion on the order the answers go in. It compares every square against the solution after every letter and finishes the grid the moment they all agree.

Put down the letter you are half sure of

A letter you are only half sure of is worth typing. No whole answer is ever submitted for grading from this board, and grading is the one thing in the arcade that takes a heart, so a guess here cannot cost you a life. What it does cost is a tick on the count pill, which rises on the letter either way. Type the doubtful one, and if it comes up red you have ruled that square out without having had to work the rest of the answer out first.

Expect three letters

Nineteen answers across the sixteen grids run to more than three letters, and none runs past five, so a clue describing a long thing is still asking for a short word. A female chicken is three squares. A written record of a ship's voyage is three squares as well.

Count the blue band before you type

The amber square says where you are and the pale blue band says how long the answer is. Counting the band first saves typing a four letter word into a three letter space, which the board handles by leaving the amber on the last square and letting the next key overwrite it. Nothing breaks, and you can lose a letter you meant to keep.

Read the count pill as a count, not a score

A full pill is not a finished grid, and green is the only signal that is. The green arrives on all the white squares together, the moment every one of them holds the letter the solution wants, so a grid reading ten of ten while nothing has changed colour has at least one letter in the wrong place. Every letter that does not belong is red as soon as it lands, so once the pill is full the red squares are the complete list of what to change.

Questions about these crosswords

Do I need an account or a download?

Neither. The grids are part of the page and the game runs in the browser. Progress, stars and the streak are kept in this browser's own storage, which is also the reason none of it follows you to another phone.

Is the board playable from the keyboard?

Once a square is selected, yes: letters, Backspace, the arrow keys and the space bar all work from there. Reaching that first square is the catch, because the input that reads the keys takes focus when a square is tapped or clicked, and the squares themselves cannot be reached by tabbing.

Why has one of my letters gone red?

It is not the letter that belongs in that square. Fixing it on the spot is not always the better move. Forty two squares on these grids are shared by two answers, and on one of those you can leave the red where it is and go and fill the crossing word: each letter you put into that word narrows what the shared square is allowed to hold, until the grid has worked it out on your behalf. The hundred and thirty eight squares answering to a single word have no second reading to wait for, and there the red is the whole of the check you get.

Does playing the daily leave fewer grids for the trail?

Yes, and the arithmetic is worth doing once. Both the tile and the road draw from the same set of grids you have not yet cleared, and clearing one for the daily clears it for good, so the road never gets that grid and no level moves for it either. Sixteen grids sit in the Corner and the ten levels want sixteen between them, which is every last one. A grid spent on the tile is therefore a grid the road cannot spend, and it is the landmarks at the top of the road that go without: one daily leaves the tenth standing in the grey, and three leave the ninth there with it.

What does the Hint button cost?

The button tells you. A chip on the Hint button prints the current price in stars. Thirty stars is the figure the arcade ships with, and it is one number in a configuration file the arcade can be handed a fresh copy of while the site is running, so the chip on the button is the authority rather than a figure written on a page like this one.

If a grid of letters is not the mood

A crossword is a grid whose answers check each other, and the clue list is what this page adds to it. The rest of the shelf takes that apart in different directions.

Word ScrambleThe same interlocking grid with the clue list taken away. Letters arrive on a wheel and the grid tells you only how long each word is, so the reading you do here is replaced by spelling.
Word searchTwenty four themed boards where the words are handed to you and hidden in the letters. The reading is done for you and the finding is the puzzle.
Mahjong SolitairePull a stack of tiles down by pairing the ones nothing rests on. No letters and no clues, and each board is dealt in a state it can be cleared from.
Riddles with answersThe hub for every riddle list on the site. Reading a sentence closely, rather than filling squares.
Rebus puzzlesPictures and letters placed so that the placement is the answer. This is where the wordplay a crossword leaves out ended up.
Brain gamesWhere every game here gets listed, crosswords among them.

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critter crossing Fill every square of this Animals mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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pantry path Fill every square of this Food mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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rainbow row Fill every square of this Colors mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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cook's corner Fill every square of this Kitchen mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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tide cove Fill every square of this Ocean mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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stargazer hill Fill every square of this Space mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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champion green Fill every square of this Sports mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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frostpine grove Fill every square of this Winter mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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chorus corner Fill every square of this Music mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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weathervane walk Fill every square of this Weather mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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anatomy alley Fill every square of this Body mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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wayfarer crossing Fill every square of this Travel mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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classroom court Fill every square of this School mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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greenhouse gate Fill every square of this Garden mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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nesting narrows Fill every square of this Birds mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.
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orchard arch Fill every square of this Fruit mini crossword to raise a landmark in Crossword Corner.