Crossword – Play Online for Free

On December 21, 1913, the "Fun" supplement of the New York World printed the puzzle now regarded as the first modern crossword. Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, had arranged words in a diamond so that they crossed and called it "Word-Cross"; within weeks it was running as "Cross-Word". The craze swept America in 1924, set off by the first book of a young publisher, Simon & Schuster: a collection of these puzzles sold with a pencil.

Neither Times was impressed. In London, The Times wrote of "An Enslaved America", where the puzzle was "making devastating inroads on the working hours of every rank of society", and held out until 1930, eight years after Pearson's Magazine had printed Britain's first crossword. The New York Times, which had called it a "sinful waste", waited until 1942. In 1944 D-Day code words such as OMAHA and OVERLORD turned up as answers in the Daily Telegraph just before the landings; MI5 questioned the compiler, a headmaster, and found nothing against him. Here you can solve free crossword puzzles online with no sign-up.

Across, Down, Done: How Our Crossword Works

In an arrowword, a staple of British puzzle magazines, the clues sit in boxes inside the grid. Our online crossword keeps to the classic layout: 25 clues in two lists, Across and Down, beside the grid on a computer and below it on a phone. Each clue's number reappears in the square where its answer starts. Unlike the symmetric grids of most newspapers, ours is freeform, but every word crosses at least one other, so each answer you solve lends letters to its neighbors.

• Choosing a square: Click a square: it turns yellow, a cursor blinks and the whole word lights up. A second click on a square where two words cross switches direction. You can also tap a clue in the list.
• Typing: Just type; the cursor moves on after each letter. Backspace deletes, the arrow keys move around the grid, Tab or Enter jumps to the next clue (with Shift, the previous one), and the space bar turns the direction at a crossing. Phones and tablets get an on-screen keyboard below the grid.
• Spelling: Answers go in as capitals, one letter per square, A to Z only, and each is a single word. A letter typed with an accent is taken as the plain one: café becomes CAFE.
• Check: This button turns wrong letters red and counts them; empty squares are not errors. If the grid is full but not yet right, the game says so too.
• Hint: A hint reveals the right letter in the selected square or, if that one is already correct, in the first empty or wrong square of the word. Revealed letters turn blue and can't be overwritten, and at the end you see how many hints you used.
• Taking a break: Your puzzle is saved in the browser, even half done. "New puzzle" asks "Are you sure?" before throwing away your letters and picks clues you haven't seen lately.

A few tricks to fill the grid faster:

• Sure things first: Read all the clues once and enter what you know for certain. Many of those letters also belong to a crossing word.
• Count the squares: They give the answer's exact length, which British papers often print in parentheses after the clue; here, as in American puzzles, the grid shows it. A word that doesn't fit exactly is wrong, however good it sounds.
• Think double: Some clues play on two meanings, such as "Fruit or calendar day". Keep both in mind to reach DATE sooner.
• Fill in the blank: A blank line stands for the missing word of a saying, as in "It takes ___ to tango". Say it half aloud and the gap often closes by itself.
• Switch sides: If the Across clues won't budge, try some Down ones. Often one more letter is all it takes.
• Check early: A wrong letter also misleads you in the word that crosses it, so check as soon as two answers clash rather than at the end.

After the Last Square: Five Games for Puzzle Fans

Grid full and still in the mood? These games are free too:

• Arrowword: Shorter clues live in green cells within the grid, each with a small triangle pointing the way. Circled squares spell out a hidden word.
• Word Search: The answers are already in the grid, hidden in every direction, even diagonally and backward.
• Sudoku: Another grid to fill, with digits instead of letters. Each digit from one to nine goes exactly once into every row, column and block.
• Mahjong: Pictures instead of words. You clear pairs of matching tiles, as long as they are free, until none are left.
• Solitaire: The classic one-player card game. You build columns downward in alternating colors until all four foundations run from ace to king.