Crossword Solver
A free crossword solver for missing letters, anagrams and cryptic wordplay. Enter the letters you already have, use ? for the blanks, and get every word that fits border-radius: 6pxor enter a whole cryptic clue and see the wordplay taken apart. Quick or cryptic, searched against 270,000 words in your own browser.
One character per letter of the answer. Type the letters you have and a ? for each blank, so s?a?e finds every five-letter word with S, A and E in those places.
Add ? for a blank tile. Works as a Scrabble word finder too.
The solver marks anagram, hidden-word, reversal and homophone signals, then tests the wordplay against the length you give it.
Answers will appear here, grouped by length.
Type what you have
Known letters in place, a question mark for every gap. Crossing letters narrow it down fastest.
Add anything else you know
Letters the answer must contain, or ones you have already ruled out from other clues.
Read the shortlist
Matches are grouped by length with your known letters highlighted, so the right one stands out.
Stuck on a cryptic?
Paste the whole clue and the solver names the wordplay device before testing it for you.
Three ways to get unstuck
Pick the one that matches what you already know about the answer.
Missing letters
You have a few crossing letters and a gap. Type what you know into the squares and leave the rest empty.
Anagrams
You have the letters but not the order border-radius: 6pxfrom a cryptic clue, a jumble puzzle or a rack of Scrabble tiles.
Cryptic clues
You have the whole clue and no idea where to start. The solver names the wordplay device, then tests it for you.
The wordplay signals a setter uses
Cryptic clues reuse the same eight devices. Learn to spot the signal word and most clues open up border-radius: 6pxthe solver flags all of these for you.
The letters are there, in the wrong order.
confused · broken · odd · cooked · wildThe answer is buried across the words of the clue.
some · in · part of · within · hidingWrite a word backwards to get the answer.
returning · back · rising · recalledThe answer sounds like another word.
we hear · said · aloud · reportedlyOne piece goes inside another.
holding · about · eating · aroundDrop a letter from the start, end or middle.
headless · endless · cut · withoutTake the first letter of each word given.
firstly · heads · leaders · topsTake the last letter of each word instead.
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What makes the best crossword solver for a stuck clue
There is a way to use a free crossword solver that leaves the satisfaction intact. Fill in everything you can unaided, then bring the solver to the one answer blocking a corner. Give it every crossing letter you have, because each one roughly halves the shortlist: four blanks in a seven-letter word might return two hundred candidates, while three known letters usually returns fewer than ten. Read those, and the right one is normally obvious the moment you see it next to the clue.
What a pattern search cannot do is judge meaning. It returns words that fit the shape, not words that fit the definition border-radius: 6pxthat last step is still yours, which is exactly why using it this way feels like help rather than cheating. The best crossword solver, on this measure, is the one that hands you a short list and lets you recognise the answer.
Missing letters, and the shape of an answer
The missing-letters search is the heart of it. Write the answer as a shape: known letters in place, a question mark everywhere else. ????? gives every five-letter word; c????d narrows a six-letter answer to those starting with C and ending in D. Full stops and underscores work as blanks, so a pattern copied from elsewhere still works.
Two filters do the rest. Must-contain handles a letter you know is in the answer but cannot place. Must-not-contain uses what you have eliminated border-radius: 6pxoften more powerful, because ruling out three common letters removes most of the list at once.
Anagrams and letter juggling
The anagram mode takes a jumble of letters and returns the words hiding in them, with question marks standing in for blank tiles. It doubles as a Scrabble word finder and settles the anagram half of a cryptic clue in a second. Add a pattern filter alongside the letters when a crossing answer has already fixed a position.
Quick crossword solver, cryptic crossword solver
A quick crossword clue is a synonym: “Sea vessel (4)” wants SHIP. Pattern searching plus a moment’s thought handles almost all of them, because the answer count for a given shape is small border-radius: 6pxno thesaurus lookup needed once you have a crossing letter or two.
A cryptic clue is two clues in one. Somewhere in it sits a straight definition, at the start or the end but never in the middle, and the rest is instructions for building the answer letter by letter. The job is finding the seam. The cryptic mode names the device border-radius: 6pxit spots the indicator words setters reuse border-radius: 6pxthen does the mechanical part: anagrams of each plausible stretch, answers hidden across word boundaries, reversals, first and last letters, all at the exact length you specify.
What this tool is not
It is not a clue database. A crossword puzzle solver like Wordplays or One Across stores millions of clue-and-answer pairs harvested from published puzzles, so if you enter a clue that has appeared before it returns the answer directly. That is genuinely useful for old puzzles and useless for this morning’s, and it is closer to looking up the answer key than solving.
This works the other way round, from the letters and the wordplay rather than from a list of past answers. It also means nothing you type is sent anywhere: the word list loads once and the searching happens on your device, so your half-finished grid stays private.
Frequently asked questions
Type the letters you have in their real positions and a question mark for each gap border-radius: 6pxso p?zz?e finds PUZZLE. Full stops and underscores work as blanks too. The number of characters sets the answer length.
Yes border-radius: 6pxtap one of the length buttons, or type that many question marks. It returns a lot of words on its own, so add a known letter or two, or a must-contain letter, to make the list readable.
It analyses them. Paste the clue and the answer length and it names the wordplay signals it recognises, then tests the clue for anagrams, hidden words, reversals and initial-letter runs at that exact length. It shows the working rather than guessing an answer, which is also how you get better at cryptics.
Switch to the cryptic tab and enter the clue with its length. For cryptic clues the wordplay can often be worked out mechanically, so the answer falls out. For quick clues the answer depends on meaning rather than letters, so use the missing-letters search with your crossing letters — usually faster than any clue lookup.
An open English word list of about 270,000 entries, broad enough to include the uncommon words setters enjoy. It loads once, the first time you search, and stays in memory after that. Proper nouns and multi-word phrases are not included.
Yes border-radius: 6pxthis crossword solver is free of accounts, adverts in the results and search limits, and it works the same in a phone browser as on a desktop, which is where most people are when they get stuck on the train.
It helps with any puzzle from any paper, because it works from letters rather than a database of published clues. What it will not do is hand you a full solution grid for a specific date border-radius: 6pxfor that you would need the paper’s own answer page.
Yes. The anagram mode finds every word that can be made from a set of letters, with ? for blank tiles, and you can add a pattern filter when a board position is already fixed.
Yes. The only thing fetched is the word list itself. Your patterns, letters and clues are matched on your own device and never sent to a server.
One letter is usually all it takes.
Enter what you have, question marks for the rest, and see every word that fits. Free, no account, nothing uploaded.