Tag Archives: cryptic crossword

The Week in Puzzles and Games (October 26th)

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There’s a lot going on in the intertwined worlds of puzzles and games, so let’s skip the intro and get to it!

Conversations with the New York Times Games Team!

There are two events coming up for fans of NYT puzzles and games.

First, the 92Y is hosting a New York Times Games Night tomorrow night to celebrate the launch of the new Connections book.

Wyna Liu, Joel Fagliano, Sam Ezersky, and Tracy Bennett will be in attendance to talk shop and engage in some live gameplay with attendees.

Click here for ticket info and here to check out the new Connections book.

But that’s not all.

On Friday, October 30th, the Wordle Review comments section will be hosting a Q&A at 1 PM Eastern with Josh Katz and Tom Giratikanon, the designers behind Wordle Bot and Connections Bot!

Learn more about how the bots work, why they’re so sassy, and meet the team who makes the Bots go.

Cryptic Crossword Updates (and The Independent)

Speaking of crosswords, there has sadly been no sign that The Independent’s managing editor will reverse course on cancelling their daily cryptic crossword.

But even with that dark cloud hanging over the puzzle community, there is plenty going on in cryptic crossword chatter for solvers and setters alike to enjoy.

Chameleon posted a terrific article on MyCrossword about an interesting variation on the hidden-style clue. For example, a traditional hidden clue would have “Scottish snack offered in disco nearby” cluing SCONE, since it’s hidden in “diSCO NEarby.” But Chameleon’s version is slightly more difficult. (Personally, I love it!)

Setter Paul Henderson (known to Independent solvers as Phi) has announced he’ll be continuing his Phidays tradition on his website.

Duncan over at fifteensquared has shared the puzzles being distributed at this year’s York Sloggers and Betters 2026 gathering, so get solving. Feedback is welcome!

And if there’s more news in the cryptic world I’ve missed, please let me know!

Bonmo.app Releases Their 1,000th Puzzle!

We talked about Puzzmo celebrating 1,000 days back in July, but it turns out they’re not the only puzzle app crossing the millennium mark this year.

Bonmo.app just released their 1,000th puzzle, a delightful grid from constructor Carina da Rosa. If you’re an Apple user, check them out!

Reminder: Cultura Connector and the GRIT Ukraine Program Still Seeking Funds

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a charity effort to inspire Ukrainian youths through LARPing.

And the team at Cultura Connector have announced that they’re 60% of the way to unlocking a $20,000 match for the charity!

They are raising funds for their first GRIT Ukraine program, enabling Ukrainian facilitators to lead a 12-week LARP program with Ukrainian young people living in Poland to strengthen resilience, communication, emotional awareness, problem-solving, and connection with Ukrainian youths.

And with a week left to go, your help could make a huge difference.

Please share the link and donate if you can. It would be so amazing to reach out to young people halfway around the world and show them the magic of storytelling while helping build them up.

You can also click here for more details on Cultura Connector and the GRIT program.

The BackerKit Holiday Market Launches Soon!

Crowdfunding is a cornerstone of the puzzles and games industry these days, especially for smaller and independent creators, so I’m stoked to hear that the BackerKit Holiday Market is returning for a second year.

Hosted between November 18th and December 1st, numerous puzzle and games companies (among others!) will be participating.

Unlike most crowdfunding efforts, there’s no funding goal and products will be ready-to-ship immediately.

Some of my favorite shops like Scarlet Envelope and Morgan’s Escapes will be participating, so be sure to check it out!

What Puzzle Words Sent American Solvers to Google?

I love digging into data. It’s fascinating to see what you can learn from sifting through carefully cultivated information.

And I’m not alone in that. The team at UnscrambleX also love data, and they’ve shared some of their findings.

UnscrambleX is a free word scrambler, anagram solver, and Scrabble word finder all in one, and they’ve been crunching solver data for the last year.

And it turns out, between June 2025 and October 2026, the words that baffled or eluded solvers weren’t small, obscure ones, overly long entries, or crosswordese.

As Adrian Talvik, spokesperson for UnscrambleX told me, “The words that stop people aren’t the long ones. They’re words people have seen on a menu or a perfume label but never had to spell.”

NEROLI topped the list with 65,684 US searches on May 28, 2026, twice the next word (POMELO, 31,911 on May 18). Three of the five hardest came from the fruit bowl or the perfume counter, hard days come in themes (BÉCHAMEL, TERIYAKI and TZATZIKI on July 2)…

You can check out their full article here, including how they gathered and analyzed their data.

And we’ll have more interesting puzzle-data tidbits from UnscrambleX in the coming weeks!

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to test out any new puzzle apps or sites this week, but I promise that feature will return next Monday.

Did I miss any puzzly news or fun board game stories from the last few weeks? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Darmok: Another Crossword-Solving Program Claims a Tournament Win!

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Image courtesy of World of Weird Things.

In 2021, Matt Ginsberg’s crossword-solving program Dr.Fill won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The top prize still went to a flesh-and-blood solver, but the program solved most of the tournament puzzles in under a minute and only made three mistakes the entire tournament, recording the top score for puzzles 1 through 7.

Of course, Dr.Fill had been “competing” for years at the ACPT before this victory. I believe in its first competition, it placed 141st.

As it turns out, Dr.Fill is not alone. The world of cryptic crosswords has its own Dr.Fill in the form of Dr. Siddhartha Chatterjee’s AI program, Darmok.

At last year’s Times Crossword Championship, Darmok solved two of three semifinal puzzles in seven minutes, but gave up on the last puzzle with one clue unsolved. (That tournament was won by champion solver Mark Goodliffe, who notched his FOURTEENTH win at the tournament.)

But this year was different.

Not only because Goodliffe’s potential 15th title was instead claimed by 29-year-old solver Liam Hughes — marking the first new name on the championship in a quarter century — but because this year, Darmok outperformed every human competitor at the tournament.

The final puzzle tripped up Goodliffe, third place finisher Peter Steggle, and Chloe Hutton, who actually finished the puzzle first, but with the same critical error made by Goodliffe and Steggle.

Hughes got it right in ten minutes.

Darmok got it right too, and faster.

And I do have to say, this is a more impressive result than Dr.Fill’s because cryptic crosswords involve a different level of wordplay in its cluing than American-style crosswords. Answer words can hide in other phrases, in anagrams, in initialisms, in pairs of definitions, in soundalike words, in rebus-style assemblies of words and letters.

So for an AI program to parse all that linguistic trickery… that’s quite something.

So what was the clue that stumped much of the field, save for our human and AI champions?

2-Down: Wolf trap missing its lowest crosspiece? (5)

I’ll leave the explanation at the bottom of the post. Good luck!

Star Trek fans and meme enthusiasts will no doubt recognize the inspiration for the name of Dr. Chatterjee’s creation. “Darmok” is an iconic episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Captain Picard struggles to communicate with an alien species that communicates through metaphor and allusion.

Although the alien captain sadly perished in his attempt to bridge the communication gulf between himself and Picard, the Darmok AI’s victory required less bloodshed.

And yet, there was a loss.

AI programs have taught themselves to solve Rubik’s Cubes, Deep Blue bested Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and IBM’s supercomputer Watson defeated previous Jeopardy! champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings to nab a million-dollar prize.

An AI program called DeepMind taught itself to play several Atari games with superhuman proficiency, and AlphaGo, an AI developed by Google based on DeepMind, twice defeated Ke Jie, the 19-year-old Go tournament champion ranked number one in the world.

Dr.Fill claimed crosswords, and now Darmok has claimed cryptic crosswords.

robo-machine---puzzler-robot---crossword-p-image-262284-grande

Did you solve that cryptic clue yet?

Here’s a hint: other answers would’ve given you the crossings S_A_F.

So, yes, the robots have arrived, and they know their wordplay.

The question now becomes: how long before they’re creating crosswords and cryptics that rival the creativity and cleverness of humans?

It’s a good question, one that has already been pondered by setter Amoeba in the aftermath of Darmok’s achievement.

And I think Amoeba’s conclusion is as heartening as it is accurate:

As a solver, I love the feeling of going head to head with a setter (even an anonymous one), and unravelling and admiring the clues they’ve written. As a setter, that’s what I hope people who solve my puzzles enjoy. This human part of crossword-setting is not, I believe, something that technology will one day supersede; it is an essential part of why we do them.

I’ve solved computer-generated crosswords. I’ve seen AI-created art.

And I’ve found both lacking.

Just as American solvers know the constructors who challenge them and tickle their brains with sparkling wordplay, cryptic setters have built wonderful reputations for themselves as cunning, playful, and surprising.

We look for these names. We accept their challenges. And we celebrate the joy of solving together, the symbiosis of creation and solution, tying linguistic knots and unraveling devious wordplay.

Community in puzzling, that’s the missing bit AI can’t match. A constructor/setter and a solver, meeting across the grid, through the clues.

That’s magic.

And speaking of, here’s the solution to the cryptic clue that tripped up so many.

Wolf trap missing its lowest crosspiece? (5)

“Wolf” is the definition. Both SCARF and SNARF could fit that clue, as all mean to devour or eat.

But the rest of the clue eliminates one of those options.

“Trap” points to the word SNARE, and reading down the grid, a trap missing its lowest crosspiece would be a SNARE with the bottom part of the E cut off.

SNARE becomes SNARF.

Did you get it?

What do you think of Darmok’s cryptic-solving success story, fellow puzzler? Let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

Do You Know the Story of The Bugle’s Audio Cryptic Crossword?

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John Oliver is a household name after his work on The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, but did you know he and his comedy partner Professor Andy Zaltzman have played a part in the history of cryptic crosswords?

Nineteen years ago this month, they created The Bugle, a half-hour satirical comedy news podcast that covered the biggest, smallest, weirdest, and Hugo Chavez-est news stories of the day. This podcast spanned the Atlantic, as Andy would record from England and John from America.

Subtitled “an audio newspaper for a visual world,” The Bugle would go on to last hundreds of episodes before Oliver departed. But it was resurrected by Zaltzman in 2016 (relaunching and jumping straight to episode 4001) and has now launched a network of informative and comedic broadcasts.

So, what does this beloved podcast have to do with cryptic crosswords?

Well, nineteen years ago when The Bugle debuted, one of the recurring features was their groundbreaking Audio Cryptic Crossword. Each episode, Andy would read a single cryptic crossword clue, including answer length and its grid position.

(Oh, and there was a prize offered to the first person to complete the puzzle. That prize? The right to treat yourself to a cup of tea and a sit down after a job well done.)

As the weeks went on, Zaltzman continued to offer new clues. Well, most of the time. On a few occasions, he would accidentally repeat a clue listeners had heard before.

Eventually the actual puzzle grid was revealed on The Times website for solvers, indicating this was an actual puzzle and not just a bit.

As the ACC progressed and more clues were revealed, Oliver grew increasingly dismissive of and exasperated by the entire endeavor.

At one point, Oliver compared the crossword to the Third Reich. Zaltzman quickly agreed, calling the crossword “a triumph for persistence, doggedness, and the value of standing up to pressure from the other side of the Atlantic,” and that “people were glad when the war was over, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the greatest part of British history.”

Oliver doubted whether anyone was keeping track of clues or attempting the puzzle, while Zaltzman would talk about the “billions” of listeners choosing sides in the Audio Cryptic Crossword debate. (It is also worth noting that, at one point, it was suggested that several lines from the Book of Revelations were not divine scripture, but were, in fact, cryptic crossword clues.)

From October 15th, 2007 to May 19th, 2008 when the final clue was revealed, the question remained: had anyone written down all the clues, figured them out, and submitted a completed puzzle?

We wouldn’t have to wait long for the answer.

The very next week, the email section featured a message from loyal Bugler and crossword enthusiast Elliot from the UK, who included a picture of his complete (and correct!) Audio Cryptic Crossword.

It seemed that Andy was right, and John’s claims that no one was bothering with the ACC were mistaken.

After the conclusion of the feature, attempts to replace the Audio Cryptic Crossword with other audio puzzles and games failed miserably.

There was an Audio Spot-the-Difference, an omnishambles of an Audio Sudoku, an Audio Tic-Tac-Toe game (or Audio Naughts-and-Crosses for UK readers), and an Audio game of Bridge, among others.

John wasn’t enthusiastic about any of them. And none of them could fill the Audio Cryptic Crossword-shaped void in Andy’s heart.

So what about the actual puzzle?

You can find the grid and the clues online, but there’s not a convenient place to solve it without potentially seeing the answers as well.

I decided to fix that.

I went through the first 29 episodes of The Bugle and transcribed the clues (some of the online archives didn’t get the wording quite right), then retyped the grid, including the two set letters from the original grid.

So if you’d like to test your puzzly mettle against the Audio Cryptic Crossword, now’s your chance!

[Click here to download a PDF of the ACC.]

Now, as you can see, the cluing is interesting. Many of the clues thematically matched the news stories they covered on a given week, and the cluing practically drips with snark. (Although it does quite admirably follow the rules of cryptic-style cluing.)

12-Across was accidentally read on two different episodes of The Bugle, and there were minor differences, so I included both versions. Similarly, Andy offered a ridiculously long second clue for 16-Down just to irk John, so I was duty-bound to transcribe both.

17-Down, on the other hand, jokingly presented one clue for girls and one for boys as The Bugle’s contribution to “International Gender Stereotyping Week.”

And that’s the end of the story for The Bugle‘s Audio Cryptic Crossword, the world’s first (and possibly only) serialized cryptic crossword in audio form.

Well, sorta.

Zaltzman frequently encouraged Bugle listeners to edit Wikipedia articles and forum posts about The Bugle to make them as ridiculous, lie-filled, and entertaining as possible, and the legacy of the Audio Cryptic Crossword did not escape the machinations of Buglers.

According to the fan lore of the show, “Elliot” was actually John in disguise (first as Gordon Sumner, aka the musician Sting, then as François Marie Arouet (aka the philosopher Voltaire), intentionally spoiling Andy’s secret (and very confusing) plan for world domination.

John bragged about this online: “Haha everybody, look at me, I’m awesome. I defeated and foiled Andy Zaltzman’s plans for world domination with a discreet undertone and a lot of anonymity. Signed, John Oliver”.

In his fury, Andy battled John atop Big Ben in London, alternating between martial arts strikes and awful puns. This bombastic duel soon became a tag team match, as Florence Nightingale joined on the side of Andy, while the Queen, Her Majesty Herself, joined on John’s side.

The battle raged on until Big Ben suddenly exploded. Emerging from the wreckage was the true victor of the fight, an impala. (This is a reference to an ongoing gag in the show about Andy making fun of impalas. I think an eland, gnu, or okapi would have been more apropos, given that a crossword puzzle started all this chaos.)

The impala pranced away in victory to return home, sit on the couch, make fun of lions, and savor his triumph.

Thus, the saga of the Audio Cryptic Crossword came to an end, both officially and fictionally.

Whether you prefer what actually happened or the epic, action movie-fueled silliness of the fan version, there’s no denying that the Audio Cryptic Crossword was something new, a symbol of the deep intelligence and subversive energy that represented The Bugle at its best.

Thanks for taking this stroll through puzzle history with me.

Were you or are you a Bugle listener? Did you tackle the Audio Cryptic Crossword? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

The Week in Puzzles and Games

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There’s so much going on in the intertwined worlds of puzzles and games, so let’s skip the intro and get to the good stuff!

boswords new

The Boswords Fall Themeless League Kicks Off Tonight!

There’s still time to register for this year’s Fall Themeless League, which officially starts up tonight! (There was a preseason puzzle last week.)

If you’re unfamiliar, the Boswords Fall Themeless League is a clever weekly spin on traditional crossword tournament-style solving. Instead of cracking through a number of puzzles in a single day (or two), the Fall Themeless League consists of one themeless / freestyle crossword each week, scored based on your accuracy and how fast you complete the grid.

Look at that lineup of talent!

Each week’s puzzle only has one grid, but there are three sets of clues, each representing a different difficulty level for solvers. Smooth is the least challenging, Choppy is the middle ground, and Stormy is the most challenging. (When you register to participate, you choose the difficulty level that suits you best.)

Look how many people are participating this year!

Each week’s puzzle is accompanied by a one-hour broadcast on Twitch, starting with a preseason puzzle and broadcast.

The Fall Themeless League then runs the next nine Monday nights starting at 9 PM.

Congrats to the Midwest Crossword Tournament Winners!

The 2026 edition of the Midwest Crossword Tournament was this past weekend, and by all accounts, it was a massive success.

Organized by Shannon Rapp and Sally Hoelscher, the excellent lineup of constructors and editors guaranteed a lively and occasionally devious experience for all involved!

The Chicago Fire was the tougher division, and Minnesota Nice the less-tough-but-still-devious division.

Congrats to all the winners and everyone who participated this year!

Oh, and if you want to watch the Chicago Fire live-solved finals, check out the video:

My deep dive into this year’s tournament puzzles will be posted on Thursday.

More on The Independent Cryptic Crossword

I have a quick update regarding Thursday’s post about the potential end of The Independent‘s daily cryptic crossword.

There is another email address you can contact to show your interest and support!

All you need to do is message trulyindependentcrosswords@gmail.com with the word “Truly” in the subject line.

Leave the body of the email empty, your email alone will count as another person who wants to see The Independent‘s cryptic crossword continue! You’ll get an automated reply letting you know that your voice has been heard.

Hopefully this will show the managing editor of The Independent that the crossword is worth saving!

Spooky Crowdfunding Roundup!

To close out today’s post, here’s a trio of games to support that fit the Halloween / horror / survival vibe nicely that are currently crowdfunding.

The Mysterious Package Company makes some of the coolest, most immersive puzzle-solving experiences on the market today, and if you were a fan of their Doomensions: Mystery Manor pop-up escape room puzzle game a few years ago, then you’re in for double the excitement this time around.

They’re currently running a Kickstarter for two new Doomensions pop-up puzzle experiences: Cursed Tomb and Crimson Castle.

You’ll get to explore these three-dimensional set pieces as you unravel the mysteries behind each puzzly setting.

The attention to detail with Mystery Manor was fantastic, and I really enjoyed the hours spent revealing the puzzle’s hidden secrets and facing each new twist and mystery as it emerged.

If you like at-home escape room puzzle games, you should definitely give one (or both) of these Doomensions a shot.

Another horror-themed sequel game is crowdfunding right now, as the smash hit game Don’t Go In There has gotten a die-rolling successor in, you guessed it, Don’t Go Back There.

This standalone expansion is built on the same template as the original, but with new foes and new effects to deal with.

Plus you can mix and match this game with the original and test yourself against BOTH games’ mechanics and monsters.

Don’t Go In There was part of my 31 Games of Halloween countdown last year, and rightly so. I have no doubt the Road to Infamy team have exceeded themselves with the sequel.

Click here to check out the Kickstarter!

And since we’ve been talking about The Oregon Trail in game form recently, it’s serendipitous that our friends at 9th Level Games have a Backerkit running right now for their new game, Portland, Oregon Trail.

Here’s the pitch:

Like in the OG Oregon Trail game, you might have to ford a river in your Ford and you’ll definitely be contracting a variety of illnesses. But the main obstacle between you and Portland will be capitalism. Your characters have limited resources (and no health insurance), and your roles as societal misfits will make you a target for capitalist villains who hate that you don’t follow their rules. In this game, though, conformity is as good as death.

This GM-less roleplaying game is a collaborative adventure to endure all the nonsense of road trips with modern day anti-capitalist rebel spirit, all in the familiar flavors of the original Oregon Trail we all know and either love, hate, or love and hate.

Check out the Backerkit campaign here!

Did I miss any puzzly news or fun board game stories from the last few weeks? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Help Save The Independent Cryptic Crossword!

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Although I have dabbled with cryptic (or British-style) crosswords for years, this year I’ve made more of a dedicated effort to improve my cryptic solving. I’ve tackled Josh Wardle’s Parseword game, sampled cryptics from many different outlets, and tried to learn more about the history of cryptic crosswords.

Along the way, I delved into Sondheim’s love of cryptics and celebrated milestones like 100 years of The Observer‘s crosswords and The Guardian publishing its 30,000th cryptic.

But it was the solving, experiencing all of those different voices and styles across many different publishers, that taught me about the incredible diversity and creativity of the cryptic setter community. Over the last year, I’ve solved puzzles from The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Observer, The Globe and Mail, the Cox and Rathvon archive, and more, as well as a backlog of cryptics from puzzle suites I’ve purchased in the past.

One of my most frequent cryptic crossword stops is The Independent.

And sadly, they’ve announced that they plan to stop publishing the daily cryptic crossword as of October 31st.

The Independent crossword is widely regarded as a breeding ground for new talent. Many commenters have rejoiced in all the new bylines and setters they see on a weekly basis, and solvers all over are lamenting the loss of a marvelous cryptic crossword outlet.

But thankfully, solvers are reaching out.

Simon Anthony at Cracking the Cryptic has shared the news with the CTC audience in the hopes of encouraging solvers to step up in support of The Independent crossword.

If you would like to add your voice to the chorus, you can share your thoughts (respectfully, please!) with Richard Best, managing editor of The Independent, at managingeditor@independent.co.uk.

I’ve already sent a few words there myself, hoping to be a small drop in a larger, more influential torrent of hope, interest, and protest.

If you’re unfamiliar with cryptic solving in general or The Independent crossword in particular, please click the links here and here to read more about the crossword’s influence and see the outpouring of support in the comments.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but The Independent crossword is one of the first cryptic crosswords I ever seriously attempted to solve.

It was 2013 and I was reading John Halpern’s The Centenary of the Crossword, where he chronicled a century of crossword solving on both sides of the Atlantic.

There were many puzzles included in the book, and after exhausting all of the American-style crosswords, I decided to try my luck with the cryptics.

It went poorly.

It was slow going at first.

Years later, I returned to those puzzles, determined to try again. Among the puzzles I finally completed were a 2012 cryptic set by Anax and a 2009 cryptic set by Nimrod, both from The Independent.

So this year, when I decided to improve my cryptic solving, I remembered those puzzles, and made The Independent a regular part of my solving.

Do I still struggle? Absolutely. I am, at best, a mediocre cryptic solver. At the start, I ended up figuring out the word from crossings in the grid and identifying the definition part of the clue, and then reverse-engineering how the clue worked from the answer.

But more and more now, I’m learning the tricks and techniques, and I have slowly started getting better. The moments of total bafflement upon reading a clue are fewer and farther between, and grids are filling faster each week.

And it’s sad to think that — now that I’m finally getting the hang of it! — one of those cherished cryptic outlets is going away.

Hopefully enough people reach out and the managing editor is convinced to reverse his decision. Maybe they’ll follow the template laid out by other outlets and charge a small subscription fee to solvers to offset costs. I think it would serve them well to try.

Solvers aren’t the largest group in the world, but they are among the most loyal.

Here’s hoping The Independent recognizes that.

Variety Crosswords: What’s Black and White and Crossed All Over

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It’s an awesome time to be a crossword fan.

You’ve got LOADS of outlets doing traditional crosswords, both themed and themeless / freestyle. There are minis and midis for quicker solving (but equally creative themes and tricks!), and cryptic / British crosswords for a different flavor of cluing.

But that’s just scraping the surface of different kinds of crosswords out there. So today, let’s explore the world of variety crosswords and see all the challenging ways constructors can add a twist to the familiar crossword formula.

(These examples are from Penny Dell Puzzles, GAMES Magazine, and Puzzlecraft by Mike Selinker and Thomas Snyder.)

Twin Crosswords (also known as Twinlets) is a puzzle that offers two identical grids and the clues for both grids, but all mixed up. 1-Across gets two clues, one for each grid, but you don’t know which. (Unless the first word is set for you, like in the example above.) That continues for every coordinate, both across and down. Can you figure out which clue applies to which grid?

For an extra challenge, constructors sometimes use the same clue for two different words, testing the solver’s flexibility of mind as well as their vocabulary.

There is a variation on Twin Crosswords known as a Dilemma crossword. In this case, the mix-matched clues apply to two different sections in the same grid. A single unifying entry runs across the top of the grid, with two identical columns below.

Black lines divide answer words instead of black squares, making this a challenging puzzle to construct and to solve! (Crosswords without black squares are also called Blackout puzzles.)

Similar to Dilemma, a Stoplines puzzle has black lines instead of black squares, leading to a dense interconnected grid with traditional rotational symmetry, but lacking that single grid-spanning entry across the top.

But at least a Stoplines puzzle gives you black lines to figure out word lengths for your answers. A Wordsworth puzzle has the same dense grid, but without any indicators of word length. An empty 15x grid space awaits a Wordsworth solver. (It’s like a Diagramless without any black squares.)

Oh, and for an extra challenge for an already difficult task, Clapboard has no black squares AND all of the entries overlap by 1 or 2 letters.

For a break from the tight grids and difficulty, let’s check out a Brick by Brick crossword.

This is a traditional crossword, except you have the additional advantage of the grid being split up into 3×2 “bricks” and randomly gathered next to the clues.

So solvers can either traditionally solve this crossword or put their jigsaw skills to the test assembling the grid visually brick by brick.

I really like this puzzle as an introduction to crosswords. That extra element adds a safety net for nervous solvers who find a traditional crossword grid daunting.

If you’re a fan of rebus-style crosswords — grids where a cell can hold more than one letter, often as part of a tricky gimmick or theme — you should check out Double Trouble crosswords (also known as Crushword puzzles).

Every box in this puzzle contains either 1, 2, or 3 letters, making the crossings extra challenging to work out so that every answer fits.

(There’s even a Diagramless Double Trouble for the truly masochistic solver.)

Sometimes, the variation isn’t in the grid design, it’s in the cluing.

For instance, instead of a traditional crossword clue, a Triple Play puzzle offers three words that form phrases with the intended answer word. For example, the clue SNAIL, BOX, ORDER points to the answer word MAIL (snail mail, mailbox, mail order).

The trios replace some (but not all) of the usual clues, offering a more associative clue to unravel.

Other times, not every entry gets clued at all. In a Four-Most, every four-letter word in the grid isn’t clued, it’s listed alphabetically in a separate word list instead. So while the clues handle the 3-letter, 5-letter, and entries of other lengths, you have to fit the four-letter words into grid from their crossings.

Similarly, an At 6’s & 7’s crossword does the same, but with all of the six-letter words and all of the seven-letter words removed from the clue list. They still get clued, but alphabetically, not by grid coordinates.

In a Buried Treasure puzzle, the shaded grid entries are related words that fit a particular theme, and they’re only clued in the grid as “Treasure Word.” So you have to fill them in from their crossings and figure out what the Treasure Words have in common.

I’m going to close out today’s post with two of my favorite crossword variants. One is a cluing variant, the other a grid variant.

For an additional level of deduction in your crossword solve, there’s Battleships.

In this puzzle, you don’t get the across and down grid coordinates. Instead, you get one Battleship-style coordinate that the word will occupy. You don’t know if the answer word is reading across or down, only that word crosses that coordinate somewhere in the grid.

You get set words to get you started, but it’s still fun to puzzle out exactly how to fit the grid together.

For a nice change of pace visually, there’s Three-D Crossword.

This puzzle offers the same grid three times, side by side by side, like looking at one half of a cube corner first.

It’s genuinely eye-catching and leads to some interesting crossings, allowing for longer entries without all the extra grid fill of a traditional 17x puzzle or larger.

They’re a pleasure to solve and surprisingly fun to construct.

Crosswords have endured in the public eye and in the hearts of puzzlers because of the endless creativity they represent. A clever mind can take a crossword places solvers didn’t expect, challenging and delighting them in equal measure.

It’s one of the many reasons crosswords have stood the test of time, and will continue to do so for years to come.

Are you a traditional crossword solver, a mini/midi enthusiast, a cryptic crossword devotee, or a fan of variety crosswords like the ones above? Did we introduce you to any new favorites? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!